You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
The East L.A. Bank Heist.
It was wild, almost hard to believe. It was straight out of the Quentin Tarantino handbook for adrenaline.
A supposed bomb strapped to a bank employee, a daring bank robbery in broad daylight. It was a newsman’s wet dream.
With a helicopter swooping over the top of the bank, the reality, the drama of the crime sunk in.
Suddenly a woman, attractive and nervous, walking in a slinky tank top can be seen. She is on the sidewalk, happy to be alive. She’s the manager.
The news reporters, the cops, the FBI are all asking the same thing: Was the bank manager a victim or an accomplice?
It’s a damn good question. Either the bank robbers had inside information, watched the bank for weeks to develop a pattern of susceptibility, or they were working with the sexy manager now claiming to be a victim.
The FBI wants to arrest someone. They have to arrest someone. The robbers stole a king’s ransome. Trust me, they get good money when they hit the tills. But the vault? That’s a pay day, Jack.
It was a bank robbery straight out of Hollywood sans Brad Pitt.
But this was real life and it was described by Diane Sawyer as bizarre and frightening.
According to news reports, the manager of the East L.A. branch was snatched from her home. That’s aggressive.
Sources say the bank robbers strapped a realistic looking device to her waist telling her it was a bomb. That’s very aggressive.
Was it a bomb? Sure looked like one.
Then the little robot blew it up and it was a hoax. But she didn’t know that. Or did she?
With fear in her heart, with a presumable queasiness in her stomach she entered her bank. The FBI says she went into the vault, collected thousands of dollars, and then began tossing bags of money out a side door. Convenient huh?
The bank manager was afraid of blowing up. Can you blame her? I’d have thrown out the kitchen sink. Its not my money, right?
The bank robbers wore masks and never even showed up on surveillance tape.
It’s right out of Ocean’s Eleven.
“They were bunch of cowards,” one inerviewed woman says.
Maybe.
But they were also kind of smart, kind of brilliant.
Investigators don’t know who they are looking for.
They sped off in a white kia. Who the hell drives off in a Kia?
Mark Wahlberg drove off in a Mini Cooper in the Italian Job.
These men are gone. Did she help them? Hard to say.
The robbery is the stuff of legends, and it took place in the shadow of the Hollywood sign, a crime that only a screenwriter could imagine.
And that is crazy.™