Your ignorance is the Devil's bliss. Every time you scorn what confounds you, he smiles. Every time you sow the fear of him where there was none, he laughs. It's you he loves. It's you he thanks in his evening prayers. -Everville
From CalgarySun.com
Quote:SPUR, Tex. -- He shuffled into the bank and surveyed the teller windows. He had done this twice before and knew the best way was to pick a bank within a full gas tank's drive of home, hit it early before there were too many customers and then never, ever return to that city.
He handed two manila envelopes to the teller. On the first, in red marker, was written "ROBBERY." The second envelope, he told her, was for the money.
"Are you kidding?" the teller asked the bespectacled man with nearly translucent skin and wrinkled, knotted hands.
"Hurry up and put the money in the envelope or you'll get hurt," Rountree told her.
As the teller complied, J.L. Hunter Rountree became the oldest known bank robber in U.S. history. He was 91.
Sitting in a wheelchair now at the Dickens County Correctional Center serving a 12-year sentence, Rountree puts his hand to his forehead, coaxing memories from a brain fogged by age. He's 92 and is serving a 12-year sentence, the equivalent of life for someone his age.
He can't remember when he decided to rob the First American Bank in Abilene. Or even what he planned to do with the loot -- $1,999 US. But he does have one answer.
"You want to know why I rob banks?" Rountree said. "It's fun. I feel good, awful good. I feel good for sometimes days, for sometimes hours."
Rountree once made millions as a businessman, once had a family. But time has a way of erasing things, and if you stick around long enough, the world you know can disappear.
Some 40 years ago, when Roundtree owned a small boat-building and shipyard business, developed a hatred toward banks.
In 1965, he said he was approached by a company to build three boats for running supplies to offshore oil rigs.
Rountree said he took out a bank loan with the understanding that he would repay it when he finished the boats.
"They let me buy the steel," he said, "and then they called the note."
The incident forced him into bankruptcy. Rountree eventually recovered and became a millionaire, then lost it, but he always resented banks.
He says he can't remember when he came up with the idea to rob a bank.
"I guess I was just mad at them for what they had done to me with my business," he said.
In 1998, at 86, Rountree entered the SouthTrust Bank in Biloxi, Miss. and demanded money. That started a string of heists, the last of which ended his new career as America's oldest bank robber. "I know I'm going to die in here. That's OK," he says pointing to his jailhouse surroundings. "I've led a good life."
This is such a classic "vendetta" type of moral reasoning for one's life of crime. You normally see stories like these roleplayed by some D&D rogue, or a movie. Very cool story. Ooohh.. so shiney!
Manx's Lootbag
Hey, my mommy's a baby-boomer, and she's only 57... that's hardly OLD.
Now, if you liquefy THEIR parent's generation, now THEY'RE old. (says the woman with no more grandparents anyway)
(Back In Black)
Delissandra Splitshadow - Marauder of Clan X
Grandmaster Poisoner (250), Master Potter (195), Grandmaster Lush (200)
Why is it that the last piece I've needed from EVERY armor set, from Ravenscale on up to Stanos' Wicked is the PANTS?
I honestly am beginning to think it's a conspiracy founded by Glip!
