Man charged with shooting dead bank employee in 1997
Kevin Ray James (Ventura County Sheriff’s Office)
A 55-year-old man has been charged with fatally shooting a bank teller and mother of four in the back of the head in a bank robbery in Southern California more than 25 years ago.
Kevin Ray James was charged Monday with the first-degree murder of Monica Leech, 39, and two counts of murder during a robbery and use of a firearm, officials said at a news conference.
Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko called it a senseless, unprovoked, and vicious murder. He said Leech grew up in Ventura County and came from a banking family. Her mother worked in the banking industry for many years.
She had been with the bank just a few months before her murder, he said.
“She liked embroidery. She enjoyed going for a walk in the mornings,” he said. “She was a beloved wife, daughter and mother. At the time of her murder, she was helping raise four children.”
Ventura County Sheriff James Fryhoff described how the fatal raid unfolded on April 28, 1997.
Two men dressed as construction workers, wearing raincoats, hard hats and tights over their faces, entered the Western Financial Bank in Thousand Oaks, about 40 miles north of Los Angeles.
One of the bank robbers jumped over the counter and started demanding money. Leech was handcuffed, forced to his knees, and shot.
“Monica was cooperative and not a threat to the bank robbers,” the sheriff said. “That’s why investigators don’t understand why she had to be shot.”
The robbers drove off in an SUV with over $11,000 in cash.
Investigators from the Sheriff’s Major Crimes Bureau and the FBI worked on the case for many years. But at the time there wasn’t enough evidence to bring the suspect to justice, and the case eventually went cold.
The case was reopened in March 2021, and authorities said DNA linked James to the murder.
Authorities arrested James, an unemployed former gang member, at his home in San Bernardino and took him to a Ventura County jail facility, where he is being held without bail.
The second man involved in the robbery has not been found. A reward is being offered for information leading to his arrest.
The current undersheriff was one of the first deputies to answer the bank, the sheriff said.
“When I spoke to him about this case the other day, the first time he cried at work was when the family showed up and asked about their mother,” Fryhoff said.
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