By Jean Cole
jean@athensnews-courier.com
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Athens and Limestone County authorities are still searching for bank robbers that hit local banks within the past couple of years.
Ardmore Police have been lucky enough to solve their three most-recent bank robberies with the help of other agencies.
Catching a bank robber isn’t easy.
“They usually have their faces covered up and they get in and out quickly, so unless you have a deputy in the area, they can get away, ” Limestone County Sheriff’s Chief Investigator Capt. Stanley McNatt said Friday. “Two or three times we have had a deputy in the right place and very observant, and they have caught bank robbers.”
Greedy?
Many times a bank robbery is solved when a robber is caught elsewhere after committing another crime. Such is the case in the last three Ardmore bank robberies.
Two brothers suspected of collaborating to rob RBC Bank in Ardmore on July 19 were soon linked to a similar bank robbery at First Bank in Fayetteville, Tenn, on July 30.
In the Ardmore case, a white man entered the bank, demanded money and fled in a stolen brown truck. He was later seen ditching the brown truck and getting into a burgundy Nissan Titan truck driven by another white man.
The suspect in a similar Fayetteville robbery was stopped in a burgundy Titan. When Franklin County authorities stopped Clay Robertson, 33, of Winchester, Tenn., on the Friday of the robbery, they found evidence linking him to the Fayetteville bank robbery. On Aug. 2, a park employee found the body of Robertson’s brother — Howard Robertson, 51, of Tullahoma, Tenn. — at Tims Ford Lake State Park in Winchester at the Turkey Creek boat ramp. Authorities were awaiting a toxicology report on the brother to determine cause of death.
Ardmore Police, and sheriff’s departments in Limestone, Lincoln and Giles counties, as well as the Memphis Office of the FBI, worked the RBC case.
It had been the third robbery of an Ardmore bank in less than a year.
In November 2009, a robber struck the CB&S Bank in Ardmore, Tenn., and the suspect later died in a wreck in Mississippi while fleeing from authorities following a robbery in that state.
In January, CB&S Bank was struck again. The suspect, from New York, was found later in Marietta, Ga., Ardmore Police Chief David Whitt said Friday.
“He was sentenced last week on two (other) bank robberies and this one,” Whitt said.
Athens
Athens Police are still searching for a white man who robbed TVA Credit Union on East Hobbs Street in Athens on July 9.
The suspect presented a note to a teller at the credit union around 3:50 p.m. and indicated he had a weapon, Capt. Floyd Johnson, public information officer, said at the time.
The suspect, who stood approximately 6 feet tall and weighed approximately 170 pounds, entered the bank wearing a black headscarf or do-rag, a white T-shirt, black pants with a gray stripe and black and white tennis shoes. He carried a black tortoise shell motorcycle helmet and sunglasses.
Limestone County
Similarly, Limestone County officials are still searching for a black man who robbed RBC Bank in Capshaw on July 10, 2009.
A black man wearing blue jeans, a blue T-shirt, a ball cap and a blue bandana over his face entered the bank about 3:20 p.m., walked up to a teller, thrust a semiautomatic pistol in her face and said, “give me the money, ” McNatt said after the incident.
Three employees were in the bank at the time but no customers.
“He brandished the gun, held it on all of the employees and the teller,” McNatt said.
The suspect fled in a blue sport-utility vehicle, believed to be a Ford Expedition, and was never located.
“The case is not closed,” McNatt said. “We are still looking.”
