Accomplice details 'stealth' of armored-car heists

The confessed accomplice of a former Santa Rosa police officer charged with four armored-car robberies in Sonoma and Marin counties said his partner used "speed and stealth" to pull off the heists of hundreds of thousands of dollars between 2007 and 2009.

In court testimony Monday, Andrew C. Esslinger, 27, of Santa Rosa said Robert "Steve" Starling, 36, recruited him to be a watchman, helping with surveillance and reporting on the movements of armored-car drivers and on police response to the robberies they committed.

Esslinger described in detail the methods he said Starling used in three robberies the pair staged together early last year — only one of which was successful — and two other armored-car robberies he said the Windsor man committed alone in Santa Rosa dating back to September 2007.

In all but one case, after days of surveillance and planning, Starling emerged from hiding places outside a bank and confronted at gunpoint armored-car personnel outside their vehicles, Esslinger said.

After demanding cash, Starling then fled down out-of-sight alleys or into a nearby creekbed, changing into stashed clothes before driving away in a getaway car, Esslinger testified.

"It was a strategy predicated on speed and stealth," Esslinger said.

Esslinger later testified that in two of the three robberies he helped plan, he did not witness the holdups.

Investigators said the techniques, including the use of disguises and diversionary tactics meant to keep police occupied, later hinted that the robbers had some knowledge of police training.

Starling was a police officer for Santa Rosa and Sonoma State University between December 2000 and July 2006. He later worked briefly as a Brinks armored-car courier.

He pleaded not guilty last year to felony and misdemeanor counts of conspiracy, robbery, threatening a witness and making false police reports. If convicted, he faces more than 35 years in prison.

Esslinger's testimony Monday came as part of a deal with prosecutors in exchange for a six-year prison sentence on a guilty plea to felony charges of conspiracy, possession of drugs and possession of a weapon during a drug deal. He had faced six felony charges and at least 10 years in prison.

The bulk of Esslinger's testimony dealt with the pair's planning of three armored-car robberies in 2009.

With the first target — the Bank of America on Commerce Boulevard in Rohnert Park on March 18 — Esslinger described placing two diversionary calls from a prepaid cell phone to police about a gunman on the campus of Rancho Cotate High School. The subsequent school lockdown and police response was so overwhelming in the city that Starling decided to abort the robbery attempt, Esslinger said.

In describing that robbery attempt, Esslinger also implicated a third man, whom he said helped from Petaluma by calling in information about the armored car's estimated arrival time in Rohnert Park.

Prosecutors said the third man has not been charged.

In the second planned robbery, on April 15 at the Bank of America on Grant Avenue in Novato, Esslinger said he made another diversionary call, about a fictional kidnapping in a remote area of the city.

After confronting the armored-car worker, however, Starling fled the scene without any money, Esslinger said.

In the last of the three cases, on May 18 outside the Bank of America on Healdsburg Avenue in Sebastopol, Starling made off with an estimated $100,000 in cash.

The men later divided the money, with Esslinger taking home $20,000, a 20 percent stake the men had agreed to when first discussing their arrangement in early 2009, Esslinger said.

In total, police said Starling netted more than $500,000 from the robberies, which they said he used to finance a pair of indoor marijuana-growing operations, among other things.

A cross-examination of Esslinger by Starling's court-appointed public defender, Jeff Mitchell, was scheduled to continue today.

Outside court Monday, Mitchell said he planned to focus his questions on Esslinger's contention that the robberies were at gunpoint.

In opening statements two weeks ago, Mitchell told jurors that Starling had used not a real gun but an Airsoft pellet gun in the Sebastopol and Santa Rosa robberies to both avoid detection in case he dropped the weapon and to avoid a shootout.

That defense, while conceding most of the charges against Starling, could beat a host of weapons charges and shave years off any prison sentence, Mitchell said outside court.

You can reach Staff Writer Brett Wilkison at 521-5295

or brett.wilkison@

pressdemocrat.com.