Pregnant Teen Charged With Robbing Bank

A 19-year-old pregnant woman has been charged with robbing a Fullerton bank after FBI agents found in her home a detailed things-to-do list outlining the crime.

“Clean tubs, sink, counter and toilets, get ski mask, get police scanner, find escape route, borrow gat from someone,” the list read, according to FBI documents filed in federal court here.

Elizabeth Julie Hernandez, who is weeks away from giving birth, appeared in court Wednesday accused of holding up the same Bank of America branch she had worked at until her dismissal a year ago.

FBI agents said that Hernandez, her teenage husband, Kiefer Kristian Maddex, and a friend of the couple, 27-year-old Larry Thomas Stratton Jr., escaped with $15,085 after the Feb. 24 robbery. All three were in court Wednesday facing armed robbery charges.

FBI agents said in court documents that the couple confessed to staging the robbery and even showed detectives a spot in their backyard where about $3,780 in unspent loot was buried.

According to the FBI, three robbers burst into the bank at 1821 W. Orangethorpe Ave. waving guns in the air and ordering tellers to “get on the floor.” Bank employees later told agents that a female robber demanded the “COW key,” referring to the “cash on wheels,” or mini-cash vault.

Suspecting that the robbers had inside information about the branch’s operations, FBI agents and Fullerton police asked bank employees to identify any former co-workers who matched the descriptions of the robbery suspects.

The information led to Hernandez, who was fired by the bank’s corporate security department a year ago for undisclosed reasons.

Investigators searched the couple’s Rowland Heights home Friday and found Hernandez’s to-do list and a chrome-plated BB gun apparently used in the robbery.