Jurors returned guilty verdicts Tuesday against a former Santa Rosa police officer and Brinks company driver who masterminded a series of armored car robberies over a two-year period, yielding hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Robert "Steve" Starling, 36, was convicted of all 10 charges, including staging four heists in Santa Rosa, Sebastopol and Novato, placing false diversionary calls to 911 dispatchers and threatening a witness. He left the police force in 2006.
The six-man, six-woman jury ignored Starling's claim that he didn't use a real gun, finding him guilty of seven firearms enhancements that will add years to his sentence.
Santa Rosa Police Detective Mark Mahre, the lead investigator, said Starling was an embarrassment to law enforcement and might still be doing holdups if police hadn't tracked him down through a cell phone call made during his second-to-last robbery in Novato.
"The one mistake he made was a phone call," Mahre said. "It all started from there."
Prosecutor Marianna Green said Starling's use of police training and knowledge of the armored car business added a "layer of criminality" to the case. Starling quit the Santa Rosa police Department after three years and worked as a Sonoma State University police officer for almost two years.
"I'm just very pleased the jury did the right thing," Green said outside court.
Starling showed no emotion as the clerk read the verdicts. He removed his shoes and belt before being escorted by bailiffs to a jail cell. Starling will be sentenced June 8, when he faces a maximum of 30 years in prison, Green said.
Jurors deliberated less than four hours. They said their job was made easier because Starling conceded three of the four robberies committed between 2007 and 2009. All agreed that he robbed the fourth armored car, even though he got no money, and that he threatened poker buddy Daniel Sullivan after Sullivan turned down an offer to be an accomplice.
Panelists also seemed to have no trouble finding that Starling used a real handgun. Juror Bill Barger of Petaluma said it was obvious from taped phone calls Starling made from the jail to his wife in which he said the gun wasn't loaded.
Defense attorney Jeff Mitchell had argued Starling used an Airsoft pellet gun.
"At the end of the day, the evidence was overwhelming," Barger said outside court. "There was no way it was a fake gun. It was a good story, though."
Juror Chris Anderson of Rohnert Park said it was unlikely someone with Starling's police and military background would go into a potential confrontation unarmed. Starling was a sergeant in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division before becoming a police officer.
"Why would you go to a gunfight empty-handed?" Anderson said.
Other jurors said they felt Starling had violated the public's trust, but that didn't really figure into considering his guilt or innocence. Anyone can commit a crime, said juror David Collin of Healdsburg.
"It reminds you that policemen are human," Collin said.
Prosecutors maintained during the 12-day trial that Starling robbed two armored cars by himself and two more with an accomplice, Andrew "Cooper" Esslinger, 26.
The robberies targeted armored cars delivering cash to banks. Each time, Starling approached guards on foot with his gun drawn, ordered them to the ground and fled with bags of money. Witnesses said he made off with about $500,000.
His undoing came in the third robbery at a Novato bank on April 15, 2009. Esslinger's diversionary call to police reporting a kidnapping on the other side of town was traced back to Starling, who authorities later found was a former cop and Brinks company employee.
Evidence from the final robbery outside a Sebastopol bank on May 18 helped confirm it. Witnesses said voice commands from the suspect to "get down" had the ring of law enforcement.
Starling also was tied to a second bogus 911 call in Rohnert Park, in which dispatchers were told a man with a gun was on the high school campus. Prosecutors believed Starling had planned a robbery but aborted it at the last minute.
Starling was arrested in August after Esslinger agreed to make secret recordings of their conversations. Esslinger testified against Starling in exchange for a plea to lesser charges that could send him to prison for about 10 years
At trial, bank records showed Starling spent thousands of dollars at casinos. Witnesses testified he was investing in a marijuana growing scheme.
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