Vanishing Philly bandits elude the feds

MARNAN Harner was having a slow morning at the hair salon: one customer in the chair in front of her, another waiting near a window at the front of the shop.

It was cloudy outside, and the temperature was pushing 70. Decent weather for all of the kids who'd soon be darting up and down front steps across the city, filling plastic bags and little buckets with candy.

It was Halloween, after all.

So Harner didn't think twice when the customer near the window started yapping about a pair of masked men walking near a Garda armored car at the Wells Fargo Bank across the street.

"He said, 'Oh my gosh, look at these goofballs with Halloween masks,' " Harner told the Daily News. "Then he goes, 'Oh my God, they're robbing them!' "

The two robbers moved fast - real fast. Their faces hidden behind the yawning black-and-white ghost masks from the "Scream" movies, they whipped out what authorities said appeared to be Tec-9s.

They didn't fire a single shot or try to get into the armored car. They didn't have to.

A Garda employee was in the process of making a delivery to the bank, at Frankford Avenue and Rhawn Street in Holmesburg. The robbers reportedly relieved him of more than $300,000 in cash.

They bolted into a getaway car, a dark green Chrysler minivan that had pulled into the bank's parking lot two minutes before the armored car arrived that fall morning in 2013.

According to surveillance footage that was obtained at the time by CBS3, the heist played out in about a minute, maybe a shade less.

The crooks vanished into thin air. Or did they?

Last April, a similar scene unfolded outside a TD Bank on Frankford Avenue near Wells Street in Mayfair. Same deal: two bandits whose faces were obscured by bandannas, two high-powered weapons and a Garda truck that reportedly was $100,000 lighter after the encounter.

Turns out there was a third case that fit the same pattern. Two shotgun-toting men in ski masks stole a bag of cash from - you guessed it - a Garda truck outside a PNC Bank on Tabor Road near 4th Street in Olney in December 2011.

The robbers haven't been identified. Did they take their score and head off into the sunset, the way armored car thieves wistfully promise to do in Hollywood flicks?

Or are they just waiting for the right moment to strike again?

FBI spokesman J.J. Klaver said the agency's Violent Crimes Task Force is still actively working the investigation into the heists.

The feds boast a perpetually high batting average when it comes to catching bank robbers in Philadelphia. But bank robbers are generally about as sharp as a bag of rubber bands.

They hit banks in their own neighborhoods, disguise themselves poorly - if at all - and make off with enough cash to maybe pay this month's mortgage and buy a couple bags of groceries.

Armored-car thieves are a different breed.

"They're inherently more organized, more structured," Klaver said. "Your average criminal doesn't wake up and say, 'Hey, I'm going to rob an armored car today.' "

In some cases, the heists are an inside job, plotted with the help of a current or former armored-car-company employee.

"But even without that, it's pretty easy to establish a pattern with armored cars," Klaver said. "These are big, marked vehicles."

Films like "Heat" and "The Town" build heart-stopping action sequences around armored-car heists, romanticizing the robbers, portraying them as conflicted characters whom people want to root for.

Author Duane Swierczynski has explored the fascination that the public has with desperadoes who pull off daring robberies in some of his books, from the nonfiction This Here's a Stick-Up: The Big Bad Book of American Bank Robbery to the novel The Wheelman.

"Professional thieves are assumed to have a code of honor, versus some mugger or home invader who takes your money and cuts your throat anyway," he said.

"We think professional thieves will get in and out of a situation quickly, and they won't hurt innocent people."

In real life, that's not always the case.

Loomis armored guards William Widmaier and Joseph Alullo were fatally shot in Northeast Philly in 2007 by a would-be thief, Mustafa Ali, now serving a life sentence.

"Even with bank robbers who aren't armed, there's a certain amount of desperation involved, and that's what worries law enforcement the most, if that desperation increases," Klaver said.

"We've had guys who were wanted for murder who were robbing banks . . . Even if no one gets hurt, we look it at is as a crime of violence."

Looking back on the Holmesburg Halloween heist, Harner, 42, is still shocked by how fast the robbers moved.

In the time it took her to run about 20 feet from the back of the Unique Images salon to the front, the robbery was over and the perpetrators were gone.

She darted outside to check on the Garda guard, who was splayed out on the ground.

"I didn't know if they hurt him. My heart went out to him," Harner said.

"I said, 'You're shaking. Are you all right?' He told me that he was OK, that he just had a scrape on his arm."

The FBI said the stick-up men and a getaway driver ditched the green minivan several blocks away, on Arthur Street near Leon, and took off in another vehicle. The minivan had been stolen in Upper Darby two months before the Halloween robbery.

They used a white minivan to flee the scene of the robbery outside the TD Bank last April, and ditched that one, too, before jumping into a waiting white Cadillac Escalade, the Northeast Times reported.

Christine Bearden, who owns a hair-and-nail salon on Frankford Avenue across from the TD Bank, said she couldn't believe how brazen the robbers were.

"I just don't understand how they're doing this in broad daylight," she said. "Is it an inside job? It seems like they're getting better at it."

Bearden, 39, repeatedly eyed her front door while noting that her salon has been robbed several times, including once last summer by a man who zapped her in the head with a stun gun.

"Everyone's looking for easy money," she said. "It's really scary."

Speaking of easy money, hefty rewards are attached to these armored-car cases.

Garda spokesman Joe Gavaghan said the company posted a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the gunmen behind the 2011 robbery, and $25,000 rewards for the 2013 and 2014 heists. (Garda's rewards are contingent upon the stolen cash being recovered . . . which could be a long shot.)

John Apeldorn, the president of the Citizens Crime Commission of Delaware Valley, said the organization also posted a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Holmesburg Halloween robbers.

The FBI also has rewards available for anyone who can provide crucial information.

Tipsters can reach the FBI at 215-418-4000, or the Crime Commission at 215-546-TIPS.

The heists are the kind of scenarios that armored-car companies fret about most.

"When these instances occur, we try to use each one as an opportunity to improve our security," Gavaghan said.

"Our people are trained to be constantly vigilant at each step of the process. That awareness factor is critical."