• Sunday, March 13, 2016
Enterprise Editor Virginia Hutchins [ 208-735-3242 • vhutchins@magicvalley.com ] • B1
THE BIG STORY
STEPHEN REISS, TIMES-NEWS
Not only pharmacies and law enforcement officers were affected by the 2014 string of robberies by prescription drug addicts. Jennifer Skinner, photographed March 3 in her Twin Falls apartment, is raising 1-year-old daughter Zahkya Palmer without her fiance, as he serves a sentence of 10 years to life in prison.
YEAR OF THE
PHARMACY
ROBBERY
CRIME WAVE ROCKS TWIN FALLS AS PRESCRIPTION DRUG ADDICTS HIT 7 TIMES IN 6 MONTHS
ALEX RIGGINS
About this Project
ariggins@magicvalley.com
TWIN FALLS • The man in the yellow hooded sweat shirt appeared calm as he walked into the Walgreens on Blue Lakes Boulevard, strode past two shoppers and, without stopping, pulled a yellow surgical mask over his mouth and nose. It was 7:25 p.m. on a Monday, Sept. 29, 2014, and he walked directly to the pharmacy counter where technician Jenny Whitmore was helping Frankie Fiscus, there with his wife, son and grandson to inquire about a flu shot. The man in the baseball hat, sunglasses and yellow hoodie ignored the Fiscus family and handed Whitmore a note demanding OxyContin, oxymorphone and hydromorphone. If he didn’t get it in 30 seconds, the note said, he would hurt everyone. Whitmore passed the note to pharmacist Rick Johns. Less than two minutes after entering the store, the man in the yellow hoodie walked out with a bag containing his demand note, 10 10-mg OxyContin pills and 500 4-mg hydromorphone pills. He left the way he came in and didn’t touch anything in the store. In 2014, a new kind of addiction-driven crime hit Twin Falls — a development that surprised police, alarmed the community and frightened pharmacists. And the Sept. 29 robbery was the peak of the wave. A trio of prescription painkiller addicts knew their plan and how to execute it without leaving clues or getting caught. They’d done it before. Get in, get the drugs, get out. This robbery was so quick and efficient that Fiscus and his family had no idea what happened until it was over. Fiscus and his son later told police they remembered a man in a yellow sweat shirt but never saw his face. Deborah Morris and Caroline Parcels — working near Walgreens’ front register that night — didn’t know the pharmacy was robbed until police arrived on scene. Officer Clint Doerr, a 16-year veteran of
NATHAN BROWN, TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO
Twin Falls police stand watch at the entrance to the Walgreens on Blue Lakes Boulevard North after a Sept. 29, 2014, robbery.
“I worked here for 18 years and never even heard about a pharmacy robbery until 2014.” Staff Sgt. Chuck Garner
COURTESY PHOTO
A surveillance camera captured this image of the man who robbed the Walgreens pharmacy on Twin Falls’ Blue Lakes Boulevard on Sept. 29, 2014. the Twin Falls Police Department, had just finished an interview at the county jail when he heard about the robbery on his radio. By coincidence, Doerr had just spoken
to an inmate who requested leniency on his own charges in exchange for information about recent, and possibly imminent, pharmacy robberies.
To reconstruct the addiction-driven crime wave that hit Twin Falls pharmacies in 2014, crime reporter Alex Riggins spent two months on an intensive investigation. Riggins combed through court records and police reports and conducted extensive interviews with police, prosecutors, victims and witnesses. Working through the Idaho Department of Riggins Correction’s public information officer, he arranged interviews with two of the convicted pharmacy robbers imprisoned in Boise. One robber put Riggins in touch with his fiancee, too. Today, the Times-News presents the first half of Riggins’ project. On Magicvalley.com, this special story is enhanced with multimedia. To learn how investigators cracked these cases and how the string of robberies changed Twin Falls, come back to the Times-News and Magicvalley. com on March 20 for the conclusion of this two-part project. The inmate gave Doerr a name: Bradley Cole Holcomb. The inmate told Doerr that Holcomb — arrested in June for robbing the Walgreens pharmacy on Blue Lakes — had spent his time in jail reading police reports to learn from his mistakes and trying to recruit others to help. “It wasn’t more than a few minutes after I get done interviewing him that we get the robbery call at Walgreens,” Doerr recalled last month. “My first thought was Bradley Holcomb, he’s a prime suspect.” Please see CRIME, B2
B2 • Sunday, March 13, 2016
“It controls your life. You get high in the morning and have to hide it from everybody … you can’t focus on anything except trying to set something up where you can get high later.” Chandler Lee Palmer
Holcomb
Palmer
Escobedo
Trout
Crime
was I able to be happy without being high?’ I couldn’t achieve happiness.”
Continued from B1
So that evening Doerr checked in on Holcomb at the house where he lived with his mother, Donna McMillan, on Washington Street North. When Doerr arrived, McMillan called her son, who said he was walking home from church. A few minutes later Holcomb called his mom and told her he was at the end of the street. McMillan and Doerr went outside. Sure enough, they saw Holcomb approaching the house. “As he’s getting closer, all the sudden I get a call of an attempted robbery taking place at Kmart,” Doerr said. “We have another robbery going on right now at Kmart at the same time I’m watching Bradley.” The June Walgreens robbery and the one just committed by the man in the yellow hoodie were too similar, Doerr thought. Holcomb even fit the physical description of the robber in the yellow hoodie: dark complexion, between 5 feet 6 inches and 6 feet tall. But the Kmart robbery threw Doerr for a loop. If Holcomb hadn’t robbed Kmart — and he clearly hadn’t, because Doerr was looking at him as the call came in — he probably hadn’t robbed Walgreens that evening either. “So Bradley was on my radar,” Doerr said. “But now either there’s more people involved, or something else is going on.” In the months that followed, police and prosecutors would describe the rapid-fire crimes as expertly planned and deliberately executed. The robbers would call them spontaneous acts of desperation to feed their addictions.
Year of the Pharmacy Robbery Magic Valley endured at least 11 pharmacy robberies or attempted robberies in 2014. On March 10, a 38-year-old man and his 17-year-old son went into Kmart and made off with drugs and cash before they were arrested four months later. On March 23, a man passed a note to Shopko pharmacy employees saying he would shoot unless they gave him several prescription painkillers. On April 21, two men tried to rob the Ridley’s Market in Kimberly; they demanded cash and drugs but suddenly fled without either. Then between June 25 and Nov. 30, six Twin Falls pharmacies were robbed, pharmacists and customers thwarted a seventh attempt, and a Burley Walgreens was hit. “I worked here for 18 years and never even heard about a pharmacy robbery until 2014,” said Staff Sgt. Chuck Garner, who has overseen Twin Falls’ police detectives since October 2014. “For our area it was kind of a new thing.” Local pharmacists had heard of robberies elsewhere in the country. For more than 20 years, they had a calling tree in place to alert the others if one were robbed. But the victim gets no warning call. And for pharmacy employees in 2014, a calling tree offered little assurance against a robber threatening violence. “There were a lot of very tentative thoughts and ideas about going to work, about what would happen,” said Troy Jackman, president of the Magic Valley Pharmacists Association. By the end of the year, four people were arrested and charged with committing seven of the final eight robberies. Holcomb and Brody McEwen Trout pleaded guilty to committing several each, while Angelic Monique Escobedo admitted to being their accomplice. Holcomb’s brother, Chandler Lee Palmer, also confessed to one of the robberies. None had violent histories. But all four were desperate.
Opioid Addiction
To understand 2014’s sudden surge in pharmacy robberies, it’s vital to understand opioid addiction. Opioids account for the greatest proportion of the prescription drug abuse problem and act on the same brain systems affected by heroin and morphine, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported in a May 2014 address to the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control. “Several factors are likely to have contributed to the severity of the current prescription drug abuse problem,” Dr. Nora D. Volkow told the Senate caucus. “They include drastic increases in the number of
Recovery and Relapse
COURTESY OF JENNIFER SKINNER
Bradley Holcomb and Jennifer Skinner during happier times in 2012.
prescriptions written and dispensed, greater started smoking pot when I was, like, 14,” social acceptability for using medications for Palmer said by phone last month, incardifferent purposes and aggressive marketing cerated in the same Boise prison but with by pharmaceutical companies.” more visitation, calling and activity priviAnd nowhere has been hit as hard by opi- leges than his brother. “First time I smoked oid addiction as the U.S. pot was with this old guy. And something “The number of prescriptions for opioids he said always stuck in my mind. He said, like hydrocodone and oxycodone have esca- ‘If I get caught, what are they going to do, lated from around 76 million in 1991 to nearly ground me?’” 207 million in 2013,” Volkow said. The U.S. is The 14-year-old adopted the same deviltheir biggest consumer globally, account- may-care attitude. Soon he was dabbling ing for almost 100 percent of the world total with much harder drugs. “When I was 16 I tried oxy, heroin, mushfor hydrocodone products, like Vicodin, and 81 percent for oxycodone products, rooms, Molly and acid.” like Percocet. The drug abuse worsened when Palmer With the massive increase in prescrip- began dealing. He started out selling weed tions for painkillers came a massive increase but was soon dealing cocaine and more powin their abuse. erful narcotics. “By 2002, death certificates listed opioid One day, a friend suggested he try oxycopoisoning as a cause of death more com- done, a potent painkiller. monly than heroin or cocaine,” Volkow told “The first time I shot up OxyContin, it was awesome,” the senators. Palmer said. “It Even those who are prescribed the turns a light switch painkillers can on, it makes you become addicted, feel alive. You but the most likely could have all the route to addiction problems in the is through use not world, but then medically pre you get high and everything’s all scribed. In 2012, right. It’s not that more than 5 percent of the U.S. populayou don’t care, but tion 12 and older everything just used opioid pain feels perfect.” relievers nonmediThat sense of well-being and cally. pleasure, Volkow “They are most Bradley Cole Holcomb d a n ge ro u s a n d told the senators, is addictive when taken via methods that produced because opioid medications affect increase their euphoric effects,” Volkow said, brain regions involved in reward. “such as crushing pills and then snorting or Soon though, Palmer couldn’t function injecting the powder, or combining the pills without prescriptions painkillers. with alcohol or other drugs.” “It controls your life. You get high in the Holcomb and his older brother injected. A morning and have to hide it from everybody faster high. … you can’t focus on anything except trying to set something up where you can get high ‘I Wasn’t a Delinquent’ later. In the back of your mind you’re just Palmer, now 23, is just 15 months older thinking, ‘You better get this or it’s going to than Holcomb, 22. be bad later.’ You get the heebie-jeebies. Life “Me and Chandler were pretty in sync,” revolves around it.” Holcomb said last month, calling from a Palmer needed more and more to achieve Boise prison during the one hour each day the high. that he’s allowed out of his cell to shower “If you do it every day,” he said, “it’s not and send emails. “We grew up really close to that intense anymore.” each other. Everywhere he went, I went. We For those who abuse opioids, tolerance went together.” creates a vicious cycle. In their early teens, the brothers moved “With opiates, you can’t function without from Kimberly to Twin Falls. They attended them,” Palmer said. “But if you don’t do it, Canyon Ridge High School, and doing drugs you’re strung out, and that’s the worst feeling seemed like a normal thing most of their you can imagine. There’s not a more desperate feeling in the world.” classmates were also trying. “I wasn’t a delinquent, I wasn’t going Holcomb told a story of addiction and out being crazy,” Holcomb said of his teen withdrawal much like his older brother’s. years, though he said he stole a car when “I think it was exactly the stereotype addiction,” Holcomb said. “It was so bad he was 14. “I started drinking in eighth grade and where if I couldn’t get them, it was like, ‘How
“At first I just took a few pills here and there, but once I started shooting up, it was over.”
Holcomb and Palmer tried to recover from their opioid addictions in their late teens and early 20s, getting clean for months at a time. But the drugs always pulled them back. While he was still a juvenile, Holcomb was sent to a yearlong recovery program in Boise. When he got out, he stayed in Boise and was joined by his girlfriend, Jennifer Skinner. “That program was good, helped me deal with a lot of issues, with family issues,” Holcomb said. “It set me on a good path for my adult life. I felt like things were squared away and taken care of.” Holcomb and Skinner were happy, and being in Boise kept Holcomb far away from the people and places that influenced his decisions in the Magic Valley. “I had a job, made good money, had a car and house,” Holcomb said. “It was just me and her in the Treasure Valley. I was working at the Winco distribution center. I could have set us up really well.” But when Skinner got pregnant, Holcomb got scared. He felt anxious and inadequate. Could he be a good father? Could he provide for Skinner and the baby? Could he do it in the Treasure Valley without either of their families for support? “Jen didn’t want to come back to Twin,” Holcomb said. “She didn’t want to come back. She foresaw something like this.” Despite Skinner’s protest, the expectant parents moved back in August 2013. Meanwhile, Palmer’s addiction was spiraling out of control. On New Year’s Day 2014, he stole a wedding ring, TV and laptop from his mom. Weeks later, McMillan took Palmer to the police department and told officers she wanted to press charges against her son. Palmer admitted to stealing from McMillan but told police he couldn’t give the items back — he had already pawned them for drug money. He pleaded guilty to a felony count of grand theft and was sentenced to two to four years in prison, but his sentence was suspended and he was sent instead to a rider, the therapeutic and educational program overseen by the Idaho Department of Correction. The program was helping Palmer get clean even as his younger brother fell victim to the temptations Skinner had foreseen. “Once we moved back to Twin I started using again,” Holcomb said. “I knew I was vulnerable. At first I just took a few pills here and there, but once I started shooting up, it was over.” “He was doing so good in Boise,” Skinner said on a recent Saturday, watching her daughter climb on Arctic Circle’s indoor playground. “But Twin’s a black hole for him.” The couple separated, but Holcomb still showed up for every one of Skinner’s pregnancy checkups. They reconciled just before their daughter’s birth and went to Boise for a week before the baby was due. There, they made plans to return to live in the city that had held such promise. March 21, 2014, three days after returning from Boise, Skinner gave birth to Zahkya Juanita Sarai Palmer. She moved back in with Holcomb and his mother in the house on Washington Street North. But Skinner suspected Holcomb was using again. When she confronted him, he admitted he was. “I moved out because I didn’t want my daughter around that,” Skinner said. “That was in June.” “When she left,” Holcomb said, “it just turned me and my attitude into, ‘They’re better off without me.’” He was using every day and growing more desperate. He got a job through a temp agency, but without drugs, he couldn’t go to work. And he had no money for drugs. “I hadn’t gone to work for, like, three days because I was so sick,” Holcomb said. “Withdrawals off opiates — man, anything is better than going through that.” Robbing a drug dealer seemed to Holcomb like a good way to get shot dead. That’s when Holcomb remembered reading about the two March pharmacy robberies, and an idea sprouted. “I saw it going one of two ways,” Holcomb said. “Either I get away with it and I’m able to get ‘better,’ because I seriously thought I was going to die (from withdrawals). Or I go to jail and get help. I was at my rock bottom.” Please see CRIME, B3
Sunday, March 13, 2016 • B3
Crime Continued from B2
First Robbery:Walgreens on Blue Lakes The temperature was 70 degrees and rising at 9:13 a.m. June 25 when Holcomb walked into Walgreens with the hood of his gray and black sweat shirt over his head. He also wore long, dark pants, a dark baseball hat and black sunglasses. He walked to the pharmacy and handed pharmacist technician Rachele West a note. Though he claims he isn’t violent and wouldn’t have hurt anyone, the note he used was threatening: Robbery Oxycotin Oxymorphome hydromorphome ALL now! or this syringe full of Hep C blood will be inside you West handed the note to pharmacist Naomi Knight, who filled a paper bag with drugs. Knight couldn’t find any oxymorphone pills but still gave Holcomb a massive haul: 1,734 oxycodone and hydromorphone pills worth almost $8,700. Their street value for illegal use: $48,000. Officer Dan Heil was first to arrive and pulled his gun as he entered the store, but he soon holstered his weapon when employees told him the robber had been gone for about a minute. A witness told police a man ran across Blue Lakes and got into a silver four-door car parked behind Absolutely Flowers. An employee at the McDonald’s across the street confirmed it was a silver four-door Cadillac, possibly a DeVille, and said it sped west on Heyburn Avenue. Back at Walgreens, officers began interviewing witnesses and victims. The two pharmacist employees believed the note had a threat that they would be shot if they didn’t comply. Knight told officers “she felt the robber would follow through with his threat to harm her because she could see a bulge in the hooded sweat shirt he was wearing,” an officer wrote. Tears still well in Skinner’s eyes when she thinks about that day. “My mom actually called me and said, ‘You know, there’s been a robbery, and it was a Cadillac,’” said Skinner, a soft-spoken young woman with a tattoo of Holcomb’s name on her stomach. “So I called Bradley, and he was just like, ‘No, I’m just here hanging out.’ And I said, ‘You didn’t happen to rob a pharmacy, did you?’ Because the news says it’s a male in his 20s with a Cadillac, and that kind of had me worried.” Holcomb still denied it, but he was short with Skinner on the phone. At 4:45 p.m., Detective Rick VanVooren received a call from a man who said he lived on Quincy Street and had a roommate named Bradley Holcomb who was acting suspiciously. At the time, police knew Holcomb from his teen run-ins with the law, but his name didn’t jump out to anyone as a robbery suspect. The roommate told VanVooren that Holcomb hadn’t gone to work that morning like he was supposed to. Strangest of all, when he came home about 9:20 a.m., he backed his Cadillac into the backyard instead of pulling straight in like normal. Then he got out and covered the back of the car with a blanket. A short time after Holcomb got home, the roommate learned about the Walgreens robbery. He was worried because he knew Holcomb was a prescription pill user and was concerned for his safety. VanVooren asked the roommate to come into the police station so they could talk more, and at the station the man showed the detective text messages from Holcomb about stripping the car to make it look like an old project car. VanVooren asked for and received the roommate’s permission to search the home on Quincy Street. Officers entered the house using a key they’d been given. Once inside, they announced themselves, and Holcomb came out of the bathroom with his hands up. Inside the bathroom, officers found a drug kit that included a spoon, hypodermic needles and syringes. Holcomb agreed to speak with VanVooren but after several tough questions told the detective he’d like to speak with a lawyer. With a warrant signed by a judge, police returned to the house and found in the attic a bag of pills matching the description of the drugs stolen earlier that day. In Holcomb’s bedroom, they found black sunglasses and a Chicago Bulls hat that matched the robber’s description. Inside the Cadillac out back, VanVooren found a pad of notepaper. The top sheet was ripped off and matched the size of the note the pharmacy employees described. A week later, inside a darkened room and using a flashlight to illuminate the next page, VanVooren and a local evidence technician would be able to read part of the imprint. And in late July, a forensic scientist in Washington would use an electrostatic detection apparatus to decipher the rest of the impressions on the pages below. Holcomb was arrested and charged with four felony counts and a misdemeanor. Holcomb’s attorney, Lynn Dunlap, told Judge Thomas Kershaw his client was employed and had a newborn daughter and other family in the area. For that reason, bond shouldn’t be set too high. But Kershaw, citing the seriousness of the charges and Holcomb’s criminal record as a juvenile, set bond at $500,000.
County Lockup
On Aug. 28, after Holcomb had spent two months in county jail, his attorney successfully argued the bond should be reduced. The
COURTESY OF TWIN FALLS POLICE DEPARTMENT
Bradley Holcomb got rid of the note he used during the robbery at Walgreens on June 25, 2014. But officers found the notebook he used, and a forensic scientist in Washington used an electrostatic detection apparatus to read the latent writing impressions on the pages below. This is a copy of the image lifted from those pages.
county jail. These two people would help Holcomb implement his “way to deal with the stress.”
Second robbery: Walgreens on Washington Street
STEPHEN REISS, TIMES-NEWS
Twin Falls Police Detective Rick VanVooren, photographed Jan. 28 inside the police department, worked on the 2014 string of pharmacy robberies. next day, Holcomb posted bond and agreed to follow the court’s compliance program. The inmate who spoke to Doerr alleges it was during those two months in the county jail that Holcomb was learning from his mistakes, recruiting help and plotting more robberies. “That’s an asinine statement,” Holcomb said in his phone call from prison. “It was never a goal of mine to rob more pharmacies. I stopped using in jail and was sober for two months.” Though Holcomb didn’t have access to drugs in the jail, he didn’t feel like he was healing from his addiction, either. Because he was booked on a violent crime, he wasn’t able to enroll in the jail’s drug and alcohol classes. When he bonded out in late August, things looked even bleaker than before. “When I got out, I encountered a lot of stress,” Holcomb said. “My mom had hired this attorney that we had to pay. All my money was going to my mom to help pay for the attorney or to pay for court compliance. And I couldn’t get a job because my face was all over the newspaper.” Holcomb knew just where to turn to make his problems go away. “I knew of a very negative way, but a very
efficient way, to deal with the stress,” Holcomb said. Around late August or early September, Holcomb started hanging out with Angelic Monique Escobedo, an old friend from high school. Around the same time, Escobedo started dating Brody McEwen Trout. Escobedo’s court records paint a picture of an abusive upbringing with much of her teen years spent in juvenile detention. In 2008 she twice attempted suicide by taking “a bunch of pills,” she told a mental health evaluator. During a court-ordered examination in 2015, Escobedo told a social worker she had been previously diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, general anxiety disorder, insomnia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The social worker also diagnosed her with panic attacks and paranoia episodes. Escobedo admitted to using alcohol, methamphetamine, bath salts, marijuana, Molly and opiates. Court records also document Trout’s history of drug use. He was charged with drug possession for the first time as an adult in 2009. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in a rider. In 2010, Trout was charged with misdemeanor drug possession and in 2011 sentenced to 90 days in
On Sept. 17, Holcomb and Escobedo went into Washington Street’s Walgreens, walked straight toward the pharmacy, then turned away suddenly, walking back toward the entrance, where they both grabbed drinks from a cooler near the check stands. At 8:09 p.m., Trout walked in wearing a white hoodie with dollar bill graphics, a white baseball hat, white basketball shorts, black socks and white shoes. He also had on sunglasses and possibly a pair of dark gloves. When Trout entered, Holcomb motioned to alert Escobedo and they left the store. Trout approached pharmacist Jeremy Hunter but walked away when he saw the pharmacist on the phone. Once Hunter hung up, Trout returned to the counter and handed him a note demanding hydromorphone, oxycodone and oxymorphone. If the pharmacist didn’t give him what he wanted, the note threatened, the robber would kill him. Hunter dumped several bottles of pills into a plastic Walgreens grocery sack and gave the bag to Trout, who turned to leave. Before he walked more than a few steps, he stopped. “Where’s the note?” Trout asked Hunter. “It’s in the bag,” Hunter told him. “Sorry for ruining your evening,” Trout told Hunter. “But you’ll receive good karma for this.” Trout left the store with more than $1,000 worth of hydromorphone and oxycodone and ran across Washington Street into the Los Lagos neighborhood. Officers dispatched to the robbery at 8:14 p.m. set up a perimeter and questioned neighbors. At least two people told officers they saw someone get into a white car that sped away, but nobody saw anything clearly. For almost two months, the robbery went unsolved.
Third robbery:Walgreens on Blue Lakes Less than two weeks after the Sept. 17 robbery, Trout on Sept. 29 pulled his lightcolored four-door sedan into the parking lot of Twin Falls’ other Walgreens, the one on Blue Lakes Boulevard that Holcomb robbed of nearly $9,000 worth of pills back in June. Trout got out of his car at 7:06 p.m. and walked around near the store’s front doors for several minutes, at one point pulling out a cellphone from his pocket and looking at it intensely. Then he got into the driver’s seat of his car, waited a few more minutes, backed out of his parking spot and drove away. It was only then, after Trout scouted the store, that the man in the yellow hoodie walked up the south side of Walgreens, Please see CRIME, B4
B4 • Sunday, March 13, 2016
Crime Continued from B3
walked confidently through the door and made off with 510 painkillers without anyone but the pharmacist and the pharmacist technician knowing what happened. Prosecutors and police are convinced the man in the yellow hoodie was Holcomb, but as part of a plea deal, charges against him for this robbery were dismissed. Because Holcomb is appealing his conviction in other robberies, he still denied his involvement in this one, although his voice got quieter and lower when he did so. Every phone conversation a prisoner has is recorded, so by denying his involvement he avoided incriminating himself. For whomever robbed Walgreens that night — Trout and Escobedo both said it was Holcomb — the night was done. Holcomb was soon walking down the street and chatting casually with Officer Doerr at his mother’s house. But for Trout and Escobedo, there was more to do.
Fourth robbery: Kmart
Less than an hour later, Trout walked into Kmart wearing a gray and black hoodie, black shorts, black leggings and white shoes. He walked to the pharmacy with his hands in his pockets and looked casual as he waited for pharmacist John Baker. While he waited, a Kmart employee asked if she could help him, but Trout told her he was just waiting to pick up something from the pharmacy. She later told police she believed the robber spoke with a Russian accent. By the time Trout finally got Baker’s attention, Trout was wearing a yellow surgical mask. He pulled a note from his right jacket pocket and handed it to Baker, who knew without Trout saying a word that it was a robbery. Baker later told police he was extremely nervous, but despite his unease he opened a drawer to begin collecting pills and pushed the transmit button on a walkie-talkie to get the attention of a loss-prevention employee. Trout walked along the pharmacy counter and away from another customer who arrived. He walked casually, taking his hands out of his pockets only to grab the bag of pills when Baker handed it over. He left no fingerprints. Once again, Trout made off with a large haul: 200 hydromorphone pills, 400 oxycodone and 11 OxyContin. A witness parked at Lighthouse Christian Academy just south of Kmart told police he saw a man running and getting into the passenger side of a black sedan with white trim. Trout later told police he fled in a green Jeep with Escobedo at the wheel. Back at Kmart, officers interviewing witnesses got a strange tip from Kmart employee Angela Hills. A woman had approached Hills shortly after the robbery and asked if the pharmacy was just robbed. “I think I know who it might be,” the woman told Hills. “It might be my boyfriend’s brother.” The woman refused to answer any more questions, but Hills was able to identify her because she was there paying off layaway items. Her name, Hills told Officer Morgan Waite, was Natasha Hoskins. Waite went to Hoskins’ residence that night to question her. Hoskins told Waite that her boyfriend’s half-brother, whom she knew only as Brad, was previously arrested for robbing a pharmacy. She wondered if he might be the person who robbed Kmart. “That is my oldest brother’s girlfriend,” Holcomb said in his prison phone call last month. He and that older half-brother were never close because the half-brother lived with their dad while Holcomb lived with his mom. “It was weird that she implicated me, like she was guiding the police or something,” Holcomb said. “It’s just weird. Very odd. I don’t really know her.” But if it was weird to Holcomb, it wasn’t weird to Waite, who started learning what he could about someone named Brad previously arrested for robbing a pharmacy. That’s when, for the second time that day, Bradley Cole Holcomb became a prime suspect in an officer’s mind. But Waite soon learned what Doerr already knew: Holcomb couldn’t have robbed Kmart, because he speaking with Doerr at the time. Three pharmacies had been robbed within 12 days, and the prime suspect — the man named by two separate people — had a perfect alibi for at least one of the robberies. If investigators weren’t at square one, they were close to it.
Detectives Meet, Pharmacist Packs Heat Detectives huddled on Sept. 30, the day after the successful double robberies. There had been pharmacy robberies earlier in the year, but never two in one day. The police were serious before, but now the pressure was really on. “We all shared our information,” VanVooren said. “Names, information we had regarding those cases, and we started developing it from there.” At least one pharmacist and his employees, meanwhile, took matters into their own hands. Kent Jensen, owner of KJ’s Pharmacy, started carrying a gun during his shifts. “It’s a good ol’ Second Amendment thing,” Jensen told the Times-News that Oct. 1. Jensen’s employees were trained to give robbers whatever they demand and not escalate the situation. Guns “are to deter and only if we felt that we were in danger of our lives or customers’ lives,” Jensen said. “Then we have the option.” Pharmacist David Nelson, owner of SavMor Drugs, didn’t go so far as carrying a gun but did step up security with a metal
COURTESY OF TWIN FALLS POLICE DEPARTMENT
Police caught a break in the investigation when Brody Trout left this note during an attempted robbery at Shopko on Nov. 6, 2014. During an interview later that day, Trout admitted to officers he used a note written in green ink.
COURTESY PHOTOS
LEFT: A surveillance camera captured this image of the Sept. 17, 2014, robber at the Walgreens on Twin Falls’ Pole Line Road and Washington Street. RIGHT: A surveillance camera captured this image during a Sept. 29, 2014, robbery at the Kmart pharmacy in Twin Falls. gate, a burglar alarm and a 24-hour surveillance system. “I think our main defensive mechanism these days is to stay as vigilant as we can,” Nelson told the Times-News that October. But the robberies were weighing on him and other pharmacists. “The subject is on our minds,” he said. “Every night when I close, I think about it.”
Copycat Robbery: Sav-Mor Drugs
VanVooren said. “Either the guy — or the people — have now upped their ante to now they’re being more aggressive, more violent, displaying the handgun. Or, we have somebody completely different that sees a different way of doing it.”
Fifth Robbery Attempt: Shopko
Bodenhofer’s robbery of Sav-Mor was so unlike the previous robberies that police were all but certain the other robber or robNelson was still being vigilant more than bers were still out there. That was confirmed three weeks later when Billy Bodenhofer Nov. 6. walked into Sav-Mor Drugs on a SaturAbout 1:30 p.m. that day, Trout walked into Shopko wearing large sunglasses, a day afternoon. Tall and slender, dressed in a blue Old baseball hat and a dark-colored hoodie with Navy sweat shirt and olive pants, Bodenhofer the hood pulled over the hat. looked nervous and fumbled with something Trout approached pharmacist technician in his hands as he walked into the pharmacy Helen Tristan and handed her a note in green about 2:40 p.m. Oct. 25. Nelson noticed his ink that said “Robbery” at the top and “give nerves and kept as close an eye on him as the note back” at the bottom. In between was he could. a list of drugs he wanted. “Hurry,” Trout told Tristan. Bodenhofer spoke with pharmacist technician Ryan Quale, a student from Idaho She handed the note to pharmacist Diane State University, H owe l l , t h e n asking him if the secretly dialed Coke machine 911 and left an worked. He open line. A 911 changed a doloperator verilar, bought a fied the call came Coke from the from Shopko but machine and could hear only then asked Quale someone speakfor the pharmaing in the backcist. When Nelground, and only son approached, indistinctly. Bodenhofer While Howell pulled down a collected the pills, mask and asked Tristan pretended for 100 morto help another customer, phone sulfate pills in one bottle. Lacy Garrison. At some point, he “When I pulled out a gun. wa l k e d i n , I didn’t see him,” About this same time, NelGarrison said in a Detective Rick VanVooren son’s wife arrived recent interview. at the pharmacy with a plate of Rice Krisp- “He was just standing there nonchalantly. I ies treats for Quale, the student pharmacist. didn’t notice him, he wasn’t making a scene.” Bodenhofer motioned for her to stand by Instead of helping Garrison, Tristan Nelson and Quale, then made the two men handed her a note that said “call the police.” unplug the phone. “I asked her, ‘Why?’” Garrison recalled. Bodenhofer told the pharmacist he was “And she whispered, ‘We’re being robbed.’” stealing the drugs for a friend who was sick. Garrison pulled out her cellphone and He also told the Nelsons and Quale that dialed 911. if they did what he said, he wouldn’t hurt “He was at the drop-off counter; I was them. He forced all three into a bathroom, at the pick-up counter,” Garrison said. “I walked further away while I was making apologizing at least three times. Count to 50, come out, and I’ll be gone, the call, and he turned around and saw me. Bodenhofer told them. When he realized what I was doing, he fled.” Police investigating the robbery later Trout left the note and fled without any learned that both Kurt’s Pharmacy and pills. Tristan followed him outside, where a Kmart pharmacy employees called police woman in the parking lot pointed to a green about a suspicious man in their stores earlier SUV heading toward the Perrine Bridge. that day, and the description matched the The woman later told police she saw three Sav-Mor robber. people in the SUV, including a woman in the Using a vehicle description from the sus- front passenger seat who opened a back door picious incident at Kurt’s Pharmacy, detec- for Trout. tives tracked down a man who said he bought Holcomb, Trout and Escobedo were now a van for Billy and Melanie Bodenhofer. Three desperate. They were strung out, and Shopko days after the robbery, Billy was arrested. was a bust. According to Escobedo and Trout, “I personally had two takes on it,” Holcomb suggested they rob a Walgreens.
“Either the guy — or the people — have now upped their ante to now they’re being more aggressive, more violent, displaying the handgun. Or, we have somebody completely different that sees a different way of doing it.”
Trout and Holcomb exchanged clothes, and 20 minutes later they pulled up to Walgreens on Washington Street and Pole Line Road.
Sixth robbery:Walgreens on Washington Holcomb walked into Walgreens dressed in the same hoodie Trout had just worn at Shopko and walked straight to the pharmacy counter, where he handed pharmacist Michael Watson a note. Just like the Sept. 29 robbery by the man in the yellow hoodie at the Walgreens across town, this robbery was quick and efficient and paid off handsomely. Holcomb walked out of the store with 718 methadone pills, telling employees to stay quiet until he left. As media outlets broke the news of the latest robberies, the pharmacy calling tree shared the robber descriptions. Within 20 minutes of the second crime, Officer David Weigt spotted a green Jeep Cherokee near Blue Lakes Boulevard and North College Road and pulled in behind it. The Jeep started driving erratically as Weigt began tailing it. The driver made a sudden turn, seeming to escape. When Weight caught up, the Jeep switched lanes, made another sudden turn and accelerated. By the time Weigt made the same turn in pursuit, the Jeep was driving almost 40 mph in a 25 mph zone. This was his chance. Weigt activated his emergency lights and stopped the Jeep in front of a house on Monroe Street. But as Weigt cautiously approached the Jeep, Holcomb, Trout and Escobedo were across town, at Escobedo’s house on Sunburst Street, dividing the pills Holcomb had just stolen from Walgreens. The pills divvied up, Holcomb left to dispose of the pill bottles and the clothing they’d worn during the robberies. The driver of the Jeep, it turned out, was simply in a hurry to get home. At the police station, detectives VanVooren, Jonathan Wilson and Ben Mittelstadt concluded that afternoon’s pharmacy crimes were clearly related. But they still had no suspects. For some officers at the station, this would turn into the longest shift of their lives.
Reporter Alex Riggins, once the victim of a robbery at knife point while in college, is fascinated by tales of armed robberies, bank heists, diamond thefts and other thievery. They’ve been his favorite topics to read about for years and have quickly become his favorite topics to write about.