Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 18, 1995 TAG: 9503200030
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Gilmore held up three banks this winter before being arrested. In one incident, he told the teller not to give him any more money.
He pleaded guilty to one charge of bank larceny and was found guilty of two counts of bank robbery after a trial in federal court in Roanoke on Friday. He was out on parole at the time of the crimes after having been convicted of five other bank robberies.
``I reached into the drawer, handed him a handful of money and said, `That's all I have,''' testified teller Suzi Neighbors of Crestar's Cave Spring Corners branch, which was held up Dec. 30. ``He said, `That's enough.'''
Gilmore's attorney, David Walker, said his client was depressed after his wife left him right after Christmas. She told her husband she wouldn't come back to him unless he got her money to take care of restitution for check-fraud charges against her, Walker said. Gilmore, 39, had been out on parole for more than a year and was working steadily before his wife left, attorneys said.
Gilmore was ``very much in love,'' Walker said.
``It's very clear this man was moved more by depression than by rational thought processes,'' Walker said. ``You don't go in robbing a bank and say, `That's enough.'''
Five days after Christmas, Gilmore walked into the Crestar branch and handed Neighbors a note asking for wrapped $100, $50 and $20 bills. His note also read, ``No dye packs! Someone might get hurt.''
In the other two holdups, the notes simply asked for money and said not to give him dye packs, which can explode all over money and robbers.
Gilmore admitted committing the holdups as soon as he was arrested, shortly after the third robbery, and was willing to plead guilty to bank larceny in all three. However, prosecutor Tom Eckert wanted a trial in two of the holdups. Gilmore was found guilty of bank robbery in both by U.S. District Judge Samuel Wilson.
To get a bank-robbery conviction, Eckert had to prove that Gilmore, who displayed no weapon, used intimidation to get the money, which elevates the crime from simple larceny to robbery.
``We're not alleging force or violence,'' argued Eckert, who referred to Gilmore after the trial as a ``benevolent bandit'' who said ``please'' and ``thank you.''
``But we are alleging intimidation,'' Eckert said.
Gilmore, 39, was allowed to plead to bank larceny in the holdup of the Crestar branch on U.S. 460 East. In that holdup - his last - teller Linda Tuck knew Gilmore as a customer and was not intimidated by him.
Gilmore told the judge that after Tuck gave him $2,406 on Jan. 9, ``she was about to give me more and I told her to quit, and I left.'' He took $1,700 from the Cave Spring branch Dec. 30 and $1,200 from a First Virginia Bank-Southwest branch on Virginia 419 on Jan. 3. Only $1,940 was recovered.
Walker argued that courts must find that a suspect's conduct is ``reasonably calculated to incite fear'' in order to make the crime a robbery. Gilmore's methods - handing tellers notes and not using a weapon - didn't constitute intimidation, he said.
But Wilson, in finding Gilmore guilty, ruled that a reasonable person would have been intimidated by the robberies. ``I have no doubts whatsoever,'' he said. ``Ms. Neighbors didn't turn over the bank's money as an act of charity.''
Because of Gilmore's prior convictions, Eckert will ask that he be treated as a career offender when he is sentenced on May 31. He faces up to 50 years in prison.
by CNB