Tucson cops nab 80-year-old armed bank robber

After police in Tucson, Arizona, released surveillance images of a male suspect they say held up the Pyramid Credit Union in northwest Tucson at gunpoint, a tip came in from a local hotel about a man matching the description trying to cash a check at the hotel. When police began checking hotels in the area, they found and arrested 80-year-old Robert Francis Krebs. Cops say that during the bank robbery, “Krebs had a handgun, demanded money from the teller and was given cash before running out of the bank,” according to The Bladen Journal.

The bank robbery took place on January 12 with Krebs being arrested the following day. Police booked Krebs on a $50,000 bond and charged him with two counts of armed robbery. And as odd as it may seem for an octogenarian to be holding up a bank at gunpoint, odder still may be the fact that this wasn’t Krebs’ first bank robbery.

In 1966, Krebs was employed as a bank teller in Chicago where he was convicted of embezzling $72,000, according to Fox 10 News in Phoenix.  “He also did time for theft and armed robbery convictions from Arizona dating back to 1980,” according to Fox. In 1981 he was convicted of robbing a bank outside of Orlando where he left a bank teller and the bank manager in handcuffs inside the bank vault. Krebs spent more than 30 years in prison for that Florida bank robbery, according to Tuscon.com.

Krebs only got out of prison during the summer of 2017.  He had reportedly violated parole for not alerting authorities as to his whereabouts; and officials with the Florida Department of Corrections have been looking for him ever since his release.  Chris Hawkins, spokesperson for the Tucson Police Department, said that investigators are still trying to determine a motive for the 80-year-old’s bank robbery.

According to retired FBI bank robbery expert William J. Rehder, who isn’t part of the investigation into Krebs’ case, it is considered odd that an 80-year-old would be robbing a bank.  For the most part, Rehder shared that bank robbers tend to be much younger, like in their 20s. Fox News quoted Rehder as saying, “… Krebs’ motivations are likely two-fold: He misses the thrill of pulling off a bank job and needs money, given that he’s an octogenarian with little potential to earn money after spending decades in prison.”

https://youtu.be/crFXh_3eWxo

Written by: Richard Webster, Ace News Today