CNN.com reports: Texan, 91, arrested for bank robbery – Aug. 14, 2003. I guess you are never too old to be a fool.
Apparantly it wasn’t the first time he did a robbery:
Rountree left a prison in Florida, where he was the oldest prisoner in the state, about a year ago after serving a three-year sentence imposed on him for a 1999 bank robbery in Pensacola.
He was caught holding up a bank in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1998 when he was 87, and given three years’ probation.
Police said he always used the same tactic — walking unarmed into a bank with a note saying “robbery”, then trying to flee in a getaway car parked outside.
In a prison interview with the Orlando Sentinel in 2001, Rountree said he had been a businessman in Texas but had fallen on hard times.
He said he robbed his first bank when he was about 80 because he wanted revenge against banks.
“A Corpus Christi [Texas] bank that I’d done business with had forced me into bankruptcy. I have never liked banks since,” he told the Orlando Sentinel. “I decided I would get even. And I have. Banks are the easiest things in the world to rob.”
Police said Rountree, who was not armed, asked a teller to stuff money into a large envelop with the word “robbery” written on it.
A witness took down the license number of his vehicle and he was arrested on a highway about 15 miles outside Abilene. He did not resist, police said.
If he is convicted, Rountree faces from two to 20 years in prison.