Harry Barber: The Laguna Niguel Heist, Fugitive Years, and Arrest

Harry Barber was the getaway driver in the 1972 United California Bank burglary in Laguna Niguel, California, one of the largest bank heists in U.S. history. He eluded the FBI for eight years by living under an alias in a small Pennsylvania town, was finally caught in 1980, served a short prison term, and then surfaced in federal court again two decades later for planting pipe bombs around Des Moines, Iowa.

His Role in the 1972 Laguna Niguel Heist

Barber was part of a Youngstown, Ohio crew led by his uncle, Amil Dinsio, a safecracker the FBI considered the head of the country’s most prolific bank burglary gang.¹ The team included Barber’s brother Ronald, James Dinsio, Charlie Mulligan, alarm specialist Charlie Broeckel, and Phil Christopher.²

On March 24, 1972, the crew blasted into the vault of the United California Bank in Laguna Niguel’s Monarch Bay Plaza and cracked 458 of its 500 safe deposit boxes.³ They walked away with more than $12 million in cash, bonds, and jewelry.⁴ The gang believed, on a tip reportedly traced to Jimmy Hoffa, that the vault held tens of millions in secret Nixon campaign money, a claim federal investigators disputed and never confirmed.⁵

The crew’s tradecraft fell apart on small details. Agents who searched the condominium the gang had rented as a staging base pulled fingerprints off dishes left in the dishwasher.⁶ Airline records showed crew members had flown to California under their real names.⁷ Seven of the eight were arrested within months. Barber was the one who got away.

Eight Years as a Fugitive in Brookville, Pennsylvania

Barber eventually turned up in Brookville, Pennsylvania, a town of fewer than 4,000 people, arriving in August 1977 under the name “John Baker.” For someone on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, he lived in plain sight. He worked as a handyman, took jobs for the local police chief John Dinger and deputy sheriff Bill Bish, and once traveled to Hawaii with the deputy. He is said to have swiped his own wanted poster from the Brookville Post Office.⁸

What exposed him was ordinary laundry. Barber occasionally visited Youngstown and used a dry cleaner there that stitched “H. Barber” onto his clothing. His girlfriend, Marlene Brady, noticed the initials. In August 1978 she told Sheriff Dinger that “Baker” was really a wanted bank robber, though Dinger later testified he treated the tip as a product of a domestic quarrel.⁹

The 1980 Arrest and His Sentence for the Heist

On May 12, 1980, an FBI agent walked up to Barber at the Big Country Campground outside Brookville, tapped him on the shoulder, and asked if he was Harry Barber. “Never heard of him,” Barber answered. He was taken into custody anyway, ending eight years on the run.⁸

Accounts of his sentence differ. A 1981 newspaper report put it at 12 years for what it described as a $5.9 million Los Angeles bank robbery.⁹ Other accounts give a 20-year sentence with only three years served.⁸ By either figure, his time inside was short relative to the size of the burglary.

The 1999 Pipe Bomb Case

Barber’s record did not stop there. Between November 2 and December 3, 1999, he placed five pipe bombs around Des Moines, Iowa. He later said the bombings were meant to “create the appearance of a mad bomber.”¹⁰

He pleaded guilty to six federal counts: one count of transporting an explosive device with intent under 18 U.S.C. § 844(d) and five counts of manufacturing a destructive device under 26 U.S.C. § 5861(f). The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa sentenced him to 96 months in prison and three years of supervised release. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the conviction but sent the case back for resentencing, finding the trial court had used a guidelines range of 78 to 97 months when the correct range was 70 to 87 months.¹¹

Where He Is Now and How His Story Reached the Screen

The 1972 burglary first drew wider attention through a ten-part investigative series by Orange County Register reporter Keith Sharon in 2003 and a 2012 documentary, Superthief: Inside America’s Biggest Bank Score, which featured interviews with Phil Christopher. Christopher himself served more than 20 years for the heist.⁷

In 2019, director Mark Steven Johnson’s feature Finding Steve McQueen, co-written by Ken Hixon and Sharon, dramatized Barber’s part in the story, with Travis Fimmel playing Barber and William Fichtner playing a stand-in for Amil Dinsio renamed “Uncle Enzo.” The film depicted Barber as a Steve McQueen fan who drove a 1969 Mustang GTO and racked up 41 speeding tickets in a year, and reviewers described it as a light, loosely accurate take on the real events.¹²¹³

Johnson met with Barber during production and described him as cooperative, though Barber declined to talk about rumors of a fortune buried in coffee cans near Youngstown and asked that the real names of his mother and former girlfriend be kept out of the film. Johnson agreed. At the time of the film’s release, Barber was in his 70s, living in Southern California, and still working as a handyman.¹⁴

1
Orange County Register. Stealing Nixon’s Millions Part 2: Uncle Amil Assembles the Crew, the Tools and the Getaway
2
Cleveland.com. Super Heist: How a Youngstown Gang Traveled to LA to Rip Off Richard Nixon and Stole $30 Million
3
Oxygen. Most Amazing Burglary Ever Has Rumored Links to Mob, Hoffa, Nixon
4
Orange County Register. Day 12: The Largest Bank Heist in US History Targets Nixon’s Millions
5
Orange County Register. Crime Beat Podcast Transcript Episode 1: Stealing Nixon’s Millions
6
Orange County Register. Stealing Nixon’s Millions Part 8: No Fingerprints, but the Thieves Forgot to Wash the Dishes
7
Cleveland.com. True-Crime Story Picks Up Another Chapter
8
Orange County Register. Stealing Nixon’s Millions Part 10: The Past Catches Up With Harry Barber
9
Newspaper Archive. Franklin News Herald, October 7, 1981
10
Law.Resource.org. United States v. Barber, 272 F.3d 1067 (8th Cir. 2001)
11
Findlaw. United States v. Barber, No. 01-1798 (8th Cir. 2001)
12
RogerEbert.com. Finding Steve McQueen
13
Chicago Sun-Times. Finding Steve McQueen: Criminals Not Quite Geniuses in a Story Not Quite True
14
Vindy Archives. Finding Steve McQueen Film Recounts Vault Heist