By Brian Anderson
Valley Times

Aug. 23, 2001

OAKLAND — Exhausted after hours of police questioning, Thomas Wheelock falsely admitted on tape that he planned to kill his fellow armored car guard and make off with cash, the 24-year-old said Wednesday during his final day of testimony.

After his 1997 arrest in Utah, in a late-night interview that stretched into the next day, Wheelock agreed with an Oakland investigator's statement about the crime because he wanted to return to his cell in a Utah jail, he said in a brief stint on the witness stand.

"I just wanted to stop thinking about it and go back to my cell," Wheelock said. "I just wanted to stop thinking about it."

Wheelock said he agreed to inaccurate details of the crime because investigators who had flown from Oakland to Utah where he was arrested "didn't want to hear anything else."

Lawyers replayed a tape of his interview with detectives that recorded Sgt. Mike Foster asking at one point if his account of the shooting of Rodrigo Cortez on Nov. 24, 1997 was accurate. Wheelock agreed several times that Foster's statement was truthful, the tape revealed.

But on the stand, Wheelock said parts of the statements were incorrect.

"I didn't kill my friend to get the money, sir," Wheelock said under questioning by assistant district attorney James Anderson.

No one disputes Wheelock shot Cortez, but the former San Ramon man charged with the killing faces the death penalty if Anderson proves Wheelock planned to execute the 30-year-old Pittsburg man to rob the armored car they were guarding. Wheelock is accused of stealing about $300,000.

"We have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Thomas Wheelock shot Mr. Cortez because Mr. Cortez was yelling at him, screaming at him and spitting at him until Tom finally snapped," defense attorney Michael Ogul said outside the courtroom.

It was Wheelock's sixth and final day on the stand as lawyers wrapped up witness testimony in the month-long trial.

"This guy's testimony was nothing but six days of perjury," Anderson said after the hearing. "I think this guy is the largest liar in the world."

Also on the stand Wednesday was a man who hung around Wheelock during a free cruise through the Caribbean a week before the crime.

Jathnael Taylor, who boarded a cruise ship in November 1997 in Miami, told jurors Wheelock boasted during the weeklong excursion about guarding millions of dollars in cash at his Armored Transport job.

"He was just trying to act tough to impress the ladies," Taylor told jurors.

Deputy public defender Bob Mertens wasn't surprised.

"He loved his job," he said. "He was proud of his job."

Closing arguments will begin Monday, and the case will go to jurors no later than Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Alfred Delucchi said.