The oldest bank robber: No regrets

Sunday, March 28, 2004 Posted: 7:57 AM EST (1257 GMT)

SPUR, Texas (AP) -- J.L. Hunter "Red" Rountree shuffled into the bank and surveyed the teller windows.

He had done this twice before and knew the best way was to pick a bank within a full gas tank's drive of home, hit it early before there were too many customers and then never, ever return to that city.

He walked slowly up to an open window and handed two manila envelopes to the teller. On the first, in red marker, was written "ROBBERY." The second envelope, he told her, was for the money.

"What do you mean?" the teller asked the bespectacled man with nearly translucent skin and wrinkled, knotted hands. "Are you kidding?"

"Hurry up and put the money in the envelope or you'll get hurt," Rountree told her.

As the teller complied, Rountree became the oldest known bank robber in U.S. history. He was 91.

Sitting in a wheelchair now at the Dickens County Correctional Center, at the edge of the Texas Plains, Rountree puts his hand to his forehead, coaxing memories from a brain fogged by age. He's reached 92 and is serving a 12-year sentence, the equivalent of life for someone his age.

He can't remember when he decided to rob the First American Bank in Abilene. Or even what he planned to do with the loot -- $1,999. But he does have one answer.

"You want to know why I rob banks?" Rountree said. "It's fun. I feel good, awful good. I feel good for sometimes days, for sometimes hours."

It was one last adventure for a man who'd had others years ago. He once made millions as a businessman, once had a family.

Rountree is led to an arraignment at the Federal Building in Lubbock, Texas, August 27, 2003.

Rountree loses track of many names, events, dates. But the man -- who slightly resembles the late actor Hume Cronyn -- can remember the important details.

The good ones revolve around Faye, the woman with whom he had a "50-year-one-month love affair."

The bad ones, the death of his son and then of his beloved wife marked the start of a second, lawless life. "I behaved as long as she was alive," he says. "After that, I went kind of crazy."

 

 

Rountree said he spent every moment possible with his wife. Faye died in October 1986.

"After the funeral, I stayed in the house a week. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do," he said. "Then maybe a week later, I went to a beer joint. People were nice to me there."

That's where Rountree's second life took hold.

The rules to rob a bank

He can't remember when he came up with the idea to rob a bank.

Whatever the prompt, on December 9, 1998, a week before his 87th birthday, Rountree entered the SouthTrust Bank in Biloxi, Mississippi.

"I was kind of dumb about it. I just walked in and told the gal behind the counter to give me money," he said. "Then I told her not to say anything until five minutes after I left."

But as the old man was making his getaway, someone followed him and he was arrested within minutes, according to police records. He was eventually given three years' probation, fined $260 and told to leave Mississippi.

In jail awaiting sentencing he met a man who knew how to rob banks --successfully. This part, he insisted, is true.

During hours of conversations, the man -- whom he would not identify -- taught him "the rules." Always rob a bank in a city with lots of roads, escape routes. Hide your car and cover the license plate. And don't get greedy.

Less than a year later, October 18, 1999 -- near the anniversary of his wife's death -- Rountree walked in to a NationsBank in Pensacola, Florida.

He looked for the youngest teller and gave her a note with the word "robbery" written in red ink.

"Give me the hundreds," he said, handing the teller a black bag. She stuffed the bag with $8,000.

But before he could get out of the bank, she screamed: "We've been robbed!"

Two customers chased Rountree as he headed across the parking lot to his idling truck. One knocked him down with what felt like a karate kick. "I went out. I went away from this world," Rountree said.

He was convicted and sentenced to three years. At age 87, he became the oldest inmate in the Florida prison system.

A one-way ticket

Rountree hated prison. There were too many rules and bad food. When he got out in 2002, he said he never wanted to go back.

Approaching 90 now, he had a wheelchair but little else. "I didn't have two cents to rub together," he said.

Prison officials gave him a one-way bus ticket to Texas.

The old man stepped off the bus in Goldthwaite with an "itty, bitty duffel bag" that contained a change of clothes and a nearly empty address book.

Later, a nephew helped Rountree buy a used car, a 1996 Buick Regal with more than 78,000 miles on it.

Red loved to drive. So when Rountree got his car, it didn't surprise anybody that within the first month he put more than 3,600 miles on it.

A few months later, he got into his car and drove more than 100 miles to the bank in Abilene.

Sitting at the correctional center, Rountree made no excuse for the Abilene robbery. He even told authorities within minutes of his arrest that he was guilty.

"I know I'm going to die in here. That's OK," he said. "I've led a good life and I have no regrets."

Although Rountree is appealing his sentence, he says he's not sure he wants to get out.

"What would I do at my age? Rob another bank?" he says, laughing.

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