Five Famous Bank Heists
Bank robbers have always caught the public's imagination. From Robin Hood to John Dillinger to Bonnie and Clyde, Hollywood has told and retold the amazing adventure stories (and often tragic ends) of thieving outlaws. But there are some stories you may not have heard. Who made their get-away in an inner tube? Who stole 355 lbs of cash? Who stormed their way into a bank dressed up as a holiday character? Read on to find out!
Jessie James: America's First Daytime Bank Robbery
Notorious outlaw Jessie James is rumored to have taken part in the very first daytime bank robbery in the United States on Feb. 13, 1866, in Liberty, Missouri. The raid was fairly successful: almost $60,000 in bonds, cash, and coins was stolen. The robbers escaped after pistol-whipping a cashier and killing a bystander.
Most of James's robberies did not go so well. In 1869, he robbed the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri, and apparently lost $100 while making off with a stack of paper. He did end up shooting the cashier though (who was, unfortunately, not his intended target).
Raised in Missouri during the lead-up to the Civil War, James's family sided with the Confederacy. After the South lost the war, Reconstruction made life hard on ex-members of the Confederacy. James didn't take kindly to that. In fact, most of his robberies seem to have been motivated by his intent to do damage to businesses and individuals associated with the new Republican government.
One of the most successful bank robbers in history (assuming you measure success by number of years spent successfully evading the authorities), James was eventually assassinated by a member of his own gang, Robert Ford, for a $10,000 reward and a full pardon.
Photo Courtesy of The Daily Mail
The Santa Claus Bank Robbery
On Christmas Eve 1927, in Cicso, Texas, four men— Marshall Ratliff, Henry Helms, Robert Hill, and Louis Davis— held up the first National Bank . It was a bad year to be a bank employee. Banks had been being robbed left and right, leading the Texas Bankers' Association to offer a $5,000 reward to anyone who managed to shoot a bank robber during the commission of the crime.
In this particular robbery, one of the bandits had decided he needed a disguise, and so, feeling seasonal, Marshall Ratliff donned a Santa Claus suit. On the way to the bank, the would-be robbers were followed by a curious group of children who wanted to see what Santa was up to. I'm guessing a fair number of adults viewed St. Nick more suspiciously as he crept toward the bank.
Once in the bank, the bandits drew their guns and asked the tellers to hand over the money. What the robbers presumably were not expecting was that a large portion of the citizenry of Cicso had heard about the reward money and was packing heat. A gun battle erupted leaving upwards of 200 bullet holes in the bank.
The robbers escaped with hostages into their getaway car but they hadn't thought to fill it up with gas before committing armed robbery. So they stopped and carjacked an Oldsmobile from a 14 year old and his family. The kid gave them the car, but not the keys – as they realized shortly after. So, after leaving the by-now injured Louis Davis behind with the money ($12,400 in cash and $150,000 in non-negotiable securities), the three remaining robbers returned to their old car with the hostages and drove off. The robbers eventually abandoned the hostages and continued their escape on foot. They were caught after a multi-day manhunt.
Robert Hill pleaded guilty to armed robbery and was sentenced to prison. He escaped three times but eventually served his time and was released in the '40s. Henry Helms was executed by electric chair for the deaths of some of the people caught up in the shootout. Marshall Ratliff pleaded insanity (remember the Santa suit?), which did not sit well with the local population. They broke Ratliff out of prison to lynch him, managing to drop him the first time they strung him up, but succeeding on the second try. Now there's a nice picket fence commemorating the power pole they used to lynch him.
Photo Courtesy of Amazon
The Cell Phone Bandit
Crimes of cell phone etiquette are rampant nowadays. College instructors are increasingly putting notices on their syllabi requiring phones to be turned off in class to prevent students from texting (and sometimes even taking calls) during lectures. Movie theaters ask patrons to refrain from texting during the show. And often people are subjected to personal calls issuing from the public restroom stall next door. But in 2005, crimes of cell phone etiquette merged with actual crimes in the case of the Cell Phone Bandit.
The Cell Phone Bandit, 20-year-old Candice R. Martinez, was a serial bank robber who plagued four Wachovia banks in Northern Virginia. Her first crime took place in October of 2005 when she walked into a bank with a box, talking on her cell to her boyfriend, Dave Williams. She approached the teller and showed the teller a box that had a note on it demanding money.
During the robbery Martinez refrained from talking much to the bank staff but continued talking on her phone the whole time. Over the course of the four robberies Martinez and her boyfriend netted $48,620 which they used to buy a Chihuahua, a TV, a bedroom set, and a 1997 Acura Integra.
Martinez was apprehended when FBI Special Agent Ron Chavarro happened to spot her car. She received a 12-year prison sentence. Her boyfriend earned 12 years for helping Martinez plan the robberies. He was a former employee of Wachovia.
Photo courtesy of CBS News
Craigslist Robbery
In October of 2008 a bandit wearing an amazing disguise – a yellow vest, safety goggles, and a respirator mask – approached an armored truck parked outside a Bank of America branch in Monroe, Washington. He sprayed the man guarding the unloading of the cash with pepper spray and grabbed a bag of money containing $400,000.
The bandit made his escape in an inner tube, jumping into a creek that drained into the Skykomish River. You'd have thought that his outfit would make him easily recognizable, but the man had planned ahead. Previous to the crime, he had put an ad on Craigslist for road maintenance workers. He specified that they were to wear yellow vests, safety goggles, and respirator masks. A dozen workers showed up around the time of the robbery, drawn by the $28.50-an-hour job.
The robber, 28-year-old former high school star athlete Anthony Curcio, was identified by DNA left at the scene of the crime. Curcio pleaded guilty in 2009.
Photo courtesy of SaleGadgets
The Trench Coat Robbers: Seafirst Bank
In 1997 two amazingly successful bank robbers finally tripped up in the aftermath of a raid on Seafirst Bank in Lakewood, Washington. The raid itself was a success: they got away with $4,461,681 in cash. That's 355 pounds of money.
These two were the Trench Coat Robbers Ray Bowman and William Kirkpatrick, serial bank robbers who are thought to have robbed 27 banks over 15 years, stealing a total of more than $7,000,000 without seriously injuring anyone. For bank robbers they seemed kind of nice: at one point one of them bought a hostage a 7UP from a vending machine.
Bowman and Kirkpatrick would wait to enter a bank until just before opening or just after close, so that they only had to deal with the employees. They earned their nickname by wearing disguises: trench coats, wigs, and dark makeup. On the day they held up the Seafirst Bank they were both wearing baseball caps with FBI insignias on them.
The Trench Coat Robbers were caught by tiny slips. Bowman forgot to pay a bill. He was overdue on the rent for the storage locker which housed his gun collection and some literature on breaking and entering. The owner of the locker opened it, freaked out, and called the authorities.
Kirkpatrick was caught speeding with $1,800,000 in the car. Some of the money was identifiable as cash stolen from Seafirst Bank. Eventually, the authorities put the two men together. Bowman was sentenced to 24 years in jail; Kirkpatrick got 15.
Photo courtesy of Incite Pictures
