Robbery Suspect Held on $10G Bail
By The Sun, Lowell, Mass.
Feb. 20–AYER — A Leominster man is being held on high bail after his image was posted on Mass.Mostwanted.com in connection a Westford bank robbery last week.
Jason Patrick Tarpy, 35, of 91 Mooreland Ave., was ordered held on $10,000 cash bail or $100,000 surety after pleading innocent to unarmed robbery at his arraignment yesterday in Ayer District Court.
A probable-cause hearing is scheduled for March 18 in which Tarpy, through his attorney, will argue that police have insufficient evidence to charge him with the crime.
A video-surveillance camera at the Sovereign Bank last Thursday captured the image of a man wearing a light-gray hooded sweatshirt, black knit hat and dark jogging nylon pants. Police believe they were the same clothes worn by the suspect in a TD Banknorth robbery in Worcester on Feb. 12.
The robber in the Westford case gave the bank teller a note demanding cash. The teller complied, and the man left. Police at the time said no weapon had been shown and no one had been reported injured.
The
suspect fled from the bank toward the nearby Market Basket with about $3,000 and escaped in a white 2000 Chevrolet Impala, police said.
“What we can gather from witnesses is he went out at a high rate of speed toward the highway,” said Capt. Victor Neal Jr.
The break police needed to solve the Valentine’s Day robbery was an anonymous, one-sentence e-mail from a tipster who had been surfing the Mass. Most Wanted Web site.
The e-mail just said Jason Tarpy lives in Leominster.
Tarpy doesn’t have any known connection to Westford but the e-mail tip gave detectives a place to start, Neal said.
Detectives also notified Worcester police because of a similar robbery at a TD Banknorth branch office there.
“While we were trying to (show pictures to) our bank tellers … the Worcester detectives took the information we gave them and went to the Leominster Police Department,” Neal said.
The Sovereign tellers identified Tarpy as the robber.
Worcester and Leominster police found Tarpy living in a motel in Leominster late Friday, Neal said.
After he was arraigned in Ayer, Tarpy was transported to Central District Court in Worcester to be arraigned on a charge of unarmed robbery last Tuesday of the TD Banknorth in Worcester.
The Westford robbery comes a month after the Middlesex Savings Bank, also on Littleton Road, was robbed. In that robbery, two men approached separate tellers with notes demanding money and threatening violence, according to police. The tellers cooperated and nobody was hurt.
Lisa Redmond’s e-mail address is lredmond@lowellsun.com. Jack Minch’s e-mail address is jminch@lowellsun.com.
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