County Bank Heists on Same Record Pace as Last Year

Bank robberies in the county this year are running neck and neck with the record number tallied last year, according to the FBI.

The federal agents said 245 robberies of county banks had occurred as of Friday, and that total is about the same for the equivalent period last year. For all of 1991, there were 371 bank robberies in Orange County, an all-time high.

The general reason for this year’s spate of bank robberies is the same as for last year, according to James M. Donckels, head of the FBI’s Orange County office.

“It’s drugs,” Donckels said. “About 85% to 95% of the bank robbers in Orange County are robbing banks to support a drug habit. There’s some talk about the increase being due to bad economic conditions, but we don’t have any indication that that’s the case.”

The most notorious current bank robber in the county is the so-called “Marty Robbins bandit,” who has held up 25 institutions and is still at large.

“We don’t know if he’s on drugs, but I suspect he is robbing for a specific purpose,” Donckels said.

The Marty Robbins bandit was so named because he resembles the late country-Western singer.

The robber is a white male, about 35 to 40 years old, with a slim build and about 5 feet 10 inches tall. He wears glasses and has short, dark-blond hair. His last robbery--his 25th--occurred Tuesday at a Wells Fargo Bank in Huntington Beach.

FBI Agent Gary Morley described the Marty Robbins bandit as looking “like an average customer. . . . When he walks into a bank, he doesn’t raise any red flags.”

Morley said that a pattern with serial bank robbers is that they feel “it gets easier” the more often they rob.

Donckels added: “Several things happen with serial bank robbers. Each time they rob and don’t get caught it reinforces in their mind that they can rob and get away with it.”

The FBI agents said invariably even the cleverest of bank robbers leave clues that lead to their arrest. And according to the FBI, almost all bank robbers ultimately are caught. “We solve about 85% of the cases,” Morley said.

Addicts in need of drugs dominate the bank-robbing field because of their desperate need, Donckels said.

“With drug addicts, it’s a situation that escalates and continues to escalate--higher and higher demands for drugs,” he said. “Part of the spiral is that a tolerance for the drug builds up, such as among heroin users. Then they need an increasing amount of that drug, and so they need more money to buy the drugs.”

The FBI said that so far this year, Orange County has escaped the trend toward violent “takeover” bank robberies experienced in Los Angeles County. Takeover bank robberies are those in which robbers terrorize everyone in the bank while they are holding it up.

For the first six months of this year, the FBI had recorded 157 takeover bank robberies in the greater Los Angeles area. Only nine of those 157 takeover robberies occurred in Orange County, the FBI said.

Donckels said that whether or not a bank robber announces a takeover, the FBI urges all people in a bank to use caution.

“The potential for violence is there with any robbery,” Donckels said. “Even if a perpetrator doesn’t show a gun, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one. Every robbery is a dangerous situation.

“From our standpoint, we hope that people in a bank carefully observe what’s going on (during a robbery), but we don’t want any heroes. We don’t want people to take any action that would get them injured or hurt. Every bank robbery is a dangerous situation.”

Bank Jobs

Last year was a banner year for bank robberies in Orange County, increasing almost 70% from the total. As of Friday, there had been 245 so far this year. The trend since the mid-1980s:

Number of Bank Robberies 1985: 193 1986: 292 1987: 356 1988: 296 1989: 221 1990: 220 1991: 371 Source: FBI