Appealed for Sympathy : ‘Polite’ Thief Robs Burbank Thrift of All Its Cash

A well-dressed robber escaped with all the cash in a Burbank savings and loan Wednesday after appealing to an employee’s sympathy by telling her he was dying of cancer, police said.

The bespectacled, heavy-set man, who witnesses said was in his 50s, entered the California Savings branch at 4000 W. Magnolia Blvd. about 9:30 a.m. dressed in a gray suit and blue shirt and holding a package in birthday gift wrapping, Burbank Police Officer Frank Ross said.

“He looked like the average well-dressed man going to work, the kind of guy nobody would suspect,” Ross said.

The man approached a bank teller and told her that he wanted to open up a savings account in his wife’s name because he was dying of cancer, the officer said. But as she began to express sympathy for him, the man’s politeness gave way to sharp demands, Ross said.

He pointed to the package under his arm and said it was a bomb.

“He started out polite, then his language got foul,” Ross said. “He said he’d blow the place up.”

The man also bragged that he’d robbed 26 other banks, the police spokesman said.

After ordering the teller to turn over all the money in her cash drawer, the man accompanied her into the bank’s vault and watched her place the cash there in a tote bag, Ross said. He then approached the two other tellers and asked for all the money at their stations, Ross said.

After ordering the three employees to lie down on the floor, the man left with the tote bag and the wrapped package, Ross said.

Police would not say how much money was taken.

There was one customer in the branch, but he was in the safety deposit room and never knew there was a robbery, Ross said.

Police said the man’s methods seemed to indicate that he was an experienced bank robber.

“He seemed to know where the money was, he didn’t just go in to there and stick a note in their faces and say give me the money,” Ross said. “It seemed like he’d been doing this for a while.”