Bonnie Without Clyde
Here's one result of the women's movement not worth celebrating: The number of female bank robbers is on the rise - and not just as accomplices or getaway drivers.
(massmostwanted.org)
Security camera images from massmostwanted.org, alleged to be of Kelli Dolaher.
One early April afternoon this year, a slight woman in her 20s walked through two sets of doors of the Cambridge Savings Bank in Inman Square and strode to the back of the office, where clerks sat behind thick glass. There, the woman stopped at a teller's window and passed a note with simple instructions: This is a robbery, and I have a gun. Hand over the money, quickly and quietly. The teller complied. A few minutes later, the woman left the bank's three-story brownstone that juts into the quiet square in Cambridge and started making her way east. She was carrying the money and, unknowingly, a tiny GPS device, which the teller had slipped into the loot and which allowed police to track her location electronically. Bank employees alerted authorities. Within minutes, Cambridge officers arrested Kelli Dolaher, a 28-year-old from Everett, who was walking by herself, unarmed, down Webster Avenue.
The Inman Square robbery was the woman's fourth attempted - and third successful - bank heist in eight days, police and federal investigators say. In addition to robbing that bank on April 1, Dolaher was also charged with robbing a Citizens Bank branch in Charlestown on March 27 and a
Bank robberies are a rare crime. Of the estimated 1,417,745 violent offenses that took place in the United States in 2006, these robberies accounted for just 7,272 - or about one-half of 1 percent (272 of them took place in Massachusetts). But even as bank robberies go, the heists in Cambridge and Charlestown were remarkable because of who was committing them. Across the nation, there has been a slight but steady increase in the number of female bank robbers. While this has not become the subject of major FBI research, because men still commit the overwhelming majority of all crime in the country, forensic anthropologists and crime experts are intrigued enough to begin asking some questions: Why women? Why now?
A DECADE AGO, THE NOTION OF WOMEN ROBBING BANKS WOULD have dumbfounded the Cambridge police who arrested Dolaher, according to Officer Frank Pasquarello, a police spokesman who has been working at the Cambridge Police Department for 32 years. But in recent years, he says, "there's been an increase in crime committed by females, I can tell you that." When the police department received a call from Cambridge Savings Bank after the April 1 robbery, the investigators were not in the least surprised.
"As women's status in society increases, they see opportunities for committing all kinds of new activities," says Rita Simon, a professor at the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, D.C., who has written books and articles on women's evolving participation in crime. In recent years, more and more bank robbers in the United States have been women. In 2002, according to the FBI, women accounted for approximately 4.9 percent of all bank robbers; in 2003, for 5.4 percent; in 2004, for 5.7 percent; and in 2005, for 6 percent. In 2006, the last year for which the FBI has complete statistics, about 6.2 percent of bank robbers were women - a 25 percent increase since 2002. (The FBI does not have specific numbers for female bank robbers in Massachusetts.)
What FBI statistics do not show, but what experts and forensic sociologists who study women and crime point out, is that the role women play in bank robberies is changing, too. For decades, women have mostly stood on the sidelines, participating in bank robberies as accomplices, "under the direction and guidance of men who were their lovers, husbands or pimps," Simon wrote several years ago in a working paper titled Women and Crime. "In most instances, their job was to entice victims, to distract or look out for the police, to carry the loot, or to provide the necessary cover."
"As a function both of expanded consciousness, as well as occupational opportunities," Simon went on, "women's participation, roles, and involvement in crime are expected to change and increase."
The Cambridge robber supports this theory. More and more today, female bank robbers challenge what Sioux Falls, South Dakota, forensic sociologist Rosemary Erickson calls "the original Bonnie and Clyde concept," in which women participate in heists in supporting roles. Instead, they can be the masterminds and carry out bank robberies on their own or with male or female accomplices. In other words, today's bank robber is sometimes just a Bonnie, or a Bonnie and a Bonnie - without a Clyde.
When feminists talk about social and political equality for women, they hardly have in mind women's increased participation in crime. And yet, Erickson and Simon say, women's growing involvement and evolved role in bank robberies are a direct result of the women's movement that in the United States took root half a century ago. "It really is equality," says Erickson, who studies bank robbers. "We really had predicted this in the '70s with the equal rights - as you become equal in other things you become equal in crime." Erickson points to other areas that are traditionally dominated by men but in which women are increasingly participating: Senator Hillary Clinton made history this year during her determined run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Businesswomen lead companies. About 15 percent of the US armed forces are women, and female troops serve and get killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Female bank robbers' motives, law enforcement officials and criminal experts say, are pretty much the same as those of the male robbers. About one-third of the robbers are drug addicts who owe money to their dealers or need to finance their habit, says Doug Johnson, vice president of the American Bankers Association. Johnson oversees risk management policy at the Washington, D.C.-based organization, which provides security training for financial institutions. One female bank robber, a 20-year-old community college student from northern Virginia whose boyfriend drove the getaway car, spent the money on clothing, a plasma-screen television, a bedroom set, and a 1997 Acura
IN THE DAYS OF JOHN DILLINGER AND WILLIE Sutton, the fabled bank robbers of the Great Depression, successful bank heists were the product of elaborate preparation and planning. Bank robbers spent days or even weeks studying their targets and traveled dozens of miles to carry out their crimes. They carried weapons but tried to use them as little as possible, and their sleek and clever robberies were legendary even outside the criminal world. "Historically, bank robbers were the top of the pecking order in terms of their professionalism," Erickson says. "They didn't want anybody to get hurt. . . . Professional means it is your career. You take it very seriously; you study, and you get it right."
Enter the demand note.
In the 1970s, such written or typed instructions, which bank robbers silently pass to tellers and usually threaten use of weapons and demand several thousand dollars, made up barely a third of all bank robberies. In 2006, according to the FBI, more than half - 3,947 of the 7,272 - of bank robberies were committed by robbers presenting such notes to bank clerks. This rise in demand notes, Erickson says, has facilitated the rise in the number of women who rob banks. An example of such a note is posted on the website maintained by one sheriff's office in Colorado. "I HAVE A Gun!" reads the note, handwritten in pen on a piece of yellowish paper the size of a business card. "Don't Push no Alarms! Don't say a word! you have 60 seconds to get at least $4,000 dollars I will start shooting Hurry Don't Be A Hero."
"They just kind of walk up to the teller counter" and pass the note with instructions, says the FBI's Marcinkiewicz. Bank employees are trained to cooperate and to assume that all robbers are armed and may shoot, so a bank robbery involving a note is usually fast and covert, she says. "Oftentimes you don't even know that the bank has been robbed." Only 51 robberies in 2006 involved vault or safe theft. The days of sophisticated Ocean's Eleven-style heists are gone.
William Sutton, the legendary bank robber of the 1930s, was nicknamed "the Actor" and "Slick Willie" for his creative disguises, elaborate heists, and penchant for expensive suits. Some of today's female bank robbers have nicknames, too - except theirs refer to the almost comical insouciance of their approach. There were the "Barbie Bandits," Ashley Miller and Heather Johnston, who were taped laughing by a surveillance camera as they casually waited for a teller to come up with cash when they robbed a Bank of America branch in an Atlanta suburb in February 2007 (they were then both 19). There was the "Flip-Flop Bandit," Sarah L. Rawlings, who robbed a BB&T bank branch near Richmond, Virginia, wearing flip-flops, a miniskirt, a revealing sleeveless shirt, and oversized sunglasses in July 2007, when she was 25. There was the "Cellphone Bandit," Candice Rose Martinez, the community college student from northern Virginia, who robbed four
"Bank robbery," Erickson says, has "become much less professional . . . and much more likely to be amateurs. It's not a career."
THE DAY BEFORE KELLI DOLAHER WAS ARRESTED, I WALKED INTO a Citibank branch on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Cold, heavy rain pummeled New York City that day, and my soaked, wide-brimmed fedora sat low on my forehead. A scarf covered my neck and most of my chin. Having forgotten my glasses at home, I was wearing dark prescription sunglasses. In a way, it was a perfect disguise, but no one stopped me as I approached a teller, who looked at me indifferently as I rummaged through my bag. I thrust some wet cash through the window, and she calmly made out a check.
There are no official statistics that suggest that women have an easier or harder time robbing banks. But security experts such as Johnson and Erickson say that gender stereotypes and the overall prevalence of male perpetrators - men commit about 80 percent of all crime - definitely work in the favor of women. "We tend to think: 'Oh that's a woman,' so we don't worry," says Erickson. "You're less likely to expect a woman to pull a gun on you or be violent or rob you."
That is a cultural stereotype that female robbers use to their advantage, even if they do so unwittingly, according to Johnson. "A teller seeing a woman with a phone in her ear would be less inclined to think that that woman was about to rob a bank," he says, referring to Martinez, the Cellphone Bandit. He says Martinez's use of a phone worked as a disguise, "a prop," and demonstrated "that a woman might find ways other than to carry a gun to try to affect a robbery, find ways to make it appear that they are just an innocent customer."
The FBI does not specify how much money has been stolen by female bank robbers as opposed to male. In 2006, according to the agency, robbers stole more than $72 million in cash, checks, and other property. (About $9 million of the loot was recovered that year by law enforcement officers.) Marcinkiewicz says the robbers' "success rates" are not determined by gender, and that women who rob banks do not demand more or less money than their male counterparts. "Bank robbers are bank robbers," she says. "There is no difference."
Bank tellers rarely have immediate access to sums that exceed $5,000 - a strategy many banks have adopted to prevent robbers from taking a large amount of cash, says Johnson. "In a one-teller note job, if you will," he says, "on average, the robber gets less than $5,000." Keeping little cash at a teller's window is one of the many security measures banks use to protect their money. "You're getting little money unless you get into the vault or the safe," Erickson says. Some banks also have armed guards, or employees who greet everyone who enters into their office - Johnson says such a personal approach tends to turn off bank robbers, who try to avoid all unnecessary interaction with bank personnel.
Many banks also ban people wearing sunglasses or hats from entering the bank to make sure that bank personnel and surveillance cameras have a clear view of their faces. But, as my Manhattan experience suggests, this measure is not in use at all banks. Some robbers disguise themselves so thoroughly that the FBI is unable to determine race and gender; this is the case for 128 of the 9,010 people who robbed banks in 2006.
Investigators say Dolaher wore a hat to at least two of the robberies or attempted robberies. A picture taken by a Citizens Bank surveillance camera in Cambridge and posted, before Dolaher's arrest, on MassMostWanted.org - a website created by Boston-area law enforcement agencies that publishes photographs of unknown suspects taken during crimes - shows a woman wearing a blue sweatshirt hood pulled tightly over a dark-gray baseball hat. A picture taken later that day at the bank's branch in Charlestown shows the same woman wearing a black Boston Celtics sweatshirt, its hood pulled low over a green Celtics cap. (She had changed during the two hours that had passed, Marcinkiewicz says.)
Dolaher's note threatened the Cambridge Savings Bank teller with a weapon, federal agents say, but when she was arrested, she was unarmed. The use of weapons is not very typical of bank robbers in general. In 2006, bank robbers had weapons, usually handguns, in about one in five heists, the FBI reports - but that does not mean they used them. During the 7,272 robberies that year, there were 13 incidents of violent death; 10 of those killed were the robbers themselves. "Female bank robbers also need to know that: They could get killed," Erickson says. Marcinkiewicz says that female bank robbers have been less likely to use weapons than men, although the FBI does not have specific statistics that shows use of weapons during bank robberies by gender. But there are extensive news reports of female bank robbers carrying weapons.
In 1999, Susan DeAngelo of Charlestown robbed banks in Arlington, Abington, Braintree, Norwell, and Quincy at gunpoint. In 2002, another female bank robber pulled her gun at a teller during the robbery of a Braintree bank. Women threatened tellers with guns during two separate robberies in Pennsylvania in 2004 and 2006. Virginia's Martinez, during at least one of the robberies, opened her purse to show the bank teller the handgun she was carrying. Last year, Los Angeles police shot and killed a woman who tried to rob at gunpoint a Bank of America branch there. Bank clients should not presume that women who rob banks will not use weapons during heists, Erickson warns.
"Customers need to be alert to this," Erickson says. "We can train the employees" to cooperate with bank robbers in order to avoid bloodshed, "but the customers are the ones who tend to resist, or to get on their cellphones or be heroes. We need to train the general population: Obey the orders, don't talk back, don't stare, don't plead, do what they say. With men or with women."
Anna Badkhen is a freelance writer in Plymouth. Send comments to magazine @globe.com.
