Frank Newgent
30th March 2004, 05:47 PM
http://www.pjstar.com/news/topnews/b2hb8989047.html
At age 91, "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.
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."
SNIP
But he always resented banks.
"They are thieves," he said.
That bitterness blends in his mind with another loss, even more grievous, at about the same time.
Thomas Rountree, just returned from a tour of duty in the Army, was killed in a car accident following a father-son dinner in Galveston.
"When he was 12 years old, he asked if it would be OK to have my name. He said I was already his dad, and he wanted to make it official," Rountree said.
"He was a good, smart boy. ... When he got killed, Faye went crazy. Maybe I did a little, too.
SNIP
At age 83, he says he experimented with a few drugs. "I tried it, marijuana mostly. I even tried some of the other stuff, cocaine. I didn't care for it much," he said.
After that affair ended, he married another woman he met in a bar.
"You know how she got me? She gave me a hug," he says. "She was a nice woman. She had two kids, and I just loved them to death."
Texas marriage records show Rountree married a Juanita Adams in 1989 and that they divorced in 1995.
It was some time during this period, Rountree visited his nephew, Buddy Rountree, at his home in Goldthwaite, a speck of town on the back roads between Abilene and Austin.
"He showed up one day wearing a purple and black running suit, the kind that had baggy pants, and he had his hair in a ponytail. This old man with a ponytail," said the 72-year-old nephew, shaking his head.
Warning: the following link tries to install adwares in your computer
Somewhere in America there's a street named after my dad (http://www.songlyrics.com/song-lyrics/Was_(Not_Was)/What_Up_Dog/Somewhere_In_America_There_s_A_Street_Named_After/78588.html)
At age 91, "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.
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."
SNIP
But he always resented banks.
"They are thieves," he said.
That bitterness blends in his mind with another loss, even more grievous, at about the same time.
Thomas Rountree, just returned from a tour of duty in the Army, was killed in a car accident following a father-son dinner in Galveston.
"When he was 12 years old, he asked if it would be OK to have my name. He said I was already his dad, and he wanted to make it official," Rountree said.
"He was a good, smart boy. ... When he got killed, Faye went crazy. Maybe I did a little, too.
SNIP
At age 83, he says he experimented with a few drugs. "I tried it, marijuana mostly. I even tried some of the other stuff, cocaine. I didn't care for it much," he said.
After that affair ended, he married another woman he met in a bar.
"You know how she got me? She gave me a hug," he says. "She was a nice woman. She had two kids, and I just loved them to death."
Texas marriage records show Rountree married a Juanita Adams in 1989 and that they divorced in 1995.
It was some time during this period, Rountree visited his nephew, Buddy Rountree, at his home in Goldthwaite, a speck of town on the back roads between Abilene and Austin.
"He showed up one day wearing a purple and black running suit, the kind that had baggy pants, and he had his hair in a ponytail. This old man with a ponytail," said the 72-year-old nephew, shaking his head.
Warning: the following link tries to install adwares in your computer
Somewhere in America there's a street named after my dad (http://www.songlyrics.com/song-lyrics/Was_(Not_Was)/What_Up_Dog/Somewhere_In_America_There_s_A_Street_Named_After/78588.html)