$350,000 in negotiable bonds. Each safecracker received $70,000 as his share from the heist.9
A website, measuringworth.com, which calculates the purchasing power of currencies, estimates that by today’s standards, the relative value of the thieves’ $70,000 share was well over $400,000 and the total amount in cash, jewelry and bonds stolen from Dodge Ridge Ski Resort equaled over $3,500,000.
Ettleman and his gang did not steal from a faceless corporation. Dodge Ridge Ski Resort was a family-owned business. It was developed by Earl Purdy, who in 1947, while drinking a cup of coffee in a grocery store in Long Barn, California, learned from neighbors that the US Forest Service was soliciting bids to develop a ski area in nearby Dodge Ridge. At the time, Purdy was running a successful general store and gas station between the towns of Ripon and Manteca, called Simm’s Station. But the long commute was getting to him and he was looking for a business venture that would be closer to his home and family. He did not know much about skiing, which he took up in his forties when his own children started taking lessons. But he was a vastly experienced individual with many facets and was not afraid to take on new challenges and risks. He’d previously been a teacher, a truck driver, a highway patrolman and a professional violinist. He also had a degree in architecture from the College of Pacifica. The son of a forest ranger, he was familiar with the region, having hiked the Dodge Ridge area as a youth.10
Purdy decided to enter the ski area competition, which entailed a one-hundred-dollar fee. Three months later he was shocked to learn that the Forest Service chose him over the other bidders because of his business history. Before utilizing the special use permit from the Forest Service, Purdy toured western ski resorts for three months to help him determine if Dodge Ridge could be economically viable. He traveled as far as Sun Valley in Idaho, and he also visited Mammoth and Squaw Valley, places that were closer to his home. Finally, he picked the spot where he thought the ski area should be built and pulled out a matchbook on which he sketched the layout of the resort. It turned out to accurately reflect what the completed project would look like.
Dodge Ridge opened in the fall of 1950 with Purdy’s initial investment of $250,000, a great sum in those days. His dream to build a family-oriented winter sports mecca with a state-of-the-art chairlift finally came true. Most importantly, it enabled him to be closer to his own family.
Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Department deputies launched an intensive manhunt as soon as they were summoned at 4:17 that morning. Neighboring police departments set up roadblocks. Agents from the FBI and the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Investigation and Identification (CI&I) responded rapidly when they received the news of the safe burglary, flying in by helicopter. In no time, the roads around Dodge Ridge and the neighboring hamlets were inundated with police cars. Helicopters could be heard circling the area on and off throughout most of the day.
The deputies also conducted a house-to-house search of five hundred cabins, looking for the armed bandits. They figured that the thieves might still be in the area, since the roads east of the resort were blocked by snow.11 But if anyone was blocked, it was law enforcement. Five inches of fresh snow fell in the early hours of the morning, covering the masked gunmen’s trail and hampering police efforts.
A ski mask, gloves and a pair of white overalls discarded by one of the bandits from a vehicle moving westbound were found along Highway 108. The stolen van used to haul the safe was also found, abandoned and empty, at a gas station in Strawberry, less than six miles from the resort. An eyewitness saw four men dash out of the van in the very early hours of the morning. The witness said the men split up into pairs and each pair drove away in a different car.
With all the scattered clues, law enforcement still had no evidence to tie any suspects to the crime. This was an era before the discovery of DNA and other forensic advancements, which make it easier to prove innocence or guilt today.
The California Department of Justice’s CI&I, the FBI and the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office were not sure where or how the armed burglars got the key to get into the lodge and the shed housing the tools and equipment they used or how the gunmen made their getaway, but they had a very good idea who the professional thieves were.12
The police had no doubt that William Floyd Ettleman was behind the operation. It was his MO. There were not many proficient, prolific safecrackers like Ettleman and his crew. The fact that the stolen van’s plates came from a Hayward junkyard turned out to be a major clue that the crooks were from the San Francisco Bay Area. And indeed, Ettleman and the driver of the van, Eddie DeVaney, both resided in the Bay Area at the time. It was also obvious the crooks were familiar with the Dodge Ridge lodge, its routine and layout. Using snowmobiles in the Dodge Ridge heist was also not a first for Ettleman. He had utilized them when they hit other ski resort safes in Montana, Nevada, Utah and Colorado.13
“It looked like a national thieves’ convention around Twain Hart the week before,” a member of the law enforcement team said, referring to a nearby town where Ettleman’s family happened to own a cabin. Fred Mitchel, the undersheriff of Tuolumne County, was quoted in the press as stating that “the gang in the last two years operated in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, Nevada and seven counties of California.”14 However, on the night of the Dodge Ridge caper, there was no one from the California Highway Patrol (CHP) on duty. Then again, with a forecast of fresh snow, why would the CHP imagine anyone would be speeding? There was no need to risk a CHP officer’s life driving back and forth on slippery roads. How were they to know that a dramatic armed robbery would take place that night? Law enforcement intelligence did not have detailed information on Ettleman yet. But it was not going to be too long before the FBI applied pressure to get it.
In the meantime, an investigator for the Tuolumne Sheriff’s Department got a lead. Two brothers who lived in the area and were known burglars had become informants, even though they themselves were not involved in the crime. Thieves like to brag to those they trust. More often than not, the ones they trust are as unscrupulous as they are. And when one makes a score like Dodge Ridge, there is bound to be bragging.
The informants led the investigator to the Carquinez Bridge, which consists of two parallel spans forming part of Interstate 80 between the towns of Crockett and Vallejo, stretching over the Carquinez Strait, a channel of water where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers empty into San Francisco Bay. They showed the investigator where the safe from Dodge Ridge was thrown down into the tidal strait below and pointed out the scrape marks on the rails where the safe was hoisted up and then pushed over. The informants claimed that after all the valuables were removed, the safecrackers had thrown their clothes and masks into the safe.
The investigation stopped there. The county did not want to spend a penny more on the case, which would have required the county corps of engineers to drive over three hours and cover more than one hundred and sixty miles to reach the Carquinez Bridge with a team of divers. And for what? To retrieve a useless safe full of discarded clothes?
Then, two weeks later, Ettleman left his mark again. This time, he hit neighboring Stanislaus County.
On the night of March 26, the eighty-year-old widow Helen Shoemake, owner of Shoemake’s Fine Jewelers in Modesto, California, lay semi-conscious in her bedroom on the second story of her home while a robbery took place around and below her. The robbery was being carried out commando-style by two gun-wielding men wearing ski masks, dark clothing and tennis shoes.1
To get into the house and take control, the masked intruders first hid behind Mrs. Shoemake’s sixty-seven-year-old housekeeper’s car, parked
