Sixty-eight-year old Barbara Joly plead guilty to robbing Community National Bank in Cincinnati, Ohio, last March. Joly is also the suspect in two other bank heists. The reason why Joly robbed the banks: she wanted to continue sending $4,000 a month to her son who had “fallen” on hard times “years ago”. Yet Joly isn’t the only “granny” to hold up a bank, nor is she the “oldest” person to commit a bank heist.

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Joly, a former bank teller, turned to robbing banks after her husband stopped her from sending the $4000 a month to her son.

Joly didn’t use a gun and wore a blonde wig, sweatsuit, and white gloves in the Community Bank robbery. The same m.o. in the other two holdups that Joly has yet to be charged with. Joly will most likely receive probation as part of a plea deal.

In 2003, a 91-yr-old man was arrested as the suspect in a bank robbery in Abilene, Texas.

J.L. Hunter Rountree allegedly made off with $2000 after he asked a bank teller to “stuff” a large envelope with “robbery” written on it. Rountree had been released from a Florida prison a year earlier after serving a three year sentence for robbing a bank in 1999 in Pensacola. At the time, Rountree was the “oldest” inmate serving time in the state of Florida. Rountree’s arrest in Abilene made him what authorities believe to be the “oldest” bank robber in American history.

Rountree died in a Springfield, Missouri, prison in 2004 at the age of 92. A judge had sentenced Rountree a year earlier to 12 1/2 years in prison, which if he had lived, he would have been a 103, and most likely the “oldest” prisoner to be released from prison.

Joly isn’t the only “grandmother” to rob banks. In 2006, 75-yr-old Marilyn Devine was arrested after robbing a bank in Pennsylvania.

Devine had worn a ski mask and carried an “unloaded gun”. Devine’s take: $6,000.

Devine, a former Korean War Veteran, teacher, and Veteran’s Hospital Nurse, plead guilty in March. Ironically defense attorneys for Devine claim Devine suffered from anxiety and depression after her son “called her the night before and said he was going to do himself in unless she could get him some money”.

Devine’s husband was at a local American Legion Hall when the family mechanic “ran from across the street” and told Devine that he heard on a police scanner that an “elderly woman driving his wife’s car had just robbed a bank”. While the first reports of Marilyn Devine’s arrest claimed Devine had led police on a high speed chase, the true story emerged during Devine’s trial:

“The following morning Mrs. Devine took her husband’s unloaded pistol from his sock drawer and headed to the mall. With a hooded coat and a black-and-gold Steelers scarf masking her face, she held up the bank and then led West Mifflin and Baldwin police on a short chase, weaving through slow traffic, until a Baldwin tow truck driver, who was also tuned into the police scanner, blocked her way.”

Marilyn Devine was sentenced to 23 months of house arrest, 20 years probation, and ordered to pay $10,000 for “victim’s duress”.

By LBG

Image – Grandmother
Source – Pittsburgh Post Gazette