Bank Robbery Suspect a Man of Many Faces

A “master of disguise” who could fool witnesses into thinking he was a 25-year-old black woman or a 60-year-old white man allegedly pulled off at least 22 bank robberies from New York to California before he decided to turn himself in, the FBI said Thursday.

The agency said that the suspect, Antonio Johnson, 26, apparently so cleverly disguised his age, sex and race that no one realized that one person was behind all the holdups. In all, he allegedly pulled off at least 22 robberies of banks and savings and loans since 1982, netting about $350,000, said FBI Special Agent John Anthony.

“There’s no doubt he’s been extremely successful,” Anthony said. “He moved around a lot and he used very creative disguises.”

Johnson walked into the FBI’s Detroit office last Friday, saying he had information about a robbery two days earlier at a Comerica Bank branch a block from Detroit police headquarters, said Kenneth Walton, special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI office.

Interview of Several Days

After interviewing Johnson for several days, the FBI linked him to a number of unsolved bank robberies from New York to San Francisco, Anthony said.

Johnson, who lives in Detroit, was arraigned Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit in connection with the Comerica holdup, the agent said. Johnson, who was charged with armed robbery, is being held at the Federal Correctional Institute in Milan pending a detention hearing today.

He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted, Anthony said.

“To put it simply, he was a master of disguise,” Walton said. The suspect used “superb makeup work, wigs, false beards, mustaches, eyelashes, rubber inserts to alter the shape of his nose--a whole bag of tricks.”

Disguised as Woman

The FBI said that among the robberies linked to Johnson was a Sept. 2, 1982, holdup of a Bank of America branch in San Francisco, in which a suspect described as a white woman handed a note to the manager saying explosives were planted in the bank.

After receiving $9,799, the robber shook hands with the manager and walked out, the agency said.

Johnson, who is black, also allegedly disguised himself as a white man about 60 years old and a black woman in her 20s during the robbery string.