Peeling back the Onion Field

I noticed that Gregory Powell just died.

He was one of the famed Onion Field killers made famous by the Joseph Wambaugh book by the same name.

I remember Banning Police Chief Leonard Purvis (yes, he is related to THAT Purvis who killed Dillinger and was one of the founders of the FBI) had some connection with the Onion Field case, I believe helping to escort Powell or Smith, the other killer, through the jail and perhaps even to court at the time. Chief Purvis contacted me a few years ago when I re-ran a column in the Record Gazette I had earlier published when Karl Hettinger, the officer who survived the original incident, had died.

The Onion Field incident really touched me after reading the Joseph Wambaugh book, and I can remember as a young police reporter covering the Gardena Police Department and seeing copies of “The Onion Field” on so many of the detectives’ desks and seeing their frustration with the case.

I don’t like the term “closure” because for the families of Ian Campbell, killed in the incident and Karl Hettinger, tortured first by the trial then later haunted by what had happened in a Bakersfield onion field that night, the book on their loved one will never be closed.

Perhaps the incident can now get pushed back a little further into the deep confines of the minds of those who were so touched by this horrible incident and those who knew and/or loved the two officers can now focus completely on their lives and not so much on their deaths.

"The Onion Field" turned nto a chilling film, starring James Woods, in a truly frightening performance, as Powell and John Savage as Hettinger. By the way, Ted Danson had a brief appearance in the movie as Campbell. A touching, frightening film.