Robberies

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ROBBERIES

ROBBERIES. In the 1990s, the United States experienced a boom in bank robberies, and in 1991, banks reported the greatest number in American history. Los Angeles accounted for 20 percent of the robberies, with an average take of $3,000 and 85 percent of thieves caught. While robbers lacked the drama and flair of such bandits from earlier eras as Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow or Willie "The Actor" Sutton, the new generation brought about the reinstitution of past practices. A holdup that netted $434,000 drove a Wells Fargo bank to post a $10,000 reward, a practice unknown since the 1890s. Automatic teller machines (ATMs) brought theft increases. With more than seventy-seven thousand ATMs nationwide early in the 1990s, they became prime sites for small robberies. In some cases, hackers were able to crack computer codes and steal cash. In rare instances, thieves removed entire machines, opened them, and stole their contents.

While law enforcement officers were successful in tracking down most bank robbers, they were less successful with armored car robberies and solved only one-third of 340 armored car heists between 1988 and 1992. The nation's largest open-road armored car robbery, in which thieves netted $10.8 million, remains unsolved. The theft occurred 26 June 1990, outside a convenience store in Henrietta, New York. In January 1993, in nearby Rochester, New York, thieves held up a Brink's depot and escaped with $7.4 million. Authorities arrested four men, alleging that most of the money was funneled to the Irish Republican Army. In what may have been the largest cash theft in history, owners of Revere Armored Car, Inc., were charged in 1993 with stealing as much as $40 million from client businesses and banks over three years. Attempts to have charges dismissed because the government failed to preserve the company's records failed in 1994.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston was the site of the biggest art heist in history on 18 March 1990. Thieves stole thirteen pieces worth an estimated $200 million, including five works by Degas, a Vermeer, a Manet, and three Rembrandts. The thieves made their way through the museum and sliced paintings out of frames. In June 2001, thieves took a small painting by Marc Chagall worth $1 million from the Jewish Museum in New York City. A ransom note that arrived four days later promised to return the work in exchange for peace in the Middle East. The painting later reappeared without explanation in a post office in Topeka, Kansas.

On 15 September 1993, a 1960s radical surrendered in one of the nation's most infamous robbery cases. Katherine Ann Power turned herself in to police twenty-three years after driving the getaway car in a small-time robbery that turned deadly. A student and Vietnam protester, Power was involved in a plot to rob a Boston bank on 23 September 1970. While she waited in the car, an accomplice killed Boston police officer Walter Schroeder, father of nine children. Power fled and lived as a fugitive in various cities before settling in Oregon in 1977 under the name Alice Metzinger. Unable to overcome her conscience, she surrendered to authorities and began serving an eight-to-twelve-year sentence in September 1993; she was released in 1999.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grabosky, Peter N., Russell G. Smith, and Gillian Dempsey. Electronic Theft: Unlawful Acquisition in Cyberspace. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

King, Jeffery S. The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998.

Milner, E. R. The Lives and Times of Bonnie and Clyde. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.

Palmer, Norman, ed. The Recovery of Stolen Art: A Collection of Essays. London: Kluwer Law International, 1998.

Kathleen B.Culver/a. e.