Still, it was 1952, and he didn't think anyone would try to rob the car while children were in it. At the worst, he'd lose some money, but he couldn't imagine anyone would be hurt. He didn't know that earlier in the day on Oct. 10, 1952, two men who rode into town pretending to be hunters had tried to catch Locatell on his way back from the bank. Locatell had gotten away. The men went to plan B, waiting for the next shopkeeper from Chester to show up at the bank to make a withdrawal.

At 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 10, 1952, Jean, Judy and Michael, a neighbor boy Guard regarded as a son, clambered into the roomy backseat of the Chrysler while Sondra, Guard's pride and joy, sat next to her father in the front. They withdrew $7,128 from the bank and stopped for ice cream on the way back.

The Chrysler was several miles outside of Westwood, heading back to Chester, when a dark Oldsmobile appeared in Guard's rearview mirror. A balding man wearing a mask and his accomplice, who had a pencil-thin mustache, pulled up beside Guard as the two cars raced down the winding mountain road. When one of the men pulled a gun on Guard, he pulled over.

What happened next comes to Sondra Young today in bits and flashes. She can remember the gun, and she has read newspaper stories about the lead pipe the two men used to smash in her father's head and kill her sisters.

"I remember them hitting the other kids," Sondra says, though she has tried to forget. "I remember it as them being spanked, but they were being hit. (A newspaper) article said my dad was killed first, but he wasn't. He watched, and he struggled to get free."

The men came at Sondra last, beckoning her to climb over the seat into their reach. They left her for dead in the back of the trunk.

California Highway patrolman Jeff Cooley was a stickler for enforcing the law.

At 9 years old, he and his dad lived as hobos in railroad cars after his mother abandoned them in the height of the Great Depression. He watched his dad kill a man, in Cooley's defense, on the train, and he later served in World War II.

After he returned, he started his career as a hard-nosed cop who was just as willing to ticket his sister-in-law for a broken taillight as he was to turn his daughter-in-law in for abusing drugs. During his 27 years in the field, Cooley was at one point in the California Highway Patrol's top 10 for most felony arrests, but he "never struck a human being in uniform," Cooley proudly points out. "I did strike a few out of uniform, but that was necessary sometimes."