Cash Missing on Slain ATM Worker’s Route

ORANGE — An audit has revealed that several thousand dollars are missing from automatic teller machines serviced by armored services employee Robert T. Walsh, who was found slain last weekend in his company car.

The 60-year-old former Marine and Fullerton police officer was last seen alive about 2:45 p.m. Friday after servicing an ATM at the Wells Fargo Bank at South Tustin Street and East Collins Avenue. His 1993 Ford Escort was found Sunday at 11:15 a.m. in the 3500 block of East Chapman Avenue. Walsh had been shot in the head, and the interior of his car doused with a flammable liquid and set ablaze, police said. “At first we determined that there was no loss,” said Joe Allen, a spokesman for Walsh’s employer, Wells Fargo Armored Service Corp. (not affiliated with Wells Fargo Bank).

But, he said, “There was a monetary loss that was determined belatedly because of a delay in the electronic documentation of deposits,” Allen said. That loss was “in the range of low thousands of dollars.”

The missing money may have consisted of “deposits that had been picked up (from the ATMs) but not yet dropped off at the bank,” Allen said. “They may have been deposits in the vehicle. . . . We don’t know what form those losses are, cash or checks.”

Allen said that Walsh did not have access to cassettes of cash used for withdrawals from the machines. Walsh wore a bulletproof vest and was authorized to carry a gun, although he chose not to, police and family members said. In the back of his company car was a locker-size safe.

Allen said the company characterized Walsh’s work as “comparatively low liability.”

Walsh used both a key and an access code to service the ATMs, Allen said.

Orange Lt. Timm Browne said police are trying to determine where the loss revealed by the company occurred.

Investigators are looking into the possibility of losses from the safe in Walsh’s car, as well as ATMs on his service route.

Sgt. Barry Weinstein said police are reviewing ATM videotapes, as well as “interviewing every possible person we can find who might know something about this.”

The armored car company has offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect in the killing. Walsh’s funeral is scheduled for noon Friday at McAulay and Wallace Mortuary, 902 N. Harbor Blvd. in Fullerton, according to his wife, Jan Walsh.