Angry in the Great White North

From America's Most Wanted:

In 1992, FBI agents say Heather Tallchief and Julius Suave celebrated the holidays at a friend's house in San Francisco. Then they moved to Mexico, where they began preparations for a major heist. By the summer of 1993, agents say they were ready to put their plan into action. Suave and Tallchief moved to Las Vegas, and she began training as a Loomis armored car driver.

The FBI says Suave and Tallchief rented a warehouse. Their cover story: they were opening a business called Steel Reinforcement Inc. to reinforce vehicles and armored cars. According to officials, they then chartered a private jet which would serve as a getaway plane. Even though she had no prior experience, by the end of August, Tallchief had secured a job at Loomis as a driver.

So this is not the case of Tallchief being an armoured car driver, who hooked up with Suave, who in turn had targeted Tallchief as missing piece of his plan.

Instead, the plan was developed well before Tallchief was an armoured car driver. In fact, the only reason she became an armoured car driver was to put this plan into action.

Brainwashed? If she were a driver already, and she was in financial difficulties, and she had hooked up with Suave just prior to the heist, I might buy it. Vulnerable, she might have fallen to temptation with Suave's help. But planning for a year, renting a warehouse, arranging for a private jet -- she was an accomplice.

There is even a question of how the money was moved. After she drove off with the money and parked the van unnoticed in the warehouse, they made their getaway:

The FBI says by 10:15 a.m. Suave and Tallchief boarded a private jet and took off, carrying only two small bags. Agents say those bags could not have held all of the stolen loot, so it is unclear how the money was transported.

More clever planning.

The real name of the alleged brainwasher Julius Suave was Roberto Solis:

The FBI determined Sauve was actually an ex-con, Roberto Solis, who police say served 23 years in prison for murder.

The murder:

In 1969, Roberto Solis held up an armored car in San Francisco. He shot the 61-year-old guard in the back and grabbed the money bag; it was empty. The guard died and Solis did 24 years in Folsom prison.

So from 1969 to 1992 he is in prison. Honing his brainwashing skills no doubt, part of a program to help make ex-cons valued members of society again.

Who would have guessed that he would have used his mind-bending powers for evil?

Now here's the problem. Heather Tallchief is a single mother and a member of the Seneca Tribe. That means if she takes the fall for this, every women's group and Native American advocacy organization is going to be all over this, angry that she is being punished for a white man's crime (Solis is in fact Nicaraguan, but no matter).

On the other hand, her defence is that she was brainwashed by this ex-con. For over a year. During the planning of an elaborate heist. Hardly the image of the strong and proud Native American woman. Another example of how easy it is to trick Native Americans, especially Native American women. That can't be good copy either.

So Solis will be built up to be some sort of Svengali, and the Tallchief defence will hinge on how no one, not even Tallchief, could be expected to resist his hypnotic powers, not even for the few minutes it would have taken to just pick up and leave, over the course of a year.

Good luck with that.