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[UPDATE] Brazen Bank Robber Chad Schaffner Nabbed in Missouri
Monday, September 14, 2009 at 11:02 am
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| Despite allegedly robbing 10 banks, Chad Schaffner never bothered to invest in a mask |
UPDATE: Chad Schaffner caught by alert retired trooper. See update after the jump...
This is not how they teach you to rob banks at Harvard. According to the FBI, Chad Schaffner was released from the Indiana pen last year and decided to embark on an exciting career in interstate robbery. Over the past few months, he's believed to have hit 11 banks across the southeast. But he wasn't all that big on details -- like, say, finding himself a decent mask.
He'd show up at a bank, wave his gun gangster style in a teller's face, all the while mugging for surveillance cameras. Still, he managed to get away with it for months until the feds bought billboards showing his face last month. That forced Schaffner underground...
He's accused of last robbing banks in Morristown and Jefferson City, Tennessee on August 18. That's when people in Morristown started identifying him as a guy who'd been hanging around town. At one point, the FBI even interviewed a woman who was supposedly dating Schaffner. She denied knowing him. But while agents talked to her outside her apartment, Schaffner was inside hiding.
The woman told investigators the next day that he threatened to kill her children if she ratted. By that time, Schaffner was gone.
He was arrested yesterday in Kingdom City, Missouri. The 37-year-old has been charged with bank robbery in Tennessee; burglary in Indiana; armed robbery in Illinois; and receiving stolen property in Ohio. He's also thought to have robbed banks in Kentucky, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
UPDATE I: A retired but savvy Missouri state trooper was the key to Chad Schaffner's arrest in about 100 miles west of St. Louis. Sam Lakey was staying at a motel in Kingdom City when he saw Schaffner. The suspected bank robber didn't make eye contact, which seemed weird to the former trooper. Then he remembered something about a guy wanted for a string of bank heists.
So Lakey went to the website for the America's Most Wanted TV show and found a description of Schaffner's car and a license plate number, which matched the car outside the motel. After he called his old pals at the highway patrol, Lakey moved his family out of the motel and watched the arrest from across the street.
Final score: Retired Trooper 1, Chad Schaffner 0.
Tags: bank robbery, Chad Schaffner, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee
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