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91-Year-Old Pleads Guilty in Bank Robbery

Posted on: Thursday, 9 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

A 91-year-old man, leaning on a cane and wearing a headset to listen to the judge, pleaded guilty Thursday to robbing an Abilene bank.

J.L. Hunter "Red" Rountree pleaded guilty in federal court to taking $1,999 from a bank in August, his third such robbery in less than five years.

Rountree initially responded "not guilty" when U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings asked for his plea.

"Not guilty?" Cummings said.

"I mean, `Guilty,'" Rountree said. "I'm sorry."

Rountree faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A sentencing date has not been set.

The bespeckled and gray-bearded Rountree had shackles around his ankles Thursday and appeared somewhat stooped. He sat attentively in Cummings' courtroom, about 150 miles west of Abilene, as several other offenders entered their pleas.

His attorney, Shery Kime-Goodwin, declined to comment.

In August, Rountree handed a First American Bank teller an envelope with "Robbery" written on it in red marker, said federal prosecutors in Dallas. He gave her a second envelope and told her to put money in it.

Twice the teller asked Rountree if he was kidding. After the first time, Rountree said, "Hurry up or you will get hurt," authorities said.

A bank employee and some customers got Rountree's license plate number as he left the parking lot, and he was stopped by authorities 30 minutes later about 20 miles from Abilene.

Rountree's crime spree began in December 1998, a week before his 87th birthday. He was arrested in Biloxi, Miss., minutes after he robbed a bank. He was eventually given three years' probation, fined $260 and told to leave Mississippi.

Less than a year later, in October 1999, he was arrested outside a NationsBank in Pensacola, Fla., after giving a teller a note that said "ROBBERY" written in red ink and telling her, "Give me the $100s." He was convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to three years in prison, becoming the oldest inmate in the Florida prison system.

In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel in 2001, Rountree was asked what he would do when he got out of prison.

"I might rob another bank," Rountree said. "I'm not saying I will or I won't. But, hey, I might need to."

Bobby Rountree, the elderly man's great-nephew and city manager of Goldthwaite, did not immediately return a call for comment Thursday.

A relative has said that J.L. Rountree once was a successful businessman who made his fortune in Houston by building Rountree Machinery Co. About a year after his wife's death in 1986, Rountree, 76, married a 31-year-old woman and spent $500,000 putting her through drug rehabilitation programs, he has said.

Sometime after they divorced, Rountree robbed his first bank.

He told the Florida newspaper that money and revenge were his motivation. A Corpus Christi bank that he'd done business with had forced him into bankruptcy, he told the newspaper, and he had not liked banks since then.

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