Mar. 10, 1963 - Ian James Campbell (pictured), a 31-year-old Los Angeles policeman, was kidnapped with a fellow officer, Karl Hettinger, in Hollywood and shot to death on a lonely Kern County farm last night in a gangland style execution by two gunmen. Hettinger escaped. Two suspects were later captured. The suspected killers, both ex-convicts, fled from the scene of the cold-blooded shooting. One suspect was picked up within hours, and the other was captured tonight in a Bakersfield rooming house. The two officers were standing in a moonlit onion field 25 miles south of Bakersfield shortly after midnight with their hands over their heads when their captors opened fire. The second officer fled in a hail of bullets, taking advantage of a cloud that drifted across the full moon, shrouding the field in darkness as the gunfire started. Campbell, 31, a policeman since 1958 and father of 2 young daughters, was shot once in the face before the killers pumped four more bullets into his chest as he lay dying. Campbell’s partner, Mr. Hettinger, 28, suffered cuts, bruises, and shock as he zig-zagged to safety across the onion field, tore through a barbed-wire fence, and hid in a cluster of tumbleweeds. Hettinger ran four miles to a farmhouse and telephoned for help. California Highway Patrol officers later spotted one suspect fleeing in a stolen car and arrested him without a struggle. He was identified as Gregory Ulas Powell, 29, a three-time prison escapee from Boulder City, Nev. Inside the car, officers found a .32-caliber revolver and a flashlight marked “Hettinger —LAPD.” Powell’s partner was identified as Jimmy Lee Smith, 32. He has a narcotics and robbery record and a string of aliases.
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