By Brian Anderson
Valley Times

Aug. 7, 2001

OAKLAND — Thomas Wheelock crafted a "grandiose" and "unrealistic" plan as part of a scheme to rob the armored truck he was supposed to guard and then escape to Canada, a Southern California doctor testified Monday.

Neurologist David Rice, a Kaiser Permanente doctor in Fontana, told an Alameda County jury that a 10-page blueprint for the heist of an Armored Transport truck was the product of "magical thinking" by someone afflicted with attention deficit disorder.

"If you look very carefully at this, it doesn't look like he's capable of planning anything," Rice said during nearly 31/2 hours of testimony. "(But) those are things he intended to do regardless of how disorganized they are."

Rice told the jury he diagnosed Wheelock with the neurological disorder in June 1987, when the then-10-year-old boy was brought to San Antonio Community Hospital in Upland with a severe headache.

The doctor briefly analyzed a plan written 10 days before armored car guard Rodrigo Cortez, 30, was killed Nov. 24, 1997, while leaving a Brinks parking lot in Oakland with Wheelock, 24. The manifesto, as prosecutor Jim Anderson has called it, seemed to "skip all over" and was "no step-by-step plan" -- disorganization specific to someone with ADD, Rice said.

He added that people with the disorder also are prone to act impulsively, and when under a great deal of stress and verbal assault could "respond in kind."

Defense attorneys Michael Ogul and Bob Mertens have maintained that Wheelock "flipped out" after Cortez blasted him with derogatory words about his weight and intelligence. Ogul said he felt they proved their point Monday.

Anderson said Rice's testimony accomplished little.

"The doctor was trying to go out of his way to help Thomas Wheelock," he said. "He was talking about explosive, impulsive conditions, but you can't have that when you planned it 10 days earlier."

Wheelock is charged with killing Cortez, then making off with nearly $300,000 after stashing the armored car behind a San Ramon auto parts store. He fled north to Sacramento and eventually was arrested in Utah after a highway patrolman stopped his Ford Bronco for not displaying a rear license plate.

He could face the death penalty if convicted.

Also called to the stand as the trial entered the third week was Robert York, father of Peter York, who drove Wheelock to Sacramento after the shooting. He testified that Wheelock "was head and shoulders above Peter in functionality."

Also, former California teacher of the year Bill Pence testified Monday that Wheelock was a motivated student who made initial efforts to launch a California High School club supporting education about endangered species. Pence said Wheelock was very ambitious about the project, but then just dropped out of sight.