The Onion Field Incident | Morbid

Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.

And I'm Elena.

And this is Morbid.

🎵

This is morbid, not AI.

That's what I would sound like if I was AI.

AI.

I am a robot.

Talking to you.

I feel like I sound like Roddy and Ben's impression of a girl from the valley.

Who they think is AI.

Honestly valid, I think.

I don't watch that show, but I feel like that's valid.

It's one of the saddest shows of all time.

Yeah, I couldn't do it.

So don't.

I could handle the – I don't know if we've talked about this before.

Maybe we have.

My brain is old now.

It gets older by the day.

Wait, I feel like I know what you're going to say and it's actually like pertinent.

So go ahead and say it.

Like I can watch like Vanderpump Rules.

I can watch all that.

I mouthed it as she said it.

You did.

Because like it's just adults being dumb and it's like, sure, watch that.

I don't give a shit if you blow up your life.

Like that's your business.

You do what you want.

But once it brings kids into it, I –

I back off.

Yeah.

Because I'm like, I can't watch you act this way with kids around.

Well, I think it's fun to, like, Housewives is, like, a thing in and of itself.

And then, like, other reality shows, it's fun to watch, like, early 20s, 30s people.

Yeah.

Like, fuck up their lives and, like, be ridiculous.

But like when real life shit like divorce and like kids and houses, and like it gets gnarly, gets brought into i don't want to know anything about that because then i kind of feel i feel like too voyeuristic in that scenario where i'm like i shouldn't be watching you go through this.

Yeah, i'm not a schadenfreude.

Do i want to watch like 20 somethings and 30 somethings like cheat on each other?

Yeah, while they're dating and shit all day like let's go.

But like even i remember watching like a vanderpump rules, like watching skandaval is too much.

I while it was happening, i was invested and i needed to know everything.

It gripped us all.

Looking back on it now i re-watched some of those episodes.

Now, watching ariana go through that, i was like we shouldn't have seen this.

No, and she never should have been like subjected to showing that entire part of her life yeah which, like whatever she was happy showing, like the power to her oh, absolutely.

But like i was watching it and i was just like Oh, I feel so bad.

Like, I'm like, this is... Because she was... It was just all... Everyone was so broken.

And I was like, oh, fuck.

This is just, like, way too real.

I can't imagine having to process what she went through, like, without a fucking camera in my face.

I can't imagine it with a camera in my face.

And here's the thing.

I love like, reality television.

I'm gonna continue yeah, but you're like, you love the old reality, i do.

I like old, i don't watch any new ones, i love all reality television.

In fact um, this year, me and my friends used to watch the bachelor like kind of like on and off in high school and like a little bit after i haven't watched it in forever, i'm watching the bachelorette this year because taylor frankie paul her her name is, so i don't know who that is, taylor frankie paul.

Well, you don't watch the secret lives of mormon wives.

No, Don't you dare.

Don't you dare look at me with a scowl on your face and say no.

It is one of the best shows.

I support it.

As you should.

I don't support them.

I support you all watching it.

Yeah.

It is one of the best shows to grace our television screens in decades.

And I stand 25 toes down on that.

I grew extra feet just to stand further on that.

It's so good, that's a lot of toes.

But taylor frankie paul of mom talk and secret lives of mormon wives is the bachelorette this year, so i think i'm gonna watch.

See that's it's the, it's the uh the, the mom talk kind of stuff.

Will mom talk survive this?

Yeah, will mom talk survive this?

I think yeah, i think uh, i'm not quite.

I'm not not on that part of mom talk.

Oh, i'm not on mom talk.

I'm on, like on tiktok, i'm on uh, cindy hoffer Oh, them Hoffers.

Them Hoffers.

We love them.

We've shouted out the Hoffers.

We have and I will continue to shout out them Hoffers.

That's the thing.

I watch Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, but I don't experience them on TikTok.

Yeah, which is probably good.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, probably.

Again, I don't know.

Well, that's I mean.

Now I'm experiencing them because of the whole, like fruity pubblescape, but we're not getting into that on this show.

Yeah, we won't get into that.

Because you know what?

Follow them Hoffers.

Follow Annalie.

Annalie.

Great follow.

Annalie.

We love Annalie.

Great follow.

Follow Chef Riley.

I love Chef Riley with my entire heart.

Oh, yes.

Do you follow?

Follow chef riley, i do now.

He's a listener.

Yeah, i didn't before and i do now.

Chef riley makes some of the most gorgeous meals i've ever seen in my entire life.

Yeah, and he has a cookbook coming out and i already pre-ordered it.

Oh, and that's actually not even a plug like whatsoever.

I just love chef riley.

Hell yeah, let's go.

But yeah, those are things you should do.

Those are people you should follow.

But again, if you're into The Valley or you know Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, I'm not judging anybody.

Yeah, she doesn't judge me.

You can watch whatever the fuck you want.

I don't.

In fact, Debbie watches it too, Deb Deb.

Oh, yeah.

Deb Deb loves it.

And we spill the tea.

Yeah.

And sometimes you ask questions.

I support it all.

Yeah. i support whatever whatever makes you happy and we support your weird stuff you play like weird video games and watch weird shows exactly and i watch like um old episodes of southern charm and vanderpump rules oh my god all the time and it's it's a trip to watch those not us turning on southern charm the other day like a really old episode where they really were talking about and so after thanksgiving we like all get together for the weekend and like we're with john we're with john's mom we're with a lot of family yep and elaine and i are like let's watch old southern charm it's nighttime like kids went to bed and we decided unknowingly to pick the reunion where they say something about giving up oral sex or cheese yep immediately on impact um there was another like gross thing big shot of austin's naked ass in the shower and john's mom gets up and was like well i'm gonna go to bed good night we were just like it had nothing to do with that but i was like wow we fucked i was like we really fucked this one it was a gnarly one yeah i was embarrassed but we continued to watch it we did um but yeah so watch what you want to watch 2026 y'all it's on its way i can't wait it's the year that i turned 30 there you go i know and i will be 40 pretty soon yep uh i think it's good it is i feel great mikey said 39 to 40 was like one of his best years it's true and i believe him so mikey doesn't ever lie he doesn't he would never lie to me all right let's let's get into it we really talked speaking of uh i have no segue okay uh because we were speaking of something happy and this is not uh this is called and i'm sure you've read this because you clicked on the episode but you were probably like what it's called the onion field incident Now the onion field incident could make you think it sounds like something silly.

You think of an onion field and an incident occurring in it.

To me, I immediately was like, is this a silly UFO kind of thing?

What's this about?

Incident has UFO vibes.

Yeah, it's not.

There's murder.

And this is a very...

It's a case where it's just going to make you go, oh.

Oh.

Yeah.

It's like everybody kind of loses in this, which I'm sorry.

It's the holiday season.

But it's a very interesting case, and it's a case that changed a lot of policy for the LAPD later.

So that's interesting, and that was interesting.

It was, you know, something that came out of it.

So the two people that this is the two victims that we're going to be talking about are named Carl Hedinger and Ian Campbell.

Okay.

So let's talk about who they are first.

Carl was born October 29th, 1934 in Los Angeles, California.

He was one of three kids to Francis and Elsie Hedinger.

I think Elsie's the cutest name.

I love the name Elsie.

Makes me think of Lauren Conrad.

Yeah.

He had two sisters, Miriam and Eunice.

They were born several years earlier.

I know Eunice.

Iconic names.

Eunice and Miriam.

They were all planned births, but Carl was a little bit of a surprise.

A happy accident.

Like me.

Yeah.

I was also a happy accident.

You know, we're all doing great out here as happy accidents.

Yeah.

And his arrival on this earth, as far as you know his father was concerned, was a little of an inconvenience, I would say.

Oh.

Elsie Hedinger, on the other hand, adored Carl.

Yeah.

Adored him.

And they were inseparable for a long time.

Mama and son.

Yeah.

Especially in his early years.

Now, despite growing up in a very big, very busy like bustling city of Los Angeles during one of its biggest growth periods too, in the 60s, Carl had dreams of becoming a farmer when he grew up.

Farmer Carl!

Yeah.

Now, he wanted this because he was inspired by these, like really romantic stories.

His mother told him about her idyllic childhood on a large farm in Germany where she grew up.

Stop it.

And she would say how beautiful it was and what a peaceful life it was.

And he was just like, wow, this just sounds amazing.

He said, I long for that.

Yeah.

Now, well, Elsie, obviously, she seemed to have endless time for her son.

She was always around him, you know, doting on him.

Carl's father was another matter. entirely, I would say.

So they were immigrants to California.

And Francis Hedinger was a very hardworking man who labored for very long hours every single day at whatever job he could find.

He was a very hard worker.

He was an experienced carpenter.

He was a very good woodworker, very skilled.

And when Carl got older, he did want to be like his father.

He saw how hard he worked and what he got.

Unfortunately, Francis Hedinger was of a generation that hadn't been raised to be involved in the lives of their children.

I was going to say, it wasn't really like the era for fathers.

No, it really wasn't.

And his attempts to bond with his son were never really successful.

They just didn't jive, really.

Right.

Carl really wanted to learn the skills that his father possessed, and like it seemed so effortless to his father.

But Francis was not a great teacher because he didn't really have a lot of patience.

So their quality time together kind of ended in frustration and really like disappointment on both sides, which is sad.

Yeah, that is sad.

So having an emotionally distant father.

While disappointing for Carl wasn't, like we just said, all that uncommon in mid-century America at the time.

This was kind of the norm.

Yeah, it's kind of not uncommon in general.

An emotionally distant father.

I think it's really like millennial dads are out here.

Trying to fix things.

They're out here being like, sure.

Truth.

Do my hair, paint my nails.

I'm coming to your dance recital.

I'm just talking about John.

And but it wasn't as though Carl was lonely or desperate for attention.

In addition to his mom being like really doting and giving him a lot of attention, Carl's older sisters often became like they acted like kind of like second estate, third moms.

They would lavish him with attention like really good older sisters, and also the neighborhood where they lived was full of young families, newly married couples, so he had a lot of like people to play with during his formative years.

It wasn't like he was just like all alone because my dad's not playing with me yeah, And as a result, Carl developed a very easily likable personality.

He was around a lot of people.

And he's been raised by ladies.

That's great.

Who like lavish him with attention.

That's kind of the dream.

And it made him popular with adults and children.

Like everyone loved him.

They were like Carl for life.

Aww.

Now, after graduating from high school in 1950 at 16 years old.

Wow, early.

Carl enrolled at Pierce Junior College in the San Fernando Valley, which was one of the few schools in the area that was known to have a strong agricultural program.

He said, I'm going to get me that farm.

I'm going to be a farmer.

It was there that Carl really stepped into his own.

He kind of shed any hint of shyness that was there and he was embracing his academic success.

He had pride in what he was doing.

And it turned out that Carl's interest in farming wasn't just a romantic idea, just from those like stories that his mother was telling her of when she was growing up.

But it was something Carl was like actually really good at and interested in.

All right.

But his success wasn't just limited to the farm.

He was also a really good student in other academic, like more academic subjects.

He was a good student athlete.

He was active in student politics and he became student body president. okay, girl, car roll.

After two years there at Pierce, where you know he was so happy the entire time he was there, but then he had to end up moving on, of course, because it's junior college two years.

He found that Not everything was going to be as perfect as that junior college experience was.

Not all academic environments were going to suit him like that.

After graduating from Pierce, he enrolled at Fresno State College, which was a very popular choice among his peers at Pierce.

A lot of them went there.

But Fresno State was not like Pierce academically or socially.

Not long after enrolling, he and his friends found themselves struggling to keep up academically.

Author Joseph Wambaugh, who we will talk about later.

He wrote the book The Onion Fields about this story.

He wrote, though most of the old Pierce boys stayed together.

They played too much and the grades began falling.

So I think they were very social at Pierce and it wasn't the same case.

Yeah.

Now, after a little more than a year at Fresno State.

Carl dropped out early in his senior year and joined the Marines and ended up stationed at a base in 29 Palms, which was a small desert town in San Bernardino County.

So to go from the life of a farmer...

To that of a soldier wasn't exactly what anyone saw for Carl.

They were just like, damn.

But to many of his friends it made like his friends said he was around all the time, like they were, like it did kind of make sense to them.

Because, according to his friend Terry McManus, he was like so many of those farm boys I met at Pierce.

Stubborn, quiet, and determined about right and principle.

And just about 30 years out of touch with the city life of Los Angeles all around them.

All right.

So you know, beginning in his earliest years, Carl's parents had instilled in him a sense of right and wrong that likely seemed antiquated and charming in this kind of city like Los Angeles.

Yeah.

That had not only increased significantly in size since the end of World War II, but the crime rate had also skyrocketed.

Yeah.

So this black and white sense of right and wrong was definitely antiquated at that point.

Yeah.

Now, after serving a few years in the Marines, Carl was honorably discharged and found himself kind of floating around aimlessly without a lot of structure.

None of that rigidity from the military that he actually ended up kind of liking.

Yeah.

And that's tough to go from like complete structure to complete unstructure.

Yeah.

Until a friend convinced him to accompany him to City Hall where he was planning to take the admittance test to enter the police academy.

Okay.

So he'd spent his youth dreaming again.

Peaceful life on the farm.

Never thought about joining law enforcement.

That was just never a thought for him.

But Carl decided that, you know what?

Why don't I just take the test and just see?

I'm bringing you there.

I might as well take the test too.

He's like, I'm smart.

Didn't you just happen? to be bringing someone there and was like, yeah, I'll go for it.

He was like, why not?

And he passed.

Sick.

And he was accepted into the academy.

And Wambaugh later wrote.

He wasn't at all certain this was to be his life's career or even how he got there, but typically he put forth maximum effort and did well and was named class valedictorian in the police academy.

Wow.

So he was student body president in the regular junior college and class valedictorian at the police academy.

He's thriving.

He is.

Now.

Carl spent the first couple of years on the force doing, you know, the mundane and often boring work of patrol, before he ended up being transferred to Hollywood's vice detail in 1962.

Vice.

Unlike the you know kind of like I said, mundane work of a patrolman in the Central Division, there seemed to be no end to the work or the excitement quote unquote of Vice.

In Hollywood.

Especially in Hollywood, yeah.

Hollywood?

Yeah.

So a friend of his said I always like to work with Carl because he had more jokes than any man I'd ever met in my life.

Yeah.

He took everything with, like, humor.

The next major change in Carl's career came the following year, when he was taken off vice and assigned to the felony car division.

It was a squad that dealt mostly with crimes, obviously, involving vehicles.

No way.

I know, it's crazy.

Imagine if I was like, it has nothing to do with cars.

The new assignment also came with a new partner, Ian Campbell.

I remember that name.

Like Carl, Ian had grown up in Los Angeles during that period of very big urban expansion.

But he also had this like main, you know, romantic sense of wonder about the world just like Carl.

Like they had a similar outlook on everything.

He was, according to his mother, a dreamer.

Who loved reading and would quote, dawdle for hours by the pits and stare into the tar until he vividly imagined great Pleistocene creatures there.

What is Pleistocene?

Oh, they're like creatures from like long ago.

Oh, okay, okay.

You know, with like when like glaciers were bopping about everywhere.

Bonds.

You know?

So he had a great imagination.

Okay.

Yeah.

He's just vibing.

Yeah.

I like that he wasn't looking at the clouds.

He was looking at the tar.

Yeah.

He was like, what kind of creatures can I see in the black tar?

Now, Ian had been a good student in high school.

And after a few years in college, he too had joined the Marines.

He worked in communications.

And, just as Carl had, he found that he really liked the rigidity.

Okay um, and the similarities didn't stop with all that between them.

Like carl, ian had also been interested in animals, because carl really loved animals and had been pursuing a degree in zoology.

So that's.

It's funny that, like carl was pursuing a degree in like agriculture, he was pursuing it like two very different things to law enforcement.

But it's also like link up and start a farm together with a petting zoo.

The animals, the farm, let's go.

But he ended up dropping out in his final year to join the Marines.

Okay.

So it was similar to Carl.

When he was discharged from the Marines, he briefly considered returning to school for zoology, but instead found himself, rather unexpectedly, taking the police exam.

Weird.

And it led him to a career in law enforcement.

Random.

Ooh.

Now, a few years into his time on the force, Ian met Ada, a former Las Vegas showgirl, and the two were immediately in love.

Shut the fuck up.

Yeah.

Too cool.

At first, Ada was afraid of him, is what Wambaugh said.

The manners he got from his mother intimidated her, but at the same time made him terribly attractive home.

In no time, they married.

They found a small apartment in Hollywood.

And, you know, Ian's mom, Chrissy, was a frequent guest there.

It was just like a nice little life.

Cute.

By almost any measure, things were going very well for Ian Campbell at this point.

Sounds like it.

He had a promising career, a beautiful young wife.

He was very likely to be promoted to detective in a few years.

But there was always something about Ian that suggested that he like...

Wasn't totally satisfied.

Okay.

Ada said.

Ada once told a friend he was always unrealistic about helping people and always expects more from life than he gets.

I'm afraid police work will somehow awaken a person like him too harshly.

Hmm.

So like it's going to be too like real.

Yeah.

For this like.

Because he's a dreamer.

Yeah.

Now in time, Ian and Ada moved from their small Hollywood apartment to their own home and they ended up having their first daughter Valerie, who was soon followed by another daughter, Lori.

Great name.

Over time, Ian lost some of that restlessness that he'd probably felt in the early years of their marriage and eventually settled into a pretty quiet peaceful, middle-class life.

You know he did have one that was punctured by a lot of violence and chaos in his day job, but he got to go home, to a nice, peaceful home with two daughters and a wife.

Yeah.

Now, Carl and Ian were just similar in their interests and personal histories, but also in their demeanor and constitutions.

They were both bookish.

They were pretty intellectual, much more intellectual than the like ordinary cop on the LA beat at the time.

To be quite honest,

That's just the way it was.

And both had very strong convictions when it came to right and wrong.

This was something they like really shared.

Yeah.

This meant that, while they were made for good partners at work, they were also really well suited to be good friends.

Yeah.

Which was a really rare thing for the average cop to find in their partner, especially in Los Angeles in the 1960s.

Yeah.

To be partnered up with someone you click with that well.

Yeah.

Well, just like working on things that are so intense at work.

Yeah.

You're probably going to need some time away from that person, you would think.

Yeah.

Especially if you're not really clicking.

Yeah.

And they genuinely like each other.

That's cool.

And everything lines up.

So like when they go about doing things, they know they're on the same page.

Like they're kind of like in lockstep with each other.

So while Ian was settling into his more peaceful era at home, Carl was also finding love.

During one of the many parties held by fellow officer Bob Burke during his early years on the force, Carl met Helen Davis.

Now, from the moment they met, Carl was just so into Helen.

I love love.

He was into her quick wit, her decisive personality, her good sense of humor.

Oh, she sounds like a girl.

A great gal.

Like a woman.

Yeah.

Now, while many of the women who attended Bob's parties were pretty timid and very much of this era, because that was the time

Yeah.

Helen was like very bold, very self-possessed.

A hot ticket.

And most importantly, she was equally as attracted to Carl.

Let's go.

And they dated for several months.

And in December of 1962...

They ran off to Las Vegas and got married.

Shut up.

Which is funny because Ian's wife is a Vegas showgirl.

Yes.

Look at that.

Again, their lives are just like interlocking.

Yeah.

It's so weird.

Now, like his new partner in the felony car division, Carl had started to envision a very bright future for himself, where he would be promoted to detective as well and assigned to one of the more prestigious divisions like homicide or major crimes.

Like they were like ready.

Yeah, and they got that and then everybody lived happily ever after and we don't even actually know what we're talking about.

What a great story, everybody.

I'm rooting for them.

Onions?

Who are you rooting for?

Forget the onions.

Now.

By then he and Helen would have moved into a little house of their own and in time they would have started a family.

Like, he was envisioning this whole thing.

Yeah.

Unfortunately...

What neither Carl nor Ian or their respective wives envisioned was that, in a matter of just a few months, all of those plans were going to come crashing down around them in the wake of a really, really inconceivable tragedy.

Oh, no.

Now, this all started with a simple traffic stop.

That really scares the shit out of me.

That night, like the eight nights before it, the officers were headed out on patrol, looking for anyone committing a crime behind the wheel of a car.

The most obvious offenders were drunk drivers, the car thieves, the hit and runs.

They were easy to spot.

Yeah.

But they weren't necessarily the types of people that they were on the lookout for.

So, like a lot of major cities around the country, Los Angeles in the 1960s was definitely undergoing a big social and cultural shift in terms of marginalized communities.

Yeah.

Up and down the coast, activist groups were demanding equal treatment and better opportunities, while also simultaneously demanding an end to the brutality experienced by the members of their communities at the hands of the police and the public.

Yeah.

I thought that's where we were headed.

Yeah.

Inspired in large part by those movements.

At this point gay lesbian, bisexual individuals like that in the San Francisco and Los Angeles area started mounting their own campaigns for equality, just demanding, among other things, the decriminalization of same-sex relationships.

That'd be pretty dope.

That would be pretty sick.

Big fan of that.

In an end to the anti-gay violence that had resulted from the increased visibility.

Yeah, that's also good.

So this is great.

Like, this is all good stuff.

This is the thing, you know, things moving forward.

Now, in a somewhat ironic twist, the officers who just a few years earlier had spent countless nights accosting, harassing, and busting sometimes gay men in the parks, they were now tasked with hitting the streets and protecting those same individuals from violence and anything else that might occur.

The script had flipped very quickly.

Yeah, definitely.

In the best kind of way.

Yeah.

It's just like it's very ironic to see that like, oh, you were tasked with this and now good luck.

Yeah.

But now it's important to note that, while it may have been their job to protect every resident of Los Angeles,

Yeah.

From the jump, that was their job.

That's the oath they took.

Many, if not most of the men on the force, had a particular disdain for particularly gay men.

Yeah.

And weren't exactly thrilled to be dealing with them at all, much less now having to protect them.

Yeah.

Which is like really awful.

They think that makes them gay.

Which is like, imagine not being thrilled with having to protect humans.

No.

Your fellow humans.

Hold on, hold on.

No.

Nope, I won't imagine that.

Regardless of their personal feelings though, Carl and Ian, because I'm not saying that's how they felt.

I'm saying that was the general consensus on the force at the time.

Carl and Ian were both men of integrity.

So when the reports began coming in that various men were being assaulted and robbed in their cars especially when they were together and somebody thought they were a gay couple the officers accepted the assignment that they had to go take care of this.

And they did that without any protests, without any complaints, as many of the other officers did.

Now I'm not saying give them a medal for that, but i'm just saying it's just, it's nice to know that they were on the right side of things.

I just want to be clear that like, we're not talking about two assholes here.

Yeah, that's all.

I'm not trying to give anyone a medal or say that that's like yeah, going above and beyond to like, protect your fellow person yeah, but this is just who they were.

Now, that night, before Heddinger and Campbell left the station to patrol, they ran into Lieutenant Max Hurlbut, who remembered them saying something about how they'd been assigned to quote, work up suspects in a string of crimes against gays.

That's a quote.

The officers set out and spent hours driving around Los Angeles without seeing even a traffic violation.

It was a very slow night until about 10 pm when they noticed two young men in a 1946 Ford Coupe driving slowly down one of the city's major roads.

Now, the men in the Ford, they were 29-year-old Gregory Powell and 30-year-old Jimmy Lee Smith.

Both of them were career criminals with long rap sheets that included, you know, various forms of theft and robbery, a ton of drug charges, just a bunch of stuff.

Like Carl and Ian, Powell and Smith had met just nine days earlier, which is weird.

Weird when a fellow ex-convict introduced them and suggested they could work together on a few small robbery jobs.

Terrible.

Smith said of Powell years later this is just a wild way to describe someone.

He was a funny looking guy.

I mean you could tell he wasn't eating right, kind of lean and hungry looking, but then so was I.

What?

What it's like.

Excuse me, drew and i just watched fargo for the first time, which i thought was like going to be similar to the case.

Yeah, not the case, it's literally like a completely different movie.

But they keep describing one of the i think it's joe pesci as or sorry, not joe pesci duh, steve buscemi as a funny looking guy.

Funny looking guy, that's it, just funny looking.

Now, like Hedinger and Campbell, Greg and Jimmy quickly learned that they had more than the usual things in common.

Both had grown up in unstable and sometimes even unsafe homes.

And of course both had spent the majority of their adult lives in and out of California's various jails and prisons and all kinds of things.

Sad.

And if anything, while they were there, they just learned to become better criminals.

The two men hit it off immediately and agreed to work together.

But very quickly, they also developed possibly a more intimate relationship.

It's always been somewhat unclear.

And that's why I don't want to put any kind of label on what they were or weren't, what their relationship was.

That's just a part of who they are.

Now it was just past 10 pm and Carl and Ian were discussing where they were going to go for dinner.

Carl and Ian are the police officers.

And that's when they spotted the 1946 Ford driven by Powell as they came out of an alley.

Now again, they were out looking for suspects in a string of pretty violent crimes committed against gay men in the area.

The quick flash of light that fell over the men in the car was enough to catch the attention of the officers.

In Joseph Wambaugh's retelling of the incident in the Onion Field I mentioned earlier.

It's cited in the show notes.

He speculates that Powell and Smith maybe aroused the suspicions of the officers.

Like pretty quickly.

And he says it was patently obvious Powell and Smith were not ordinary out-of-town tourists.

The snap brim.

Leather caps were rare enough, but with matching leather jackets they were almost absurdly suspicious, even contrived.

Wow.

Yeah.

But Hedinger and Campbell couldn't pull the men over simply because they looked like ne'er-do-wells.

They could not pull them over simply because they had matching jackets.

Yeah, like, you know, that's not supposed to be the case, at least.

They needed something more concrete that at least resembled a crime.

So they pull out behind the Ford and boom, they get what they need, because a burned out rear license plate light

That's all it takes.

That'll do it.

Then, just moments after, Campbell noticed the burned-out plate light.

Greg Powell gave them even more of an excuse to pull over when he made an illegal U-turn.

So they were like, we got him.

You can't bang a Yui.

No, you can't bang a Yui.

Not in Los Angeles.

Oh, you can always bang a Yui in Boston.

Always.

Now continuing to follow behind the Ford.

Campbell threw his arm out the window and put the flashing red light because they're undercover on top of the car, then blew the horn, letting the driver know that he's got to pull over.

When they saw the light in the rearview mirror, Jimmy panicked, pulling the 38 caliber pistol from his jacket pocket and dropping it on the floor, and then kicking it over to the other side of the car where it landed next to Greg Powell's foot.

Now, although his eyes were fixed on the car in the rear view, Greg felt this thing hit his foot.

And without looking, he knew exactly what he had just kicked over to him.

And with his eyes still in the mirror, he tried as best he could to calm Jimmy down.

He was reminding him, like, there's no need to panic.

This is a traffic violation.

Don't fucking go crazy.

Don't kick me a gun.

Yeah, like, what are you doing?

Greg Powell looked in his side mirror and watched as Ian Campbell approached the car on the driver's side.

Mm-hmm.

He'd been through all this before, obviously.

He's a career criminal.

Yeah, he's been stopped in traffic.

So he kept his hands firmly placed on the wheel and didn't make any sudden movements.

Now.

At the time however, he was moving the gun on the floor into the space between the seat and the door.

Yeah, so he wouldn't see it.

Trying to get it out of sight, yeah.

But he was like I want it to be accessible because I don't know what's going to happen and I'm a career criminal.

As he approached the door, Campbell announced himself as a police officer.

And Powell said oh Lord, I know what I'm getting a ticket for this time, because this happened to him often.

But in his head, he also knew that undercover police officers didn't give traffic tickets.

Right.

And it was unlikely he would be able to bluff his way out of this situation.

But the two men just kind of talked to each other, exchanged, you know, ordinary traffic stop shit.

Campbell asked to see Powell's ID, asked a few questions like, when did you get into town?

And then asked the question that Greg Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith were hoping not to hear.

Would you mind stepping out of the car?

No.

Powell protested and he was like, what are we being stopped for?

Why do I need to get out of the car?

But Campbell just said, it's just routine.

Now, as he slowly opened the door, Powell could see that Ian Campbell was holding a flashlight.

And while he presumed the officer had a gun on him, it would have taken him at least a few seconds to get it because he couldn't see it from where he was.

So Greg opened the door a little faster, which was when Ian looked down and saw the 38 caliber pistol in his hand, because he wanted it accessible.

It was right there.

But by the time everything clicked into place in Ian's mind, it was too late.

Powell was already out of the car and had managed to spin Ian Campbell around, holding him by his sports coat and pressing the gun into his back.

Using Campbell as like a shield, essentially.

Now, from the passenger seat of the police car, Carl Hedinger watched everything happening and was like completely confused by what just occurred.

Yeah, like I just stopped you for a traffic violation.

And he couldn't see the details.

So he's just like, what the fuck is going on?

From where he was sitting, it appeared Ian and the driver were walking towards the back of the car.

But it occurred to Carl that Ian was walking in front of the driver, not behind him, and protocol did not dictate that.

By the time he was out of the car and closer to the suspects.

Jimmy Lee Smith was also out of the car and a bewildered Carl stood before all three of these guys, still confused by what the fuck was happening here.

And Carl snapped back into focus when he heard Greg Powell tell Smith 'Take his piece'.

Carl stepped back and put his hand on his revolver, ready to pull it out of the holster, but he heard Ian Campbell, his partner, say he's got a gun on me, give him your gun.

Oh.

Now, at this time, and we'll go further into this later, there wasn't protocol for this.

This didn't happen a lot.

So this wasn't protocol.

There was no protocol.

They weren't taught what to do in this situation.

Yeah, I mean, what do you do?

I don't know.

That's the thing.

By this point, Carl had removed his gun from his holster and was pointing it in the direction of Powell, who was still shielded by Campbell.

Yeah.

And Ian's just trying not to get shot, so that's why he's like, give him your peace.

And Carl later said, Hello?

By the way, Los Angeles.

Yeah, for real.

They're like, I gotta go about my life.

And Carl is sitting there trying to quickly mull over what his options are.

What the fuck do I do?

If he didn't put his gun down, the driver might shoot Campbell.

But if he did surrender the weapon, it was entirely possible he might shoot them both.

Right.

So Carl was now pointing the gun at Smith who was standing by the back of the ford, completely still as a statue.

Then he heard a voice from the other direction and swung the gun the other way.

It was campbell and he was begging carl to give up his gun because he's like i don't want to get shot.

With no good options left, carl could feel the grip on his revolver loosening because he was like so he was still holding.

I guess he like loosened it to just like kind of hold it in two fingers And he just raised it, like dangled it from his fingers.

And Smith stepped forward and just plucked it out of his hand.

Okay.

Now all four men stood perfectly still, just standing there, staring at each other for a few moments.

And then Carl started to move, like slightly, like making circles on the ground with his flashlight beam.

Okay.

Because he was trying to signal to any passing drivers that like something is happening.

Yeah.

And he later told a jury.

He said we stood at the side of the street with our hands in the air and flashlights in our hands.

And he said we stood there for about 15 seconds in silence, trying to wave around my arm and draw the attention of someone.

I saw cars going both directions.

Many of the drivers saw us waving our arms but no one stopped.

Finally, whatever was going on here, the silence spell was broken and Powell like, snapped back to life and directed Smith to move the unmarked police car further away from the road.

While Smith turned off the flashing red light and moved the car, Powell instructed Campbell to get behind the wheel of the Ford and he motioned for Hedinger to get in the back seat.

Okay.

So all four men had piled into their car now, and Greg Powell became very agitated.

He said more to himself than them, I think.

He said, I've already killed two people.

I didn't want to get in this business, but now that I'm in it, I got to go all the way.

Oh, fuck.

Like, what the fuck?

Hearing that?

Yeah, no.

So Powell instructed Ian to drive in the direction of the Hollywood Freeway and not do anything to attract attention.

Okay.

Powell told them the plan was to drive them out to some remote location in the north where they would let the two officers go.

He said we'll take you guys up on the ridge road, turn off on a side road, drop you off and make sure you have to walk a long way back to the highway.

That's what Powell told them.

Greg went a step further, Greg Powell, telling them that he would, quote throw the officers' guns into the brush, where they could be found after he and Smith had left.

Okay.

Powell even went so far as to return a small amount of money he'd stolen from Campbell earlier as a sign of good faith.

Okay.

So, as they're driving, Powell and Smith are carrying on a very quiet, whispered conversation that neither Campbell nor Hedinger could hear.

When the kidnappers weren't talking to each other, Carl and Ian tried to engage them in conversation.

They told them about their families and how both were eager to return safely to them.

So there should be no concern about either of them trying to escape or flag down help because they said we just want to get back to our families.

And the talk of the officer's wives and children seemed to agitate Smith, who constantly told them to stop talking.

Which means he has a plan to kill you.

But Powell seemed unbothered and even a little amused by the whole thing.

Because he's crazy.

Yeah.

It seemed, at least for a time though, that it was at least having the desired effect of like relaxing the tension in the car a little bit.

So to Ian and Carl it felt like the tension in the car maybe decreased a little bit as they were driving north.

But

It didn't really have a lot to do with the conversation that they were trying to have.

Years later, Jimmy Smith would recall the conversation between he and Powell as they were driving.

He said, Jimmy, I told you it was only a matter of time before it would come to this.

That's what Powell said to him.

The fuck have they been doing?

And he said, it's either them or us.

Remember the Lindbergh Law.

He didn't come right out and say it, but when Greg mentioned the Lindbergh law, Jimmy knew exactly what he meant.

What is that?

They had kidnapped two police officers at gunpoint and if they were caught they would almost certainly be given the death penalty.

Oh, shit.

And the only way to ensure that they didn't get caught was to get rid of any witnesses.

It came from the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, which we have not covered yet, and I do want to cover it.

I know.

It's so weird that we haven't covered that.

I always think we have for some reason.

Yeah, it's always on my list.

Yeah.

We talked about it on Crime Countdown once, I think, and that's why I think we covered it all the time.

But it came from that case.

It also makes me think of the Sodder children, because I think we briefly talked about it when we went over that case, which was like one of the first episodes, I think.

Now, they continue driving north for a very long time, passing out of Los Angeles.

More than an hour had passed when Powell spoke up again.

And he said, we've changed our plan.

We're going to hold you guys until we stop a family car.

We need hostages.

When we get some, we'll let you guys go.

We know your cops and have a job to do, but if you turn us in we'll kill every member of that family.

Okay.

Carl and Ian both promised not to take any action.

And Carl said, we're both family men and want to get back to our families alive.

Now, after about an hour and a half, they reached the valley just out of Bakersfield when Powell said he knew of a dirt road nearby and instructed Ian to pull off the highway at the next exit.

So they drove down this dark country road and Powell pointed to the farmhouse off in the distance and said that's the farmhouse you're going to hike back to to make your call.

It seemed like they were actually giving them, they're like, okay, we're going in here.

That house right there you can go to and you can make your call.

You're not going to turn us in.

That's your call to get back to wherever you need to get back to.

It seems like they're setting them up as like, we are going to let you go.

Carl looked out the window and saw what looked to be farmland as far as he could see in every direction, which must have been like.

Which is so sad because he loves farms.

And Powell said, stop the car, turn off the lights.

This is where we're going to let you go.

So Jimmy Smith turned and looked at Carl Hedinger, who had spent the entire ride squished into the back compartment of the car, by the way.

Who did?

Sorry.

Carl.

Okay.

And Jimmy recalled he was breathing funny again, couldn't get enough air.

So he was like stressed out back there, like trying.

And Jimmy was remembering how Greg had told him he didn't want to tie the hostages up earlier that night.

And his comment about the Lindbergh law.

And he's like, I don't think we're letting them go.

Like, that was—he was like, ugh.

But if Carl and Ian picked up on Smith's anxiety or the fact that that previous plan that they said they were going with wasn't happening and that like they weren't going to kidnap a family and like all that shit—.

Neither of them let them know that they knew that the plan was being abandoned.

Kind of thing that they had a totally different idea.

Like later, Jimmy was like, it seemed like they thought we were going to let them go.

Like they thought we were being real.

Now, Powell instructed the two men to get out of the car.

And Ian opened the door and slid out, while Carl struggled to get out of the seats and out into the front.

And outside the car they could smell the dirt and acres of onions planted in the fields on both sides of them.

It is a massive onion field.

They said it even caused all their eyes to tear up.

Oh, yeah.

It was that much like the pungent stench.

Yeah.

Were it not for the moon that night and a lot of stars, it would have been pitch black.

Oh, so freaky.

And the only sound they could hear was crickets.

Oh.

Yeah.

With their arms raised high above their heads, Ian and Carl stood before Powell, who was still holding Ian's gun in his hand.

And Powell said, we told you we were going to let you guys go.

But have you ever heard of the Little Lindbergh Law?

Oh no.

Ian had barely begun to open his mouth to say the word yes when Powell raised the gun and fired and shot him directly in the mouth.

Oh my god.

The blast knocked Ian off his feet, sending him into the air briefly before landing hard on his back.

He laid there moaning on the ground and Powell walked over and stood directly over him and fired four more shots directly into his chest.

And Jimmy Smith said later, I can only remember his arm and his hand.

Each time a bullet hit him, his hand would jerk and jump up like he was grabbing for you.

Oh.

Yeah.

Now, although... And he's a father of two daughters.

Like...

It's just who, had just been newly married, wanted to become a detective.

Studied zoology like that fucking breaks my heart.

And all they did was stop these two fuckers for a traffic violation.

Yeah.

Also, what the fuck are these two doing?

That's... They're fucking crazy.

Like, these are career criminals that... It's senseless.

Completely senseless.

That's what makes this so sad.

It's like, this is a completely, completely senseless crime.

Yeah.

Although he didn't remember doing this, Carl let out later.

They told the jury that Carl let out a long, loud scream the moment his partner hit the ground.

Yeah, of course he did.

That must have been horrific to witness.

And that's like his friend and his partner.

Like they work together.

Yeah.

The noise broke the kidnappers concentration and they looked up just in time to see Carl lurching away from them in the direction of the onion field.

He just managed to hurl himself through the bramble packed barbed wire fence, ripping his hands and face in the process, and was trying to catch his breath when he heard the sound of footsteps and heavy, heavy breathing coming.

They were chasing him.

Yeah.

He knew they were after him and they were intending to kill him just as they killed Ian.

And he had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide at this moment.

And the realization that he might die was all the motivation he needed.

And just seconds after he'd made it through the fence, he was on his feet and he was running harder and faster than he ever ran before.

I'm sure.

Now back on the road.

Jimmy had run back to the car to get the flashlights, which he handed over to Powell as soon as he got back to where Greg was standing.

And in order to get a better view, Powell climbed up on top of one of the fence posts and swept the flashlight beam back and forth across the fields, expecting to find Hedinger crouched in the low leaves of onions in the ground.

I'm like, nah, he's running.

And imagine being like...

Because at this point, Carl started running, but he's trying to hide whenever that beam comes.

So he's out of breath.

Not wanting to give away his position, and he made himself as small as he could to try to catch his breath while this light is sweeping around.

When he looked at his watch, he saw that it was 12.15 a.m.

It had been over two hours since they last checked in with the dispatcher, and their fellow officers at this point were definitely going to be looking for them.

Because if they're not hearing from them, something's wrong.

Right.

But there was no way they would find them because they're two hours away.

In a fucking onion field.

They're in Baker's Field in an onion field.

Smart.

Okay, yeah.

Which is probably good.

Yep.

If ever there was a moment to make a break for it, it was when it was pitch fucking black.

So he quietly stands up and just starts running again, this time towards the south, which he hoped was the last place they would think to look.

And as he crept along the fence... How the fuck do you even know where you're running at that point?

That's the thing, you're in a giant onion field.

What if you just run right back into them?

Yeah.

Carl could see though, as he's creeping along the fence, that Powell was back behind the wheel of the Ford and was driving slowly down the road, flashing his flashlight into the fields.

Oh, my God.

At the same time, Jimmy Smith was still walking back and forth along the perimeter of the field, looking for any movement.

In the meantime, Carl had run south, then west, then doubled back hoping he could shake them.

He's literally being hunted.

He needs his glasses.

And without them, he couldn't know whether they were a sign of safety or danger at this point.

Yeah.

Finally, after running for a few more minutes, he spotted something that he'd seen a million times and made him feel so much better.

It was a caterpillar tractor parked in a field adjacent to the farmhouse, because he was like I know how to work one of those if I have to.

All right.

But...

He didn't have to, because Emmanuel McFadden had been working the late shift in the fields that day and was just wrapping up a little before 1230 when he saw a shape come shambling out of the fields towards his house.

That must have been fucking horrifying.

Oh, yeah.

By then, Carl had covered nearly two miles.

Wow.

At a pace faster than he'd ever run before and was exhausted.

He was operating on sheer terror and adrenaline at this point.

And the will to live.

But McFadden, the farmer, said, I was so scared.

At first I thought it was an animal coming up like that.

And I picked up a shovel I carried on the cat.

And I was ready to hit it when it came up on me.

And I seen it was a man.

I'm sorry.

Can you imagine if after all that he just gets fucking taken out by a shovel?

Beamed with a shovel.

With a shovel.

Not a shovel.

A shovel.

No.

I thought of a trowel for some weird reason.

But he said, I saw it was a man with his clothes half tore off, not wanting to get involved.

McFadden at first tried to ignore Carl.

He was like, I don't know.

Just run through my farm.

Go for it.

Yeah, he said, you go right ahead.

But it soon became clear that he could not ignore him.

Oh, God.

But eventually he realized he couldn't leave Carl behind.

So he returned and together they slowly made their way to civilization together.

So this dude was about to get the fuck out of Dodge and then was like can't leave this guy and went back and got him.

He had a moment of like, not great.

And then he said, no, I got to go get him, which I give him credit for.

Now, if Greg Powell had ever thought to look to his right at various points as he drove down the road and back, he would have definitely seen them huddled in the rows of onions.

But luck seemed to be on Carl's side at this point, and neither of his pursuers had caught sight of him or Emmanuel.

I'm so happy, but, like, you didn't think to look to the right, babe?

After 10 or so minutes of searching, Powell and Smith decided to give up and Smith got back into the Ford and Powell then drove to the Maricopa Highway and they were hoping they would be off and on their way after killing a police officer in a field.

Now, with McFadden's help, our farmer friend Carl made it to the nearby home of local rancher Jack Fry, who listened very patiently as they explained what had happened.

Iconic.

Aww.

Yeah.

We love community.

We love community, farm community especially.

It was a little past 1 am when Carl got through the Kern County Sheriff's Office and he gave the deputy on the other's end a truncated version of the story and asked him to get the description out to law enforcement across the state.

And in the surrounding states.

And Carl also asked that the deputy get in touch with the Hollywood division of the LAPD on his behalf, completely unaware that, after already having found the unmarked car abandoned an hour or so ago, they were already desperately searching for them.

Oh.

Now, around the time that Carl was on the phone with the deputy from the sheriff's office, Jimmy Smith and Greg Powell had officially split up.

After ditching the Ford a few miles from the onion field, Powell stole a car from a nearby farm and was well on his way to Los Angeles, hoping that he could beat Jimmy Smith back to the city.

Because he said if Jimmy made it before him, Greg and Powell knew he would go straight to the police and tell them that Greg had killed a police officer. what isn't that crazy he knew that jimmy smith would have turned him in that's why i'm like why are you fucking working which i wonder if it's because and and i wonder if it's because jimmy didn't have as active of a role in this and he was like i'm not going down for this so i'll turn him in yeah you know now what the holy shit that's actually I did not see that coming isn't that crazy meanwhile Jimmy Smith this sounds like a it's like it's awful but like this sounds like a movie no it literally does it doesn't sound real no like this does not sound like something that actually happened in fact it actually sounds kind of like Fargo it sure did So he's hoping.

So meanwhile, Jimmy Smith is like despondent over everything that has happened that night.

And he's furious with himself for allowing Greg Powell to drag him into murder alone in an unfamiliar city and unsure what to do with himself.

He started walking towards the nearest town, which happens to be Bakersfield.

Now, if Greg Powell hadn't been in such a big hurry to get back to Los Angeles before Jimmy Smith, it's entirely possible he could have gotten away with it.

But he got pulled over.

But he didn't think things through when he stole the car near Bakersfield and switched out the license plate on the car in case it was reported stolen.

By the time he made it to Los Angeles, the report with Powell and Smith's descriptions and the car they were driving had already gone out across the state and nearly every cop in California were looking for them.

And meanwhile, by that time, Greg Powell was already in a different car.

Had it not been for the license plates that he took from the stolen car that was already reported and put it on the new stolen car, they would have not noticed him at all.

Why would you even do that?

Because in his idea, like this is how, so Greg Powell, he bails on the Ford.

Because obviously they're looking for the Ford.

And he steals a new car.

But what he doesn't know is that.

So he steals the new car and he takes the license plate from the Ford and puts them on the new car.

Yeah, why would you do that?

Because he thinks they're going to report that family is going to report their car stolen with their plates on it.

Okay.

So he's putting his plates on it thinking that no one knows what we did.

No one's reported us.

But it's like you're taking the license plate from a cop car that you stole.

Well, no, it's from their car.

But still, it doesn't make any fucking sense.

No, it literally does.

Like you can see in some sense in his dumb thinking that he's like oh well, when this family wakes up and their car's stolen, they're going to report it and they're going to be looking for their license plate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'm going to put this license plate on it.

I guess I kind of get it.

And I'm going to be smarter about it.

But that's the problem.

He was thinking too quickly of like I got to get there before Jimmy does, because he's going to report me.

And he wasn't thinking about the fact that hey dummy, they've probably already figured out what you've done.

So what was he going to do?

Was he going to turn Jimmy in for it?

No, I think he was just going to get the fuck out of there.

He was going, he was getting out of Dodge.

He was going to pretend he was never there.

Like pack a bag in LA and leave.

And if Jimmy goes down for it, Jimmy goes down for it.

All right, all right.

Yeah, it's wild.

It is.

So...

Again, had it not been for the license plates, the officers parked at Mirage Station at this point probably wouldn't have noticed him at all.

But when the plate came up as belonging to that of a different vehicle, officers Odom and Crist figured they'd better check that out, just in case.

Because again, this is Bakersfield.

This car goes by.

They run it.

Different license plate.

They're like, what the fuck's that about?

Yeah, like that's weird.

It immediately put him on.

That's suspicious.

Now, at first, Greg tried to be like, you know, normal and chill when he got pulled over.

He was like, have I been speeding, officer?

Like, what?

And they're like, no, did you steal a car, though?

Yeah.

He was doing the same law abiding citizen act that he had done with Ian Campbell earlier that night.

But after a minute or two, he started to get anxious and his tone changed a little bit.

Yep.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

No.

Because now, suddenly...

He's scared.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah.

I think Ian felt.

Yeah.

And then he asked if they if they thought he could, quote, get a break if he talked.

No, I don't think shooting an officer in the mouth, you'll ever get a break.

Chief Deputy Fote replied that he would not be getting a break, and then began reading him his rights.

Yeah.

Nice try.

Now, despite being told that he was unlikely to get a deal, Powell started talking anyway.

He told the police that he and his partner, Jimmy Youngblood, which was a known alias used by Smith.

Not Jimmy Youngblood.

Had been on the lookout for a place to rob when they were stopped by the officers.

Then he proceeded to lay out the story in more or less the same way that it actually happened, except in his version of events Jimmy was the aggressor.

Yeah. and had been the one that fired the shots that killed Ian Campbell.

According to Powell, once Jimmy started shooting, he got scared and ran off into the fields and didn't stop running until he made it to the farmhouse where he found the car.

He wouldn't have stolen it.

He insisted, but he was terrified that Jimmy might be looking for him and he desperately wanted to get away.

Mm-hmm.

Now, the next day, Jimmy was arrested at a rooming house in Bakersfield after the owner of the house heard the description and turned him in.

Oh, so he didn't even go and turn Craig in.

Interesting.

When they arrived at the house to arrest him, Jimmy confirmed that he was the man they were looking for, and he made no attempt to resist.

He even pointed them in the direction of Heddinger's gun, which was still in his jacket on the bed.

Yikes.

He was not the least bit surprised that Greg had pinned everything on him.

In fact, he had expected exactly that from the moment they split up.

So as one would expect, this night has been incredibly traumatic for Carl Hedinger.

Yeah.

Who not only watched helplessly as his partner was executed, but also he had been hunted through onion fields and fully expected to be killed.

He like lived the most dangerous game.

Literally.

But that night turned out to be just the beginning of Carl's terrible ordeal.

What?

Because the kidnapping of a law enforcement officer was such a rare occurrence.

That, like I had mentioned earlier, at the time of this abduction there was no protocol for officers who found themselves in these situations.

In fact, the very idea that one would find themselves in that position seemed inconceivable to police officers.

The LAPD, like many police departments then and now, was steeped in a tradition of hyper-masculinity, the kind that, regardless of the circumstances, would have seen surrender as the highest form of cowardice.

Like, okay, so all of you saying that, tell me exactly what you would do in this situation.

Precisely.

As soon as he got back to Los Angeles and had cleaned himself up from the night before, Carl Hedinger sat down to give his statement.

That's the other thing.

Even if he had, like, shot the other guy.

Yeah.

What was it, Jimmy, who didn't have?

Yeah.

And still would have been shot, probably in the lower back, which also could have killed him or paralyzed him.

Yeah.

But to his captain and many of his colleagues, none of that mattered.

As far as they were concerned, Carl was a coward.

That's just so irrational.

It's disgusting is what it is.

They believed he was a coward who caved in the face of danger.

And as a result, his partner was dead.

Are you kidding me?

Carl's former partner told the author, Joseph Wambaugh, you can always do something.

I just don't see giving up your gun to some crook under any circumstances.

And even after that, you can do something.

Are you joking?

Let's put you in the same situation and see how you come out.

Yeah.

Now the author of The Onion Field, Joseph Wambaugh, was an LAPD officer at the time and remembered a head injurer's return.

That was a twist I didn't see coming.

He said everybody was talking about the shooting.

It was the first time a policeman had been summarily executed, and it was quite shocking.

Unfortunately though, most of the talk that was focused on Carl and was just rife with speculation about what he should have done or could have done in that moment.

It sounds like he just got completely ostracized.

A more enlightened and compassionate person would have recognized the absolutely impossible situation that Carl Hedinger had found himself in on that night and wouldn't have judged him for his decision that he'd made, especially since, like you just said, none of them had ever been in that situation and couldn't honestly say what they would have done.

No.

Because you haven't been in the situation.

You have no idea.

And again, there's no fucking protocol.

There's no protocol.

In 1963, it seemed the LAPD was short on enlightened people.

Evident by the number of people who very much weren't shy about sharing how they felt about Carl after Ian's death.

While Carl struggled in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Greg Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith were both talking to detectives, each telling their own version of the story.

In Powell's version of events, he went so far as to nearly portray himself as the third victim.

A simple stick-up bandit who'd been roped into a murderous scheme by a bloodthirsty partner who he barely even knew.

Jimmy's version, on the other hand, was more closely aligned with what Carl Hedinger had said in his statement.

The contradictions between the two men's stories was very obvious from the start, but it became even more so when the coroner's report showed that Ian Campbell had been shot with two different guns.

Oh.

Once in the mouth with one gun and then four more times in the chest with another.

And Powell's the only one that had two guns because he had his own and Ian's.

Well, and according to the coroner, the first shot wouldn't have likely killed him, assuming he could get medical attention.

You said he shot through the mouth?

Yeah.

He was still like making noises.

Right.

I remember you said that.

But any one of the four additional shots to the chest could have been fatal within just a minute or two.

Now, with the release of the coroner's report, Powell's story began to change in different ways, of course, Greg Powell, particularly in the way he described his own participation.

He told Sergeant P.R.

Brooks, we had guns and we were hot.

When the cops stopped us, we had the guns ready.

I jumped out of the car and threw down on this cop before they had a chance to take us.

While Powell did eventually stop trying to portray himself as an unwilling bystander to the events, he continued pointing the finger at his partner, identifying Jimmy Smith as the primary shooter.

That such a claim was even remotely believable was due in part to Carl Hedinger's faulty memory.

In his statement, Hedinger recalled seeing both men holding guns, but admitted he was too far away to see which of the two men had stood over Campbell and fired the four bullets into his chest.

He did, however, distinctly remember seeing Powell shoot Campbell the first time.

Okay.

Hedinger said, pointing to when he was taken to the scene after the shooting.

He pointed to the bloodstained patch of road.

I can't believe they had to take him back.

Yeah.

He said right there is where Powell fired on the officer.

Finally, after days of questioning, Greg Powell admitted to investigators that it was he who fired the initial shot at Campbell that hit him in the mouth, but he maintained that it was Jimmy Smith who fired the fatal shots.

Okay.

Now, given the sensational nature of the case, stakes were high going into Powell and Smith's trial, which began in early July 1963.

In his opening statement, Deputy District Attorney Marshall Shulman laid out the facts of the case as they knew them, explaining to the jury that, because they believed they'd be prosecuted under the Little Lindbergh law, Powell and Smith decided to murder their captives rather than leaving witnesses over the course of the up the ante, to murder because you could also get caught for that and suffer the same consequences.

Well, like is literally happening right now.

They thought they could get away with it and if they left, if they had left witnesses, they figured those witnesses are going to identify us.

Yeah, we're going to get caught and then we're going to get the death?

No, totally.

But if we murder them, we're so smart we're going to get away with it and no one's left to point the fingers at us.

Totally Yeah.

But over the course of the trial they intended to show through evidence and testimony that both men had acted with malice and could have at any time reversed course.

For those reasons, they were seeking the death penalty.

Now.

Throughout the trial, the jury heard testimony from all key players, including Hedinger Powell Smith and Emanuel McFadden, the farmer on the tractor, while also being shown reenactments of the crime and seeing detailed photographs of Campbell's injuries.

During his testimony, Jimmy Lee Smith denied having any idea that Powell was going to pull a gun on the two officers during the traffic stop.

And he said he did not know that Powell planned to kill both men once they reached their destination in Bakersfield.

When Powell was called to the witness stand, he told a new version of events, this time claiming the whole thing had been an accident.

Oh, that's an interesting accident.

How does that work?

Yeah, he said, I raised my gun to cover the officers and the gun went off.

What?

What does that even mean?

That's not even a good lie.

To cover them?

Yeah.

Qual?

After months of testimony, the jury, retired for deliberation in early September, spent more than five days poring over the evidence.

But when they did emerge, they found both Gregory Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith guilty of first-degree murder.

I feel like you would have to find them both.

You would have to.

You can't just find one.

Yeah.

When asked whether he had anything to say on his behalf, Greg Powell said I admit responsibility to some extent because I put the man in the position to be killed.

A week later, Powell and Smith were back before the judge in Superior Court and the jury voted unanimously in favor of the death penalty.

Yeah.

I mean, that's when you can, it makes sense.

Yeah.

You killed a police officer.

Well, I can understand how at the time that was the...

That was it.

Well, I mean, it's 1960-something and you killed a police officer.

That's what I mean.

Like, at the time.

Huge.

Yeah, I would expect that to be the outcome.

No matter what, that's huge.

Yeah.

Now, in the wake of their sentencing, Powell and Smith were sent to San Quentin State Prison and placed on death row.

But that was hardly the last time anyone was going to hear from them.

Oh.

In the few years that followed their sentencing, Greg Powell made multiple attempts to escape from San Quentin.

Stop it.

Including one incident in which he tried to smuggle guns into the prison.

In 1972, they were among several California inmates whose death sentences were commuted to life in prison after the death penalty was deemed unconstitutional.

In the decades after that, Powell and Smith's names would occasionally appear in the press, usually when parole came up, the idea of parole.

In 1982 Smith, who had been a well-behaved and mostly productive inmate, Jimmy Smith, was granted parole.

Wow.

However, just a few months later, after failing a drug test, he was returned to prison to serve six more months.

In the years after that, Jimmy Lee Smith would cycle in and out of prison again on various charges, including one and this will make you think in which he kidnapped a woman and held her captive for several days.

The fuck?

So that innocent act he was playing of like, I would have never done that.

Really?

You held a woman captive.

But you know what?

He died on April 6, 2007 from a heart attack.

Damn.

Bye.

Greg Powell also came up for parole in the summer of 1982.

However, the parole board reconsidered their plan to release him.

And said, nah.

Yeah, they said no, no.

After they received a petition signed with more than 30000 California residents objecting to his release.

Wow.

He went on to appeal the decision, but was ultimately unsuccessful, as were his future bids for parole.

We got 30,000 signatures one time.

Including a request for compassionate release in 2011, when he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.

He died in the state prison on August 12, 2012.

Wow.

Now, in the aftermath... He's had a long time in prison.

Yeah, that's a long prison stint.

Now, in the aftermath of all this, Carl Hedinger tried to return to life as usual.

How do you?

Including trying to return to his job at the LAPD.

But sadly he would spend the rest of his life dealing with the consequences and trauma that he endured that night.

His return to work at the department was met with protests and ridicule by his fellow officers.

That's such bullshit.

They all blamed him for Campbell's death, not the guy who killed him.

Eventually.

I don't even know what to say about that.

Like, come on.

Eventually, Carl was transferred to various different departments, before being let go from the force entirely after he was arrested for shoplifting.

Oh, that's really sad.

In the years after his firing, Carl became active in local politics and was appointed to the Kern County Board of Supervisors, where he served from 87 to 93.

Wow.

Despite his political successes, he really continued to struggle psychologically and suffered PTSD.

Yeah, of course.

Which he often coped with by drinking heavily.

On May 4th, 1994, Carl Hedinger died in Bakersfield from liver failure.

And in Bakersfield.

Yeah, that's horrible.

From the moment the news broke about Hedinger and Campbell, everyone seemed to have an opinion on what Carl should or shouldn't have done.

And in the world of law enforcement.

The case became a motivating factor in certain policy changes, including the wide circulation of a memo that stated in no uncertain terms that officers were never to relinquish their weapons, which is a good protocol to have.

But when the protocol is not in place, you're leaving it up to somebody in that moment of life and death to try to figure out.

And it's a good protocol to have for sure.

You know it's there.

You know it's there and it's a good one to have, but still the same outcome might have happened.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's like I said earlier, he could have been shot in the back and killed or paralyzed.

Well, and it's just like having the protocol at the very least allows him to sit there and say I can't.

And also since Carla was such a right and wrong.

He just wouldn't have.

He would have been like, well, that's the protocol.

I'm not giving this up.

And it would have led him to only consider that path, which might have like, I don't know, narrowed what could happen there.

Yeah.

But like you said, it doesn't take away the fact that these people have guns, too.

And now everyone has a gun.

It's just like anything could have happened.

Could the same exact outcome have happened?

Maybe, maybe not.

Because if you're not getting in the car, likely.

But it's like you can't sit there and say that everyone would have been fine here or that Ian would have lived no matter what.

Of course you want that to be the outcome, as Carl did.

That's what kills me.

I'm like, you're all treating him like this.

The last thing he wanted was for that to happen.

You're punishing him for being human.

It's like this isn't his fault.

It's the murderers who did it.

It's like the definition of toxic masculinity.

Yeah, it's just gross behavior to treat him like that, like when he's going through it as well.

Now, 10 years after the murder, the story was in the headlines again when Joseph Wambaugh published his nonfiction account of the event, The Onion Fields.

This book was a big success, like huge.

It was adapted into a popular feature film.

Both of which did little to improve the crushing weight of guilt and shame Carl Hedinger experienced every day for the rest of his life.

Many years later though, in an interview with the Washington Post, Wambaugh expressed a deep sense of regret for how he presented the story and the impact it had on Carl and his family.

Oh.

He said, Carl minded terribly, but I just exploited him.

I used money as my weapon to get the story.

I offered him money that, for the sake of his family, he couldn't refuse.

I acted that way because I thought the story was more important than Carl Hedinger, more important than me, that it was a story so important that I would have done almost anything to get it written.

That's dark.

That's what I mean when I say no one won here.

Yeah.

Like everyone came out of it.

Because it's like you got the story out there, but at the cost of your own personal dignity.

Like it's just, what a, that's a dirty end.

Yeah.

Like that's just, that's so yucky.

That's so bleak.

And then later to realize that you sort of ruined someone's life.

To then finally come to that conclusion after it's already been done and nothing can be fixed.

It's like, woof.

Like, that is just really sad.

Yeah.

And Carl seemed like such a good guy that just like... He really did.

...got put in a shit situation that had no protocol.

He had never been trained for this.

And also like, there should have been a fucking protocol for that from the jump.

You would think.

That's one thing that we didn't even talk about.

Like...

It kind of makes sense to have a protocol for that.

Of course it does.

Even though it had never happened that no officer had been kidnapped like that before.

But that's the culture of that type of work.

It's like, this just won't happen.

Especially back then, it was very much like a hyper-masculine, like, well, we'd never be abducted.

We're too strong for that.

It's like, just plan for everything, man.

And if you never use it, then who gives a shit?

Right.

But at least it's there.

Overreact more than underreact.

Over fucking react.

If you never use it, you never use it.

At least you have it.

Plan for the worst.

Expect the best.

Exactly.

And it's like, obviously now it feels like that's more like hindsight.

The idea of like, let's just plan for the worst shit, even though we're hoping that never happens.

But again, if a protocol had been in place, Carl would have had a blueprint to go off of and it would have narrowed his thinking a little bit.

When you are sitting there in a situation like that, where there's endless possibilities and endless paths to take,

And your partner is begging you.

Which I can't believe.

And Ian's sitting there.

Like I'm going to get shot.

Just hand your gun over.

Poor Ian.

Poor Ian was put through all of this shit and now he's and i know for a fact that ian would not want everybody to be sitting here blaming his friend no, who he begged to give them his weapon he's sitting there being like i told them to do it.

Yeah, i thought i would like and none of us expected.

It just makes me i'm like come on, people just got to be stop being so shitty to each other.

That's a goddamn story.

I'm glad policy changed because of it and that like there's more training for this kind of situation.

So nobody is put in a situation where they have no guidelines to go off of.

Right.

Because that's such a horrible position to be in.

And I hate when people sit there.

That's why, like when we'll say like, we'll say a situation, we'll be like well, if I was there, like I feel like I would have done this.

We always backtrack it.

I always try to sit there and go, but I've never been in that situation.

So I don't fucking know.

I'm sitting here saying it, but like who the fuck am I?

I don't know.

Yeah.

I have no fucking clue what I would have done in that situation.

I think we both have the experience of being in situations we didn't expect ourselves to be in and being like oh fuck, I thought I would have done that, but I did this.

100%.

You know?

100%.

Right.

And that's the thing.

That's what we need to be a little more cognizant of as humans here.

Because everybody's real quick to give their opinion about what they would do or what somebody should do.

And it's like.

Everybody's just so holier than thou.

Maybe just like let people have their own experience and deal with the aftermath of it.

Yeah, it's just i feel horrible for ian campbell and his family.

Like he's a father, i'm sure that added to it too.

It's like he left these two children behind and carl didn't have any children at that time and i'm sure people were like, oh he's the one you know yeah, which it's like?

And i feel awful for his wife and family, ian campbell's, because it's like they both seemed like such good dudes yeah, and like they somehow were put together, they would have been probably an amazing pair.

I think they would have like from the sounds of it, they had all the makings of great detectives and like would have done really well together.

Well, and just what a freak event this was to that.

A freak event.

They just put, like, just a regular traffic stop.

And it did not need to go that way.

Yeah.

Like, look what happened.

You were trying to get out.

Greg Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith didn't want to get in trouble for a gun, an unlicensed gun.

And they didn't want to go back to prison.

They didn't want to go back to jail, which they've been in and out of forever.

And it's like, look what happened.

You got put on death row, you idiots.

Like, was that worth it?

And in the process, you took away a father and husband away from his family?

Which it sounds like Powell really didn't give a shit about that.

It almost seemed like he was, like, gleeful to do that.

Yeah.

It's just... Humanity is the worst.

Yucky, yucky people.

Yeah.

And I feel awful for Carl Hedinger and his family, and I feel awful for Ian Campbell and his family.

I'm just really sad.

Yeah.

But, yeah.

So I don't really know how to transition out of that one.

It gets harder and harder every time we tell these stories.

It does.

It really does.

But we hope you keep listening.

We do.

And we hope you keep it weird.

But that's so weird that you judge others for a situation that you yourself have never been in.

Yeah.

Don't keep it that weird.

That's not even weird.

That's just gross.

Don't be gross.

Icky.

Gross.

Yuck.

Bye.

Thank you.

[The Onion Field Incident: A Tragic Case of Policing and Trauma]-[The Onion Field Incident]

📋 Summary

The Tragic Case of the Onion Field Incident

The Officers: Carl Hettinger and Ian Campbell

The Perpetrators: Gregory Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith

The Execution and the Escape

Institutional Failure and Lasting Trauma

Legacy and Policy Changes

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Onion Field Incident: A Tragic Case of Policing and Trauma]-[The Onion Field Incident]

📋 Summary

The Tragic Case of the Onion Field Incident

The Officers: Carl Hettinger and Ian Campbell

The Perpetrators: Gregory Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith

The Execution and the Escape

Institutional Failure and Lasting Trauma

Legacy and Policy Changes

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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