The return of the fugitive

MSNBC-TV Heather Tallchief, 12 years after the armored car heist.

Heather Tallchief’s family had neither seen nor heard from her in 12 years. They had lost track of her even before she disappeared with Roberto Solis and nearly $3 million from an armored truck in Las Vegas. 

Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent: Did you think you’d ever see her again?

Elaine Tallchief, Heather Tallchief's sister: No.

Morrison: In all those years? She was gone.

Elaine Tallchief: I always thought about it. What it would be like to see her. And what does she look like.

Nor did the police have any clue where Tallchief and Solis were. They suspected, perhaps, Central America, but the trail had been cold for years. And if they had to lay odds, they would tell you that if anybody ever found Heather, it would be her dead body. 

And then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere... here she was before our eyes.

Morrison: This is quite a moment for you.  How do you feel right now?

Heather Tallchief: Extremely nervous.  I have a lump in my throat.  And my heart’s racing.  So I’m pretty scared.

Scared? Nervous? It was a remarkable scene. Tallchief’s attorney has arranged this evening meeting with us in a Los Angeles hotel. He’s insisted that we keep the meeting and our location totally secret, deeply concerned that she might be discovered and captured.

She is on the run, the woman who committed the perfect crime, who escaped without a trace, whose whereabouts at the moment we met her— as she fidgeted with her beads— were unknown to any law enforcement agency anywhere.

We were about to hear Heather Tallchief tell her story for the very first time.

Heather Tallchief: It takes a tremendous amount of courage to face and confront what’s in front of me.

So many questions
The story begins in San Francisco’s eclectic Haight Ashbury district. In the early ‘90s, the district was no longer anybody’s idea of a funky hippie haven— it was darker and more troubled when Heather came to live there.

Morrison: What was going on with you?

Heather Tallchief: Well, as a young person in a bad relationship that was slightly abusive, perhaps clouded by the drugs. Your judgment is impaired, obviously.

She was 20, broke, boyfriend-less, and lost.

Heather Tallchief: Not really going anywhere, not really succeeding with life. And ended up meeting Roberto Solis right after I turned 21.

In fact, she was barely old enough to be in the bar the night she saw him. Solis was 48 years old and interesting.

Heather Tallchief: I found him attractive as a man. I would have never accepted a beer from him if I wasn’t attracted, physically.

Nor would she have followed him home...

Heather Tallchief: Seeing his altar he had set up in his living room, it was so spectacular— it had all these things on it like a goat’s skull, and candles and incense, and crystals. And he had two chalices. And one was full of red liquid and the other one was white. I mean there had to be something behind that. So I had to find out.

Tallchief says Roberto Solis told her that the white liquid was goat’s milk, the red represented blood.

Heather Tallchief: Menstrual blood of the idea about women giving birth, life, creation, fertility. And the milk represented the milk that you need to raise and to nurture this life.

Intrigued, Heather agreed to let this seemingly spiritual man read her tarot cards.

Heather Tallchief: One was fortune. And the other one was the temptress or the lust card. This was like fate.  I was supposed to embark on a spiritual path, an awakening, an enlightenment by somebody great and powerful and knowledgeable.

Morrison: You were moved by this. You remember it all these years later!

Heather Tallchief: Extraordinarily moved by it.

What was this form of spirituality they were practicing?

Heather Tallchief: We called it Sex Magick.

Morrison: Sex Magick.

Heather Tallchief: Yes, it’s a ritual.

Morrison: The spiritual and the physical and they are all—

Heather Tallchief: —combined and you use to manifest ideas, wills, powers, energy.

She invoked gods and goddesses and let them take over her body. She was swept away.

After a couple of weeks together, Tallchief says Solis told her about his time in prison, how he had killed an armored car driver in 1969.

Morrison: What did you think?

Heather Tallchief: I think it was an accident. It happened and it was unfortunate and he regretted it. And he had changed his life.

Morrison: Did you fall in love with him?

Heather Tallchief: Yes.

And so when Roberto Solis suggested they move to Las Vegas together, Heather agreed.

Morrison: Did he tell you why he was interested in Las Vegas?

Heather Tallchief: Definitely the gambling. 

Moving to Las Vegas
In Las Vegas, Solis suggested she find a job, even brought home applications for her to fill out. She says she didn’t think anything of it when he guided her toward armored car services and says she didn’t even think about the fact that he had killed a Loomis guard all those years before. She didn’t make the connection.

Heather Tallchief:  “Why don’t you fill this one out for Loomis?”’ I filled it out and I turned it in and I got a call and they interviewed me. And I got the job.

Heather turned out to be a quick study in the armored vehicle business.

Morrison: So you got an idea over time  when the fat days were, and when the not-so-fat days were, in terms of how much money you were carrying.

Heather Tallchief: You’d get an idea over time.   Ok that day you’re doing that, so there’s a lot of paper there. Or that day there’s a lot of coin there. So you can work it out a little bit.

Morrison: When did you decide that it was a good idea to take that money?

Heather Tallchief: Never.

And so, how did it happen?

Heather Tallchief: I was told that if I did anything wrong, I’d be shot dead. On the spot.

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