The Onion Field
First edition cover
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| Author | Joseph Wambaugh |
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| Cover artist | Paul Bacon |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | nonfiction |
| Publisher | Delacorte Press |
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Publication date
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1973 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 427 pp |
| ISBN | |
The Onion Field is a 1973 nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, a sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, chronicling the kidnapping of two plainclothes LAPD officers by a pair of criminals during an evening traffic stop and the subsequent murder of Officer Ian James Campbell. It was one of the most influential murder cases in U.S. history, as it forced the Los Angeles Police Department and other large municipalities to change some of their police tactics in the field.
On the night of March 9, 1963, LAPD officers Ian Campbell (age 31) and Karl Hettinger (age 28), both former Marines, were riding in an unmarked "felony" car. They pulled over a 1946 Ford coupe containing two suspicious-looking men at the corner of Carlos Avenue and Gower Street in Hollywood. The two men, Gregory Ulas Powell (age 30) and Jimmy Lee Smith (a.k.a. "Jimmy Youngblood", age 32), had recently committed a string of robberies, and "each had a pistol tucked into his trousers." Powell, the driver, pulled a gun on Campbell, who "calmly told his partner, 'He has a gun in my back. Give him your gun.'" The two officers were then forced into Powell's car and, within 30 seconds after the traffic stop began, were driven north from Los Angeles on Route 99, to an onion field near Bakersfield, where Campbell was fatally shot. Hettinger was able to escape, running nearly four miles to reach a farmhouse.
The killing occurred primarily because Powell assumed that the kidnapping of the officers alone already constituted a capital crime under the state's Little Lindbergh Law. However, Powell's interpretation was incorrect. Under the Little Lindbergh Law kidnapping became a capital crime only if the victim were harmed or if a ransom were demanded. (Today, kidnapping in California, where there is bodily harm short of death, is punishable either by imprisonment for 25 years to life, or by life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.)
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Wikipedia