Word: holdup
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...epidemic of bank holdups? Simple enough: withdrawals are easy. For one thing there are more and more targets. As the number of banks and branches in the U.S. rose from 52,000 in 1968 to 90,000 today, the number of robberies soared from 2,040 in 1970 to 4,739 in 1978. Banks are often located close to highways and shopping centers, a convenience for robbers as well as customers. Tellers are trained to hand over the money in a holdup to avoid shootings, and even the guards are often instructed not to resist. As a result, notes...
...only did he brandish a chrome-plated pistol, but he was a natty dresser who always wore a fedora and treated his victims with elaborate courtesy. He once even apologetically told a clerk, "I wouldn't do this if I didn't have to." After seven holdup witnesses picked the same man out of a police lineup last February, the authorities indicted an unlikely suspect: the Rev. Bernard T. Pagano, 53, then assistant pastor at St. Mary's Refuge of Sinners Church in Cambridge...
...characters have less bulk but more definition: Ellerbee is the nicest of guys, a Minneapolis liquor-store owner who voluntarily supports the families of two employees who have been shot during a holdup...
They had pulled off the biggest holdup in U.S. history with professional perfection, but the $5,850,000 in cash and jewelry turned them giddy, as well it might. The gang that seized the loot from a Lufthansa Airlines cargo facility at New York City's Kennedy International Airport last December quickly committed blunders unworthy of a teenage shoplifting ring. As a result, two of the gang were under arrest last week, one was murdered, another was presumed dead and the identity of the others was known to the FBI and New York police...
...tough Democratic politician, struck first in 1959. She was secretary of state then, the third-ranking office in Kentucky, and she found one day that both Governor Happy Chandler and his Lieutenant Governor were away. By law, that made her the boss. So she pardoned three prisoners, including a holdup man sentenced to up to life for stealing...