Heist

Even as a kid Luke Elliott Sommer showed a talent for leadership. And by the time he finished U.S. Army Ranger School his mind had become a precision weapon capable of planning strategic attacks on buildings in enemy territory. Then he came home.

By James Ross Gardner

In the late summer of 2006, the North Fraser Pre-trial Centre in Port Coquitlam, BC, was home to some of Canada’s most notorious criminals: Robert Pickton, the pig farmer who confessed to murdering 49 prostitutes and feeding their remains to swine; Marxist intellectual Rakesh Saxena, wanted by the Thai government for embezzling up to $2.2 billion; and Luke Elliott Sommer, whose Tacoma bank caper had caught the attention of media all over the U.S. and Canada. Sommer found a kindred spirit in Saxena, a man who used his mind like a weapon.

Released after a few weeks and placed under house arrest at his mother’s home, Sommer fought extradition to the U.S. For that battle he deployed his full arsenal of charisma, spinning his tale on the phone to any journalist bold enough to track him down. He came just short of admitting to the robbery and outlined the reasons he did it—if he did it. Hunkered down in his mother’s basement, he spoke of the atrocities he claimed to have witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He pulled the bank heist, he said, to grab media attention and expose the U.S. military’s wrongdoing overseas. Seattle Weekly, The Seattle Times, The Vancouver Sun—all gave Sommer a forum for his agenda. He spoke to Seattle Metropolitan on two occasions in February 2007, once after a long night of drinking vodka with friends. Listeners of NPR’s All Things Considered heard Sommer talk about how guns—;including those used in the heist#&8212;are being smuggled into the United States by its own soldiers.

Meanwhile the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division conducted an investigation into Sommer’s war crime allegations. The rape of the Iraqi woman in the back of the 18-wheel truck trailer? Bogus, said CID—there were no trailers or female detainees at that time at the site in question. The Navy Seal assassination of defenseless Afghans? Impossible, investigators charged, because no such mission ever occurred.

Then, one morning in June, Sommer vanished, leaving a note in the basement addressed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detailing a penny stock scam he’d been conducting with his old prison mate Rakesh Saxena. And he wrote: “If you’re wondering whether I am a danger to the public or not, rest assured, I have no intention of doing anything that will put people at risk, and if you find me, I will go quietly.”


The RCMP got a tip that Sommer had made a call from a phone booth near an Ikea in a Vancouver suburb. On July 19, 2007, a stakeout crew spotted a man who could pass for Sommer approaching the booth, only this person was fatter. In the nine months Sommer lived at his mother’s house his Ranger muscles had softened and he’d gained 90 pounds. True to his word, he gave himself up without incident.

He spent nearly a year at North Fraser Pre-trial Centre before pleading guilty to the robbery and agreeing to end his fight against extradition. In May 2008 he was transported to SeaTac Federal Detention Center. The rest of his crew pleaded guilty, too. All fingered Sommer as the mastermind behind the crime, which shaved years off their own prison sentences: Nathan Dunmall received 10 years; Tigra Robertson, 12 and a half years, Chad Palmer, 11; and Alex Blum, for his role as the driver, spent 16 months at the SeaTac detention center.

By the time Sommer reached his sentencing hearing in December 2008, he’d shed his claims of witnessing war crimes. Instead, to win leniency from the judge, his lawyers focused on a new development. Sommer had recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. His father, Luke Sommer Sr., came forward with a story about an incident that had haunted him for almost a decade. When Elliott was 13 or 14, his mother emerged from Elliott’s bedroom, a haunted look in her eyes. Their son was in there, she told Luke senior, and he was hearing voices.

In a letter to the judge, Christel Davidsen wrote of her son, “I really don’t believe he ever intended to hurt anyone. I believe that he was following one of his grand ideas, and for the first time it didn’t get stopped in his mind.”

The explanation held little sway over the Honorable Franklin D. Burgess, who sentenced the former Ranger to 24 years in prison. He will likely be there much longer. Luke Elliott Sommer had at least one more meticulous plan in him.


NEXT: Sommer and a co-conspirator meet one more time.

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Published: September 2009