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Historical Phenomenon | Collision on Route 132 in Mariposa County on March 5, 1983, between a sheriff's patrol car and a Secret Service convoy assigned to Queen Elizabeth's Yosemite visit, killing three agents. | 1983-03-05 | Route 132, Mariposa County, California |
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2025-08-05 | 2026-09-22 |
On March 5, 1983, a Mariposa County sheriff's patrol car driven by Sgt. Roderick Sinclair, with Deputy Rod McKean, collided on a winding stretch of Route 132 with the middle car of a three-car convoy of off-duty Secret Service agents in California to protect Queen Elizabeth II on her visit to Yosemite National Park. Agents George P. LaBarge, Donald Robinson and Donald A. Bejcek were killed; they were not wearing seat belts. Sinclair and McKean were injured. The convoy was preceding the royal motorcade, which passed the site a short time later; the Queen and Prince Philip detoured around it and saw the wreckage.12 President Ronald Reagan issued a statement on the deaths.3
The Investigations
A 178-page report of the Central Division of the California Highway Patrol, issued March 29, 1983, blamed Sinclair's speed, estimated at 76 to 80 miles an hour and later revised to 72, and recommended that he be prosecuted. The Mariposa County District Attorney, J. Bruce Eckerson, resisted CHP pressure to file charges for six months and engaged a retired CHP lieutenant, Bob Kovach, whose review disputed the skid-mark evidence; Sinclair's lawyer, David Linn, said the CHP had reached "a predetermined conclusion." The CHP stood by its report.2
The survivors of the three agents sued Mariposa County and Sinclair and settled for a total of 4 million dollars. The county then sued the United States for contribution, arguing that the federal drivers, Agent LaBarge and Agent Max Phillips in the car ahead, had driven negligently. The district court found that the collision occurred on a blind curve, that Sinclair was driving at 64 miles an hour in a 35-mile zone, 6 miles an hour below the critical speed for the curve, that both federal cars were halfway across the center line into his lane, and that their presence caused him to brake and skid; it found Sinclair 70 percent at fault and ordered the United States to pay 30 percent of the settlement, 1.2 million dollars. On August 26, 1986, the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that the United States, as an employer covered by workers' compensation, could not be sued for contribution.1
Drug and Cover-up Allegations
Sinclair was said to have been receiving large daily doses of Demerol prescribed by Dr. Arthur Dahlem, as nurses at Fremont Hospital and former deputies were said to have confirmed. Assistant U.S. Attorney James White in Fresno was said to have ordered Dahlem's files seized, and Judge Robert E. Coyle to have ordered him to drop the criminal investigation on the ground that no blood tests had been taken, although tests had been taken and later disappeared. The CHP report was said to have been sent to the office of Attorney General John Van de Kamp, who told an assistant to "discard" it; Eckerson was said to have held stock in Music Corporation of America, and the CHP officers on the original investigation and White himself to have resigned or been transferred or fired. Deputy Rod Cusic told the Fresno office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Sinclair had told him "to lie to a Grand Jury," and said he had seen a booby-trapped incendiary device explode at Sinclair's home; a 1984 civil trial was said to have heard that Sinclair's car carried automatic weapons and a booby-trapped bomb. Sinclair was later promoted to commander. A Secret Service agent, Ron Williams, whose friend was killed, and a CBS executive asked Cheri Seymour to investigate, and Don Thrasher of ABC's 20/20 examined Sinclair's background. The case figured in the reporting of Jerry Goldberg for Capitol News Service and the work of D.I.G. (Decency in Government)4
Footnotes
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LaBarge v. County of Mariposa, 798 F.2d 364 (9th Cir. 1986). The caption spells the sergeant's name Roderic B. Sinclair; the opinion, Roderick. ↩︎
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"Highway Patrol's Crash investigation questioned." United Press International, September 25, 1983. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/09/25/Highway-Patrols-Crash-investigation-questioned/7300433310400/ ↩︎
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Reagan, Ronald. "Statement on the Death of Three Secret Service Agents in California," March 5, 1983. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/statement-death-three-secret-service-agents-california ↩︎
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Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. TrineDay, 2010. Sole source for the passages so cited. It describes Judge Coyle as ordering Mariposa County to pay 70 percent of the claim and Eckerson as appointed to write a replacement report; the court record places the 70 percent finding in the county's contribution suit against the United States, which was reversed, and contemporaneous reporting shows Eckerson as the elected district attorney resisting the CHP's call for prosecution. ↩︎