About This Episode
Larry Eugene Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu walked into a Bank of America branch on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, on February 28, 1997 — heavily armed and clad in homemade body armor — setting off one of the most intense and well-documented police confrontations in modern American criminal history. The case is now the subject of a new episode from the globally popular true crime podcast Casefile True Crime.
Two Men Against an Entire Police Force
Phillips and Mătăsăreanu were not amateurs. The pair had carried out multiple bank robberies prior to the North Hollywood incident and were methodical, well-prepared, and ruthless. On that February morning, they arrived at the Bank of America branch equipped with automatic weapons and homemade body armor capable of stopping conventional handgun rounds.
When officers from the Los Angeles Police Department arrived and engaged the two men, it quickly became clear that standard-issue police firearms were no match for the robbers' protection. The gunfight that erupted on the open streets of North Hollywood lasted approximately 44 minutes and involved hundreds of rounds fired. Several officers and civilians were wounded during the battle, but no one outside the police and the two perpetrators lost their lives.
Both robbers were killed on the day of the robbery. Larry Eugene Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu never faced — meaning no verdict was ever handed down in the case.