‘Baby Face’ to ‘Big Boy,’ FBI Says Nicknames Bring in Bank Robbers

Since the days of “Pretty Boy” Floyd and “Baby Face” Nelson, bank robbers and thugs pursued by federal agents have had at least one thing in common: catchy nicknames.

Sometimes they’ve made the crooks famous. Often, they’ve made them the butt of jokes. Mostly, though, the monikers have provided law enforcement with quick and memorable references for the most notorious criminals of the day.

“It gets a lot of attention, and that’s what we want,” said Daniel Bodony, an eight-year veteran of the FBI. One of his jobs is to come up with catchy names that help lead to the apprehension of those bank robbers.

“I don’t do it to give them notoriety,” he said. “I do it as an investigative tool.”

Like the time he called a guy the “Butterfingers Bandit” because the crook dropped his loot on two occasions and a demand note during a third robbery before his arrest in 2002. During a couple of heists, bank customers would help him pick up his scattered cash.

And there was the robber Bodony dubbed the “Cockadoodledoo Bandit” because he showed up so early in the day -- usually before the bankers had arrived for work.

When agents noticed that one robber was wearing a single glove, it seemed like a no-brainer: The Michael Jackson bandit. But when bureau attorneys recently urged Bodony to find another name in light of the pop superstar’s legal difficulties, he discovered that calling the suspect “The One-Glove Bandit” didn’t have quite the same resonance.

While the “Michael Jackson Bandit” stirred media interest with reporters clamoring for information and photos, the “One-Glove Bandit” was a media dud.

Such is one of the balancing acts of the name game: finding a lasting and snappy moniker without offending someone.

“We’re careful about it,” said Laura Bosley, spokeswoman for the FBI in Los Angeles. “But we also know that popular names are what people remember most.”

The “Jay Leno Bandit” was renamed amid worry that it might offend the late-night television host. So the bad guy with the distinctive chin became the “Groundhog Bandit” after disappearing for months before finally resurfacing on Groundhog Day in 1995. But show business has been good to Bodony.

Police recently arrested three female bandits dubbed “Charlie’s Angels” for toting guns in their purses during holdups in Riverside and San Bernardino. And “The Starsky and Hutch Bandits” earned their names by acting in a manner familiar to viewers of that late-1970s television series: diving through an open car window, then burning rubber to escape.

Bodony comes up with the names after sifting through snapshots from bank surveillance tapes and volumes of investigation reports. He searches for commonalities in what they wear, say or do. Some names are humorous, a few are obvious and all are meant to be flashy.

A female bandit earned the provocative name “The Naughty Girl Bandit” this year after a series of Southland bank robberies in which she wore a T-shirt that said “naughty.”

And the “Big Boy Bandit” -- thought to be good for the man who robbed banks this year in Orange and San Diego counties -- had a weight issue.

“When I’m [talking to] other law enforcement,” he said, “it’s easier to call them by their nicknames than say ‘the male black or white who robbed [a bank] two weeks ago.’ ”

That’s especially true, Bodony added, in Southern California where it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of an average of 55 bank robberies a month. “You may have 15 or 20 male blacks or whites,” Bodony said, “so we have to really break them down.”

Nicknames are easier for the public to remember, he said, and may attract publicity to help solve the crime.

Bodony said he comes up with the monikers only after a robber’s second hit.

“They get a name because now they’re considered serial robbers and I have to start tracking them,” said the man who analyzes bank robberies in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

So say hello to the “Nip and Tuck Bandit,” so named for wearing a surgical mask during his jobs. Who could forget “The Prom Queen Bandit,” a man fond of robbing banks while dressed as a woman? And how could someone fail to notice the “Kangaroo Robber,” who took over banks wearing a backpack as a pouch on his front?

At least one robber in Bodony’s inventory, however, proved fairly easy to catch. Meet the “Faithful Parishioner,” a criminal whose scrawled demands for money appeared on canceled checks he’d found at his church. Aside from religion, investigators say, he had one thing that most others lacked: a real sense of place.

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Times staff writer David Haldane contributed to this report.