London Judge Spares ‘Desperate’ Couple

LONDON — A judge has declined to imprison a pensioner and his wife who robbed a bank at gunpoint because they couldn’t afford their mortgage payment.

Herbert Butler, 65, and his wife, Eleni, 61, admitted holding up a London bank last New Year’s Eve in an effort to meet mortgage payments of $2,140 a month. They receive a monthly pension of $41.

In Friday’s decision, Judge Raymond Dean in Old Bailey Court gave the Butlers a two-year suspended sentence and let them go. “You are both of retirement age and must have been quite desperate to embark on that course of action,” he said.