1973, 1st edition "First Printing-1973" stated; Delacorte Press publishers, New York; hardbound in black boards with gilt lettering on spine; book in very good condition with unmarked pages; dust jacket good but has edge bumps and very small tears - see pics for condition.
 
Description -
The Onion Field is a 1973 nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, a sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, chronicling the kidnapping of two plainclothes LAPD officers by a pair of criminals during a traffic stop and the subsequent murder of one of the officers.
 
Crime -
On the night of March 9, 1963, LAPD officers Ian Campbell (age 31) and Karl Hettinger (age 28), both former Marines, were riding in an unmarked "felony" car.[clarification needed] They pulled over a 1946 Ford coupe containing two suspicious-looking men at the corner of Carlos Avenue and Gower Street in Hollywood. The two men, Gregory Ulas Powell (age 30) and Jimmy Lee Smith (a.k.a. "Jimmy Youngblood", age 32), had recently committed a string of robberies, and "each had a pistol tucked into his trousers." 
 
Powell, the driver, pulled a gun on Campbell, who "calmly told his partner, 'He has a gun in my back. Give him your gun.'" The two officers were then forced into Powell's car and, within 30 seconds after the traffic stop began, were driven north from Los Angeles on Route 99, to an onion field near Bakersfield, where Campbell was fatally shot. Hettinger was able to escape, running nearly four miles to reach a farmhouse...