waited for the automatic timing device of the bank’s vault, set to open at 8:15, to function.
She then helped herself to “the loose cash”—that is, currency involved in the previous day’s business, which had been placed in the vault in cash drawers at the close of the previous day. She apparently made no attempt to force her way into any of the vault’s locked interior compartments.
The robber then left the bank building by the rear door, locking it after herself. Mr. Dailey’s keys were later found by the FBI in the parking lot.
At 8:25 a.m. the branch bank’s manager, Mrs. Jean-Ellen Dowd, 42, of Upper Black Eddy, arrived at the bank.
“I knew something was wrong the minute I found the door locked,” Mrs. Dowd told authorities and this reporter, “because Stanley [Mr. Dailey] is as reliable as a Swiss watch. But I thought he had a flat tire or something. I never dreamed it was something like this.”
She entered the building and found Mr. Dailey in the rest room. Once she had taken the duct tape from his mouth, and he told her what had happened, she activated the alarm. The sound of the alarm was heard by Constable Werner at his full-time place of employment, the Riegelsville plant of the Corrugated Paper Corporation of Pennsylvania, where he is a pulper technician.
He rushed from the plant in his personal vehicle, a pickup truck, which is equipped with a siren and a red flashing light. En route to the scene of the crime, he collided with a Ford sedan driven by Mr. James J. Penter, manager of the Corrugated Paper Corporation’s Riegelsville facility, who was on his way to work.
Neither Constable Werner nor Mr. Penter was injured in the collision, but Constable Werner’s pickup truck was rendered hors de combat. Mr. Penter then drove Constable Werner to the scene of the crime, where, after questioning Mr. Dailey, he notified the State Police, who in turn notified the FBI.
State Trooper Daniel M. Tobias of the Bethlehem Barracks was first to arrive at the scene. After obtaining from Mr. Dailey a more complete description of the robber as a female approximately five feet eight inches tall, approximately thirty years of age, with large, dangling earrings and an unusually thick application of lipstick and cheek rouge, Trooper Tobias put out a radio bulletin calling for the apprehension of anyone meeting that description and then secured the crime scene pending the arrival of other law enforcement officials.
The Philadelphia office of the FBI dispatched a team of four special agents under the command of Assistant Special Agent in Charge (Criminal Affairs) Frank F. Young.
After questioning Mr. Dailey and Constable Werner, Mr. Young spoke with the press regarding the crime.
“The FBI regards bank robberies as a very serious matter,” Young said, “and can point with pride to its record of bringing the perpetrators to justice. I have no doubt that when the FBI has had time to fully apply its assets, this crime will be solved.”
Mr. Young, when asked by this reporter if a shotgun-wielding female with unshaven legs, dangling earrings, and an unusually thick application of lipstick and cheek rouge had been involved in other bank robberies, declined to answer.
He also declined to offer an opinion about when an arrest could be expected, and when asked by a reporter from the Easton Express to identify the FBI agents with him, stated that it was FBI policy not to do so.
The FBI agents with Mr. Young were known to this reporter as John D. Matthews, Lamar F.
Greene, and Paul C. Lomar.
END
He stopped typing, pushed the Page Up key, and read what he had written. He tapped his fingertips together for a moment, then pushed the Send key on his keyboard. This caused as much of the slug of the story as would fit—it came out as (O’Hara) “Really Ugly” Woman Robs B—to appear on the computer monitor on Mr. Schwartz’s desk.
Schwartz immediately called the whole story up on his monitor screen.
He read it, chuckling several times, and then pushed a key that caused a printed version of the story to emerge from a printer on a credenza behind him. He snatched it from the printer and walked across the city room to O’Hara’s office.
“Very funny,” he said. “A bank robber dressed up like a woman.”
“It was a Chinese fire drill, from start to finish,” Mickey said. “I was going up Route 611 when the FBI, two cars, goes around me, lights flashing, sirens screaming, as if I