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Taking a leap into the past of bank robbery to determine the present

When you look at the past of bank robberies and bank robbers, you would discover that a lot has happened in the time past. I mean things that could be ordinarily unimaginable but were given the picture of reality. None of those events can be detached from a movie scenario but they are real and true. In this piece, I want to discuss how we can understand the past of bank robberies in order to creatively put up a fight against it.

According to The New York Times and the Saturday Evening Post, the first bank robbery in the United States occurred in March 1831 (the 19th according to the Times, the 20th according to the Post). Two men, James Honeyman and William J. Murray, entered the City Bank of New York using forged keys. This allowed them to empty the vault of more than $245,000 in bank money. According to the Times, it cannot be confirmed if this was a robbery or a burglary. The Post later corrected this claim upon learning of a previous 1798 robbery of $162,821 from the Bank of Pennsylvania at Carpenters’ Hall. The Carpenters’ Hall theft also may not have technically been a robbery as there were no signs of force and the thief may have had a key (Braswell, 2017).

The first bank robbery in Denmark occurred August 18, 1913 in the bank Sparekassen for København og Omegn at Osterbro in Copenhagen. Two men, Danish salesman Lindorff Larsen and a German machinist Güttig, armed with revolvers, got away with 9000 Danish kroner. Güttig was arrested August 30 and Lindorff Larsen committed suicide after having fled the police (Axel, 1938).

On 14 September 1828 five men tunneled through a sewage drain in George Street, Sydney and stole approximately 14, 000 Euros in promissory notes and coins from the vault of the Bank of Australia. It has been described as the first bank robbery in Australia and also the largest in Australian history at the equivalent of $20 million in today’s currency (Baxter, 2008). So, bank robbery has been in the world for the past centuries.

Let’s consider some fascinating facts of historical bank robberies.

One of the facts that bank robberies have shown us is that age is just a number. In 2018, the Pyramid Federal Credit Union in Tucson was robbed at gunpoint by a career criminal the state of Arizona, U.S would not soon forget. The suspect, Robert Francis Krebs, is undoubtedly a rarity in his line of work, given his ripe old age of 80. After serving more than 30 years in prison for a 1981 bank robbery in which two employees were left handcuffed in a vault, the geriatric bandit was destined to return to his favorite pastime. Surprisingly, the title for “America’s oldest bank robber” actually goes to J.L. Hunter “Red” Rountree, who committed his last heist in 2003 at the age of 91. He died in prison the following year (Ramos, 2018).

The other side to this coin is that even underage children have been reported to have led bank robberies. In 1981, a midtown Manhattan bank was robbed at the hands of a nine-year-old boy. In a risibly creative defense, the child’s attorney argued that he was influenced by television and that he was “only playing” when he aimed the toy gun at the bank teller: “Robert is a victim of shows that are on television, depicting violence and breaking the law.”

Also, the journey of one of Ireland’s most infamous criminals began at an early age. From jumping over counters in banks to racking up more than 30 convictions before his 18th birthday, Gerry “The Monk” Hutch is credited—albeit disputably—with pulling off two of the biggest heists Ireland has ever seen. In 1987, at the age of 24, Hutch and his crew robbed a Securicor van for £1.7 million, making him enemy number one for the Gardai (the state police force of the Irish Republic).

Such a flattering title, however, did little to deter Hutch, despite the fact that the Gardai preferred shooting armed robbers as opposed to apprehending them. The Monk’s biggest score would come in 1995, when he made off with IR£3 million from Brinks Allied in Dublin. Throughout the years, the Gardai did everything in their power to capture Hutch, and even then, prosecuting the criminal mastermind seemed fruitless given the lack of evidence. Eager for a conviction and with little to go on, the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) targeted Hutch for money laundering in 1999. Hutch eventually reached a settlement with the CAB. These days, he lives a more quiet life as a businessman with a taxi fleet and property interests (Ramos, 2018).

Another story that depicts the factual situation of bank robbery is the Gladbeck Hostage.

The Deutsche Bank robbery in Gladbeck will forever be the epitome of abysmal failure pertaining to the handling of a hostage crisis. It all began in West Germany on August 16, 1988, when Dieter Degowski and Hans-Jurgen Rosner held the bank’s employees captive in what has now become known as “The Gladbeck Hostage Drama.” Over the next three days, the antics of the murderous duo became a public spectacle with the help of eager reporters determined to make a name for themselves.

The media’s extraordinary access to the crime in progress not only hindered police involvement but indisputably allowed the incident to escalate. While millions watched on television, the two men gave impromptu interviews as if they were movie stars, all while holding guns to the heads of their quivering hostages. Fifty-four hours after the start of the madness, Degowski and Rosner were in custody, while victims Emanuele di Giorgi, 15, and Silke Bischoff, 18, lay dead in the street. One police officer had also been killed.

It became evident, only after the horrifying end result, that the journalists clearly overstepped their boundaries. Their involvement and behavior were deemed “unethical,” spurring the German Press Council to rewrite their own guidelines. Due to this, reporters in Germany are no longer allowed to interview hostage takers, negotiate on their behalf, or intervene in any crime in progress—guidelines that were too little, too late for three people (Ramos, 2018).

References

Axel B & Axel K (1938). Københavnerglimt – 1912 – 1920, 1938, p. 41.

Crime Museum (2019). Histories of Bank Robberies. Retrieved from https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/robberies/history-of-bank-robberies/

Ramos, A (2018). Top 10 Fascinating Facts And Firsts Of Historical Bank Robberies. Retrieved from http://listverse.com/2018/08/28/top-10-fascinating-facts-and-firsts-of-historical-bank-robberies/

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