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I got my STUFF magazine for this month and there was an article in there about the worlds greatest bank robber. After reading it for a few minutes his name finally came up and what do you know, he's Armenian. His name was Carl Gugasian.
The mask comes off
The Friday Night Bank Robber - responsible for nearly 50 heists - was
legendary, almost superhuman. Then two boys playing in Radnor's woods
found a clue....
Carl Gugasian as a Villanova University senior in 1971.
FBI agent Raymond Carr was at the Radnor Township police station on
April 2, 2001, staring at a collection of items ranging from the
alarming to the absurd.
Books and maps, detailed notes on 160 banks from Connecticut to
Virginia, five guns, about 500 rounds of ammunition, two ski masks,
and eight Halloween masks.
Carr and his friends and colleagues Radnor Detective Joseph
Paolantonio and Pennsylvania State Trooper Thomas Gilhool had been at
it for hours, examining the contents of a "bunker" found the day
before in the woods across Iven Avenue from the Radnor police station.
be it belonged to some kind of extremist group, someone suggested.
And then, Carr recalled, it hit him.
"I believe I know who this guy is," the agent announced to his
surprised colleagues. "This is the Friday Night Bank Robber."
The Friday Night Bank Robber was legendary in FBI and law enforcement
circles. If he was one person, he was without doubt the most prolific,
successful bank robber in U.S. history: scores of heists, all on
Fridays, going back three decades, netting him about $2 million.
The robber worked alone, and witness identifications were impossible
because he was always fully covered: heavy clothing, cap and gloves,
and a full-head Halloween mask, usually of an elderly person or the
Freddy Krueger character from the Nightmare on Elm Street films.
Just as frightening as his gun and the loud voice was the robber's
seemingly superhuman athleticism. From a standstill, the robber would
often vault over the counter and land near a terrified teller to empty
the cash drawers.
Just three months earlier, Carr, the FBI's regional liaison with its
profiler unit in Quantico, Va., had been asked by FBI agents in
Albany, N.Y. and Scranton to create a psychological portrait of this
phantom.
Carr was looking at many of the elements that would support that
profile.
What he did not have, Carr said, was a name.
The Friday Night Bank Robber would turn out to be Carl Gugasian, an
enigmatic, single 56-year-old with an Ivy League education, who paid
his taxes with money he said came from casino gambling, drove two
nondescript used vehicles, and lived in an ordinary suburban garden
apartment.
On Dec. 9, 2003, Gugasian was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Anita
B. Brody to a 171/2-year term in federal prison.
It was a sentence carefully crafted by prosecutors and Gugasian's
attorneys to acknowledge his value to the FBI and to offer him some
hope of avoiding what otherwise would have been life behind bars.
The story of Gugasian's arrest and prosecution was, the judge noted,
the culmination of "excellent police work" by the FBI and state and
local police. It was also the result of an unusual friendship that
developed between the hunter and the hunted.
The week after he was sentenced, Gugasian began his new career as an
incarcerated "consultant" to the FBI, a role Carr helped him get. He
was interviewed on videotape for a training film on bank-robbing
techniques that the bureau will distribute nationally to police
academies and law-enforcement schools.
Gugasian has already helped the FBI's profiler unit in his own case
and has led agents to 27 of his bunkers throughout Pennsylvania, where
he hid clothing, rations, weapons and detailed bank surveillance
notes. His guilty plea let the FBI close 50 unsolved bank robberies, a
record that dwarfs those of such crime legends as Bonnie Parker and
Clyde Barrow, John Dillinger, and even Willie Sutton.
Gugasian would not agree to an interview for this article. His elderly
mother, brothers and girlfriend - Gugasian has never married - are
also maintaining their silence, said defense attorney Scott Magargee.
But despite a sentence that for most middle-aged men might seem like a
life term, those who know Gugasian have few doubts that he will see
freedom again.
"I've never encountered anything like this before in my career," Carr
said of Gugasian's expertise. "It's overwhelming."
Health-food fanatic, devotee of yoga and meditation, third-degree
black belt in karate, Gugasian is a lean, muscular 5-foot-9 in superb
condition.
He has a mind to match: a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering
from Villanova University and a masters in systems analysis from the
University of Pennsylvania, plus doctoral work in statistics and
probability at Penn State.
What remains a mystery is why a man who would seem likely to succeed
at anything decided to succeed at bank robbery.
Ray Carr has been an FBI agent for 16 years, first in Buffalo and
since 1991 in Philadelphia, where he ultimately was assigned to bank
robbery.
Much of Carr's time is spent handling requests from FBI and law
enforcement agencies for help from the bureau's National Center for
the Analysis of Violent Crime - the profilers.
Though the public most often associates the unit with hunts for serial
killers, Carr, 46, said there are serial perpetrators in every type of
criminal conduct.
The unit, for example, assisted Philadelphia police by developing a
profile of the Center City rapist, who was arrested in 2002 and
admitted attacking 14 women in Pennsylvania and Colorado, including
the fatal 1998 assault on Shannon Schieber, 23, a student at the
University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
So it was not unusual when, in January 2001, Carr got a call from the
FBI offices in Albany and Scranton asking for a profile and analysis
of a man they believed was responsible for about 15 bank robberies in
New York and northeastern Pennsylvania since 1989.
The agents in Albany and Scranton sent Carr the voluminous case files
on the man dubbed the Friday Night Bank Robber, and he began running
the data through the bureau's Rapid Start computer program, which
creates a searchable database of case information, tips and clues.
"I had a pretty good feel for who this guy was," Carr said.
The robber would be in his 40s, be even his 50s, Carr determined.
He "would probably be a loner and would be relatively mysterious: He
didn't communicate a whole lot about his personal life."
Given the robber's athletic flair during the heists, Carr believed he
had military training and would be a physical-fitness fanatic.
At 8:30 a.m. on April 2, 2001, Carr was in his office in the FBI's
satellite unit in Newtown Square, trying to organize his findings into
a "workable format," when Radnor Detective Joe Paolantonio called.
"What are you doing today?" Paolantonio asked. "I came across
something last night I think is a little bit beyond us. Can you come
up and give us a hand?"
Paolantonio had Carr's attention: "What is it?"
"We found some guns and stuff in, like, a bunker."
The two teens had been building a fort in the woods late in the
afternoon of April 1, 2001, when they spotted something inside a
concrete drainage pipe.
Inside were several sections of capped PVC piping. Curious, they
opened a pipe and took out documents that referred to several bank
robberies, as well as instructions on how to clean a Beretta firearm.
The teens took their find to the Radnor police, and when an officer
returned to the scene, he stumbled on a "bunker" - three feet deep and
four feet across - filled with capped PVC pipes and waterproof
containers.
In his 13 years as a detective, investigating burglaries and suburban
crime, Paolantonio, 45, said he had never seen anything quite like
this. The bunker was not just a hole in the ground. It was carefully
excavated and lined with brick and concrete block. The contents were
organized with military precision. And the drainage pipe, placed into
the berm of the abandoned right-of-way for the old P&W trolley line,
seemed to be a dummy; it did not connect with anything.
"It was very clear that somebody had taken a lot of time and effort to
do this," Paolantonio recalled.
This was what Paolantonio had called Carr to see.
Among the contents was a paper describing the Patriot National Bank
and location and the notation "F-7."
To Carr, the note had just one meaning: The bank closed on Fridays at
7 p.m.
There was more, including detailed surveillance notes on 10 to 20
banks in New York, Connecticut and central and eastern Pennsylvania,
among references to 160 banks. There were eight flesh-colored
Halloween masks and several pullover ski masks. Some masks had been
altered to improve the fit and vision, and some were hand-painted to
be more intimidating.
The bunker also contained formidable firepower: five large-caliber
guns, all with their primary and hidden serial numbers obliterated.
There were electrical-engineering and statistical materials, a "Camp
Hill Handbook," and - most intriguing to Carr - detailed topographical
and directional maps for Pennsylvania state forests near Jim Thorpe.
Did the maps show the sites of other bunkers? Carr wondered.
The Radnor discovery resulted in the creation of a 30-member task
force, including FBI agents from states in which the listed banks were
located, Pennsylvania and New York state police, and a veteran federal
prosecutor from Philadelphia, Linwood C. "L.C." Wright Jr.
Carr's hunch proved correct. The maps from Radnor led to seven more
bunkers - some large enough to walk into - carved out of the
wilderness in northeastern Pennsylvania.
There were more bank-related documents, newspaper clippings about bank
robberies, surveillance notes, clothing, disguises and survival
rations.
One bunker contained 18 weapons, all but one with the serial numbers
removed. That gun, so unaccountably neglected, proved to be a clue as
enigmatic as it was important: The pistol had been reported stolen in
the 1970s from a shop near the Army's Fort Bragg, in North Carolina.
To pin a name to the profile of the Friday Night Bank Robber, Carr and
the task force started following leads from the bunkers. One of those
leads, which also fit the profile, was a paper mentioning the Dillman
Karate Studio.
Dillman Karate turned out to refer to George Dillman, the
Reading-based founder and owner of an international chain of 85 karate
schools, who had developed his own method of Ryukyu Kempo
pressure-point fighting and grappling.
Among five local studios was one "dojo" in Drexel Hill, near Radnor.
Carr said he described the robber's profile to the studio's owner, who
named several students fitting the description.
One was Carl Gugasian.
Carr realized that Gugasian was the right age and height. In addition,
his apartment on Iven Avenue was directly across the street from the
woods in Radnor where the first bunker was found.
As agents checked Gugasian's background, more pieces came together. He
had received weapons, survival and self-defense training with Army
special forces and was stationed at Fort Bragg in the mid-1970s - a
link to the stolen gun in the bunker in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The mask comes off
The Friday Night Bank Robber - responsible for nearly 50 heists - was
legendary, almost superhuman. Then two boys playing in Radnor's woods
found a clue....
Carl Gugasian as a Villanova University senior in 1971.
FBI agent Raymond Carr was at the Radnor Township police station on
April 2, 2001, staring at a collection of items ranging from the
alarming to the absurd.
Books and maps, detailed notes on 160 banks from Connecticut to
Virginia, five guns, about 500 rounds of ammunition, two ski masks,
and eight Halloween masks.
Carr and his friends and colleagues Radnor Detective Joseph
Paolantonio and Pennsylvania State Trooper Thomas Gilhool had been at
it for hours, examining the contents of a "bunker" found the day
before in the woods across Iven Avenue from the Radnor police station.
be it belonged to some kind of extremist group, someone suggested.
And then, Carr recalled, it hit him.
"I believe I know who this guy is," the agent announced to his
surprised colleagues. "This is the Friday Night Bank Robber."
The Friday Night Bank Robber was legendary in FBI and law enforcement
circles. If he was one person, he was without doubt the most prolific,
successful bank robber in U.S. history: scores of heists, all on
Fridays, going back three decades, netting him about $2 million.
The robber worked alone, and witness identifications were impossible
because he was always fully covered: heavy clothing, cap and gloves,
and a full-head Halloween mask, usually of an elderly person or the
Freddy Krueger character from the Nightmare on Elm Street films.
Just as frightening as his gun and the loud voice was the robber's
seemingly superhuman athleticism. From a standstill, the robber would
often vault over the counter and land near a terrified teller to empty
the cash drawers.
Just three months earlier, Carr, the FBI's regional liaison with its
profiler unit in Quantico, Va., had been asked by FBI agents in
Albany, N.Y. and Scranton to create a psychological portrait of this
phantom.
Carr was looking at many of the elements that would support that
profile.
What he did not have, Carr said, was a name.
The Friday Night Bank Robber would turn out to be Carl Gugasian, an
enigmatic, single 56-year-old with an Ivy League education, who paid
his taxes with money he said came from casino gambling, drove two
nondescript used vehicles, and lived in an ordinary suburban garden
apartment.
On Dec. 9, 2003, Gugasian was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Anita
B. Brody to a 171/2-year term in federal prison.
It was a sentence carefully crafted by prosecutors and Gugasian's
attorneys to acknowledge his value to the FBI and to offer him some
hope of avoiding what otherwise would have been life behind bars.
The story of Gugasian's arrest and prosecution was, the judge noted,
the culmination of "excellent police work" by the FBI and state and
local police. It was also the result of an unusual friendship that
developed between the hunter and the hunted.
The week after he was sentenced, Gugasian began his new career as an
incarcerated "consultant" to the FBI, a role Carr helped him get. He
was interviewed on videotape for a training film on bank-robbing
techniques that the bureau will distribute nationally to police
academies and law-enforcement schools.
Gugasian has already helped the FBI's profiler unit in his own case
and has led agents to 27 of his bunkers throughout Pennsylvania, where
he hid clothing, rations, weapons and detailed bank surveillance
notes. His guilty plea let the FBI close 50 unsolved bank robberies, a
record that dwarfs those of such crime legends as Bonnie Parker and
Clyde Barrow, John Dillinger, and even Willie Sutton.
Gugasian would not agree to an interview for this article. His elderly
mother, brothers and girlfriend - Gugasian has never married - are
also maintaining their silence, said defense attorney Scott Magargee.
But despite a sentence that for most middle-aged men might seem like a
life term, those who know Gugasian have few doubts that he will see
freedom again.
"I've never encountered anything like this before in my career," Carr
said of Gugasian's expertise. "It's overwhelming."
Health-food fanatic, devotee of yoga and meditation, third-degree
black belt in karate, Gugasian is a lean, muscular 5-foot-9 in superb
condition.
He has a mind to match: a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering
from Villanova University and a masters in systems analysis from the
University of Pennsylvania, plus doctoral work in statistics and
probability at Penn State.
What remains a mystery is why a man who would seem likely to succeed
at anything decided to succeed at bank robbery.
Ray Carr has been an FBI agent for 16 years, first in Buffalo and
since 1991 in Philadelphia, where he ultimately was assigned to bank
robbery.
Much of Carr's time is spent handling requests from FBI and law
enforcement agencies for help from the bureau's National Center for
the Analysis of Violent Crime - the profilers.
Though the public most often associates the unit with hunts for serial
killers, Carr, 46, said there are serial perpetrators in every type of
criminal conduct.
The unit, for example, assisted Philadelphia police by developing a
profile of the Center City rapist, who was arrested in 2002 and
admitted attacking 14 women in Pennsylvania and Colorado, including
the fatal 1998 assault on Shannon Schieber, 23, a student at the
University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
So it was not unusual when, in January 2001, Carr got a call from the
FBI offices in Albany and Scranton asking for a profile and analysis
of a man they believed was responsible for about 15 bank robberies in
New York and northeastern Pennsylvania since 1989.
The agents in Albany and Scranton sent Carr the voluminous case files
on the man dubbed the Friday Night Bank Robber, and he began running
the data through the bureau's Rapid Start computer program, which
creates a searchable database of case information, tips and clues.
"I had a pretty good feel for who this guy was," Carr said.
The robber would be in his 40s, be even his 50s, Carr determined.
He "would probably be a loner and would be relatively mysterious: He
didn't communicate a whole lot about his personal life."
Given the robber's athletic flair during the heists, Carr believed he
had military training and would be a physical-fitness fanatic.
At 8:30 a.m. on April 2, 2001, Carr was in his office in the FBI's
satellite unit in Newtown Square, trying to organize his findings into
a "workable format," when Radnor Detective Joe Paolantonio called.
"What are you doing today?" Paolantonio asked. "I came across
something last night I think is a little bit beyond us. Can you come
up and give us a hand?"
Paolantonio had Carr's attention: "What is it?"
"We found some guns and stuff in, like, a bunker."
The two teens had been building a fort in the woods late in the
afternoon of April 1, 2001, when they spotted something inside a
concrete drainage pipe.
Inside were several sections of capped PVC piping. Curious, they
opened a pipe and took out documents that referred to several bank
robberies, as well as instructions on how to clean a Beretta firearm.
The teens took their find to the Radnor police, and when an officer
returned to the scene, he stumbled on a "bunker" - three feet deep and
four feet across - filled with capped PVC pipes and waterproof
containers.
In his 13 years as a detective, investigating burglaries and suburban
crime, Paolantonio, 45, said he had never seen anything quite like
this. The bunker was not just a hole in the ground. It was carefully
excavated and lined with brick and concrete block. The contents were
organized with military precision. And the drainage pipe, placed into
the berm of the abandoned right-of-way for the old P&W trolley line,
seemed to be a dummy; it did not connect with anything.
"It was very clear that somebody had taken a lot of time and effort to
do this," Paolantonio recalled.
This was what Paolantonio had called Carr to see.
Among the contents was a paper describing the Patriot National Bank
and location and the notation "F-7."
To Carr, the note had just one meaning: The bank closed on Fridays at
7 p.m.
There was more, including detailed surveillance notes on 10 to 20
banks in New York, Connecticut and central and eastern Pennsylvania,
among references to 160 banks. There were eight flesh-colored
Halloween masks and several pullover ski masks. Some masks had been
altered to improve the fit and vision, and some were hand-painted to
be more intimidating.
The bunker also contained formidable firepower: five large-caliber
guns, all with their primary and hidden serial numbers obliterated.
There were electrical-engineering and statistical materials, a "Camp
Hill Handbook," and - most intriguing to Carr - detailed topographical
and directional maps for Pennsylvania state forests near Jim Thorpe.
Did the maps show the sites of other bunkers? Carr wondered.
The Radnor discovery resulted in the creation of a 30-member task
force, including FBI agents from states in which the listed banks were
located, Pennsylvania and New York state police, and a veteran federal
prosecutor from Philadelphia, Linwood C. "L.C." Wright Jr.
Carr's hunch proved correct. The maps from Radnor led to seven more
bunkers - some large enough to walk into - carved out of the
wilderness in northeastern Pennsylvania.
There were more bank-related documents, newspaper clippings about bank
robberies, surveillance notes, clothing, disguises and survival
rations.
One bunker contained 18 weapons, all but one with the serial numbers
removed. That gun, so unaccountably neglected, proved to be a clue as
enigmatic as it was important: The pistol had been reported stolen in
the 1970s from a shop near the Army's Fort Bragg, in North Carolina.
To pin a name to the profile of the Friday Night Bank Robber, Carr and
the task force started following leads from the bunkers. One of those
leads, which also fit the profile, was a paper mentioning the Dillman
Karate Studio.
Dillman Karate turned out to refer to George Dillman, the
Reading-based founder and owner of an international chain of 85 karate
schools, who had developed his own method of Ryukyu Kempo
pressure-point fighting and grappling.
Among five local studios was one "dojo" in Drexel Hill, near Radnor.
Carr said he described the robber's profile to the studio's owner, who
named several students fitting the description.
One was Carl Gugasian.
Carr realized that Gugasian was the right age and height. In addition,
his apartment on Iven Avenue was directly across the street from the
woods in Radnor where the first bunker was found.
As agents checked Gugasian's background, more pieces came together. He
had received weapons, survival and self-defense training with Army
special forces and was stationed at Fort Bragg in the mid-1970s - a
link to the stolen gun in the bunker in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Wow!
Genuine
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