Prior to the COVID epidemic, 1971 rated as the second worse year for police officers who died in the line of duty (251) in the United States. New Mexico State policeman Robert Rosenbloom was shot and killed on November 8, 1971, making him the twelfth New Mexico State Police officer to die in a duty-related death, and only the second to die by gunfire (the first shot to death was in 1952). Although his three assailants were identified very soon after the murder, none of them were ever brought to justice. Their method of escape is what made this an international incident.
Born in Oregon, and after serving in the U.S. Army as a military policeman, Robert “Bob” Rosenbloom found his way to Las Cruces, New Mexico as a student at the New Mexico State University. After graduating, he worked for a short time as a city policeman in Las Cruces and then was hired in 1965 by the New Mexico State Police and assigned to work in Las Cruces. Even though his future wife, Linda Kay Bates, grew up in Las Cruces and also attended New Mexico State University, they didn’t meet until a year after he started with NMSP and after he had been transferred to Alamogordo where Linda was working as a secretary for NASA at the White Sands Missile Range. They married in 1966 and had two children: Tammy born in 1968 and Robbie in 1969.
The family moved to Albuquerque in 1970, and Bob and Linda bought a home in the Paradise Hills neighborhood of northwest Albuquerque near the intersection of Paradise and Unser Boulevards. From their home it was a short, four-mile drive south on Unser Blvd for Bob to reach his normal patrol beat along I-40. He patrolled the area from the Rio Grande River west to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation in an area referred to as “nine-mile hill”. On that November 8th, Bob was working the day shift and had a relatively uneventful day, working nine hours, and was home by 6:00 PM. He was then called out for a special detail. His assignment was to pick up an officer from the Arizona Department of Public Safety at the Albuquerque airport for a trip to Gallup, where the officer was to be a witness in a trial in McKinley County. Bob arrived at the airport at 8:30 PM and after picking up his passenger, the two of them drove west along I-40 to the little village of Mesita, where Bob transferred the officer/witness to NMSP’s Officer Juan Chavez. He began his return journey back to Albuquerque around 10:30 PM.
It is not known why Officer Rosenbloom stopped a rented 1972 green Ford Galaxie on I-40 in the area of the iconic, and abandoned, Route 66 Rio Puerco Bridge. At 10:41 PM, car 245 (NMSP officers use a radio call sign that matches the license plate number on their car) radioed in to check on California license plate 824EDH. The license plate came back registered to the Hertz Rent-a-Car Corporation and did not have any ‘wants or warrants’ associated with it. When the dispatcher tried to relay that information to the officer, he received no response. Then at 11:11 PM, an unknown voice came on the radio to say an officer was hurt and asked for an ambulance and help.
The voice on the radio belonged to Dennis Arnold of Greeley, Colorado. He reported he was driving by the patrolman’s 1970 Plymouth patrol car which was stopped behind a green Ford Galaxy. As he drove past, he saw what appeared to be a “body flying through the air” and shortly after that the green car sped around him heading east towards Albuquerque. Suspecting that the officer may have been hurt, he turned around and drove back to the scene. He found Officer Rosenbloom lying motionless and ran back to the patrol car and used the radio to call for help.
NMSP Sergeant Charlie Hawkins arrived within minutes of Dennis Arnold’s call, to find Officer Rosenbloom lying face down on the ground approximately twenty feet from his patrol car with a flashlight in one hand and his service revolver out of his holster and on the ground near him. His hat had rolled down an embankment, although years later in a news interview, one of the assailants said he picked up the officer’s hat and flung it down the hill. A search of the crime scene turned up a single 45-caliber bullet casing on the ground not far from the officer’s body. An autopsy later conducted by county coroner Dr. James Franklin would determine that Rosenbloom was shot once in the neck. The bullet entered approximately two inches below his chin and exited through the shoulder blade toward the center of his back. It was likely this exit wound resulted in several news sources reporting that the officer had been shot in the neck and the chest. The bullet severed a large artery in the neck and Rosenbloom died quickly from loss of blood. It is not known what transpired leading up to the shooting, but in an interview in Cuba many years later, Charles Hill said the officer asked them to open the trunk and they refused. He unholstered his weapon and asked them to step back to the police car. Ralph Goodwin later told a flight attendant that Michael Finney (who he called “Masheo”) went crazy and shot the officer.
Linda Rosenbloom was awakened in the early morning hours by her neighbor, and her husband’s co-worker, Officer Robert Trippeer, who lived nearby. He informed her of Bob’s death. In a cruel twist of fate, the Rosenblooms had just closed on selling their home that very day, as Robert had received a long sought after assignment to the NMSP intelligence unit and he was slated to move back to Las Cruces and begin his training there on December 1st.
A huge manhunt ensued and at 6:30 AM, the morning after the murder, Bernalillo County Deputy Neils Jensen found the rented Ford Galaxy abandoned in an empty lot in Albuquerque’s South Atrisco neighborhood west of the airport across the Rio Grande River. The car was abandoned just west of Tapia Boulevard and north of San Ygnacio Road. Inside the vehicle, they found radical literature about Malcolm X, communist propaganda, writings by Mao Zedong, and pamphlets published by a group called the Republic of New Afrika. Several of the documents had the name Michael Robert Finney on them. They also found an owner’s manual for a Llama 45 ACP caliber pistol with the initials MRF written on the outside. The FBI found receipts in the car for the purchase of two military 30-caliber carbines issued to a Ralph Goodwin. The following day, they located records from an Oakland area gun store showing the sale of a Llama 45 ACP pistol to Finney’s wife, and from later witness statements, one of the gunmen (allegedly Finney) carried what appeared to be a government 1911 45 ACP pistol during his crimes (the Llama was designed to look nearly identical to government 45 ACP pistol). Finney’s fingerprints were later identified on that pistol’s owner’s manual as well as on some of the abandoned literature in the car.
The day after the car had been recovered, 11-year-old Ivan Lujan was walking to his home at 1937 Trocadero Place SW from catechism classes at the Holy Family Catholic Church at 562 Atrisco Drive SW. He kicked a pile of tumbleweeds near some tire tracks and felt a hard object. Pulling back the weeds, he uncovered suitcases and some weapons and immediately ran home to tell his mom. The sheriff’s department responded, and the boy took them to the vacant lot just south across from 1125 Pear Drive SW. There, they recovered a cache of weapons, which included three military 30 caliber M-1 carbines, a 12-gauge shotgun wrapped in a pink blanket, a package with five single sticks of dynamite, two dynamite sticks bound together as a bomb, six blasting caps, and over 300 rounds of ammunition. During a second search of the area, about 100 feet from the first cache of weapons, another shotgun was recovered. The three men obviously came armed for some kind of violent confrontation. The weapons and bomb-making material were located along with two suitcases and an army duffle bag about seventy-five yards from where the car had been abandoned. Vehicle tire tracks in the soft dirt clearly lead up to the area where the items were located, and the tumbleweeds had been piled over the weapons cache in order to conceal them. It appeared that they had pulled into the vacant lot on Pear Drive, dumped the weapons and suitcases and covered them up with tumbleweeds. Then, they pulled around the corner and left the rented Ford in the vacant lot near Tapia and San Ygnacio. Charlie Hill’s mother’s place was about a mile away across the Rio Grande River, and it was later learned that they spent their first night in Albuquerque there.
Police discovered the car had been rented by a 23-year-old San Francsico Bay area woman who first told them that it had been stolen the previous Sunday, but she had not reported it to police or the insurance company. Later it was discovered that the car was slated to be turned into the Hertz office in New Orleans, Louisianna on November 27th, and that just happened to be where the armed revolutionaries were heading for a national meeting of the group Republic of New Afrika (RNA). Authorities believed she rented the car for the three suspects and although she was later arrested as an accomplice, those charges were eventually dropped. The car also contained nearly one dozen receipts for gasoline made on a Union 76 credit card in the name of Daniel DeCario (another RNA member) who was never located. The credit card was not ever reported stolen and was found in the patrolman’s car after the shooting. From some of those gasoline stops; the FBI was able to find witnesses who were able to identify one or more of the fugitive trio through their photographs. A witness at a gas station in Needles, California identified Goodwin as the driver of the car. The last place they bought gas was in Gallup, NM at Ernie’s Conoco just hours before the murder.
The FBI eventually issued arrest warrants for Michael Finney, Ralph Goodwin, whose fingerprints were found on the outside of the car and the rearview mirror, and Charles Hill, whose fingerprints were lifted off of a beer can found in the back seat of the car. They determined the suspects were part of a revolutionary band of anti-patriots called the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), which was a radical group that called for a violent takeover of several states in the southern US to create a separate nation for African Americans allowing for self-determination and rule. The group was a black nationalist organization founded in 1968 in Detroit, but after a shootout with police at the New Bethel Church in Detroit in 1969 and mass arrests of group members, it splintered and a new headquarters was established in Jackson, Mississippi. The location was largely chosen in response to the Jackson State University killings of two black students in 1970. They proposed militant self-defense through building of local black militias and creating a standing army called the Black Legion. They called for a subjugated national territory made up of five states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. The radical group was involved with armed confrontations with police in the late 60s to early 70s. A Detroit police officer was killed at the New Bethel Baptist Church on March 29, 1969, during RNA’s first conference and then another police officer was shot and killed on August 19, 1971, at RNA headquarters just north of Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. The three militants who killed Officer Rosenbloom were supposedly enroute to a meeting in New Orleans to plan a response to the Jackson raid and shootout which resulted in more arrests of RNA members. The FBI found that the particular band of the group in the San Francisco Bay area met at the Black Student Union on the University of California Berkley campus. After UC Berkley was informed of the murder of Officer Rosenbloom in New Mexico, they banned the RNA from their campus.
The police and FBI eventually arrested an Albuquerque man named Johnny Earl Vines (29) who was charged with aiding and abetting the trio of fugitives. Vines was an aircraft fueler working for a company called Southwest Air Rangers at the Albuquerque Sunport. He admitted that after the three wanted men spent the first night in Albuquerque at the house of Dorothea Hill, the mother of Charles Hill, that Ms. Hill asked him to come over through a mutual acquaintance. She lived at 1700 Arno SE, the same address that Charles Hill once lived when he attended high school. Vines took the trio to his home at the Vista Nueva Apartments at 3429 Gibson Blvd. SE and harbored them there for nearly 18 days. Later as they were identified and their names and photographs began appearing in newspapers and on the local television stations, tips led police to the area. After the FBI questioned Vines’ employer, he convinced the outlaws that they had to leave and dropped them off at a vacant lot east of the airport that had large piles of sand that they referred to as “sand dunes”. One of the fugitives later told a witness that they buried themselves up to their necks in the sand in order to escape detection. The day after they moved out of Vines’ apartment, 15 to 20 police officers raided the apartment at 3429 Gibson, but found no one there. The had missed them by about thirteen hours. It was from the new “sand dune” location where the plan was created to hijack an airplane at the airport as a way to escape the city. Vines was later arrested and indicted for his role harboring the fugitives and he eventually plead guilty and received a five-year prison sentence. Sadly, he was the only one involved in Rosenbloom’s murder to receive any prison time. Hill’s mother was also arrested, but eventually authorities dropped the charges against her.
One November 11, 1971, Robert Rosenbloom was laid to rest at Hillcrest Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Las Cruces at a funeral attended by over 500 people, including Governor Bruce King of New Mexico, who was pictured in the local newspaper consoling the family. The 19-day manhunt was one of the largest in New Mexico state history. Because their pictures had been splashed all over local media, the group of men knew they had to get out of the city soon, or face capture and their escape plan was to hijack an airplane.
The second part of this story will cover the hijacking of a TWA airliner to Cuba and attempts to get the fugitives returned to the United States.
Officer Robert Rosenbloom, New Mexico State Police, was murdered on Interstate 40 west of Albuquerque on November 8, 1971. He was a married father of two young children who had worked for NMSP for six years prior to his death.
The shooting took place near the iconic Rio Puerco Bridge which sets between the westbound lane of I-40 and a frontage road near milepost 140. The bridge used to carry Route 66 over the Rio Puerco.
The assailants drove a green, 1972 Ford Galaxie rental car that looked very similar to the one pictured.
Police search the abandoned car the day after the murder. (Albuquerque Tribune)
11-year-old Ivan Lujan kneels and points to the tire tracks leading to the cache of weapons he found. (Albuquerque Tribune)
The three fugitives: Michael Robert Finney, Charlies Lee Hill, and Ralph Lawrence Goodwin (Albuquerque Journal)
An FBI agent escorts Johnny Earl Vines to arraignment for harboring the fugitives in his apartment. (Albuquerque Journal)
Linda Rosenbloom, the widow of the slain policeman, and her two children, Tammy (3) and Robbie (2). (Albuquerque Tribune)
Comentários