USA v. Bowman
| Decision Date | 01 May 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-30120,99-30120 |
| Citation | 215 F.3d 951 |
| Parties | (9th Cir. 2000) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. RAY LEWIS BOWMAN, A.K.A. Charles Clark, Defendant-Appellant |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
[Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Peter Camiel, Mair, Camiel & Kovach, Seattle, Washington, for the defendant-appellant.
Arlen Storm, Assistant United States Attorney, Tacoma, Washington, for the plaintiff-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington; Franklin D. Burgess, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CR-98-05121-FDB
Before: Edward Leavy, Pamela Ann Rymer, and Thomas G. Nelson, Circuit Judges.
One of the most successful partnerships in the nation's history began more than a quarter of a century ago in Kansas City, Missouri and ended in 1997 with the arrests of Ray Lewis Bowman and William Arthur Kirkpatrick. They were known as the "Trench Coat Robbers." Their last hit, at Seafirst Bank in Lakewood, Washington, netted a record $4.4 million.
Both expert locksmiths, they would enter banks just before or just after business hours through locked doors. Wearing wigs, fake mustaches and beards, fedoras, baseball caps, tams, or fisherman's caps, and glasses or sunglasses, one of the two would tie-up bank employees with plastic electrical ties while the other would stand guard with a handgun. Bowman usually used whitish makeup and had an "L" shaped wire with a key on it around his wrist; Kirkpatrick usually had a police scanner piece in his ear. Kirkpatrick would case targets (sometimes with the help of his girlfriend, Myra Penney), arrange for rooms in the vicinity (in the case of Lakewood, under the alias "Don Wilson") and pay the bills. Both Bowman and Kirkpatrick would be gone from home for weeks at a time. After a robbery they would split the take and head their separate ways, Bowman to Kansas City and Kirkpatrick to Burnsville, Minnesota. On his way home, Bowman would stop in different cities along the way, leaving stolen cash, guns and paraphernalia in safe deposit boxes or storage facilities.
Cheryl Clark met both Bowman and Kirkpatrick in the early 1970s, but started dating Bowman in 1983 and moved in with him a year later. Despite being unemployed, he spent money extravagantly on limousines, $800 dinners, expensive cologne, hand made silk shirts, and silk dresses for Clark. He used pay phones, a post office box, and gave money to Clark to deposit into her account. Once when Kirkpatrick got in trouble, Bowman told Clark that he had to help out Kirkpatrick's then wife, because "you take care of your partner's family." Clark saw Bowman experiment with fake mustaches and a wig; and once, when she could see into a room that Bowman always kept locked, she saw police scanners and clothing she had never seen Bowman wear. After Clark and Bowman broke up in late 1989, he dated Jenny Delamotte and they started living together in September 1990. The lifestyle continued. He refused to tell Delamotte anything about his employment, but supported her, her child from a previous relationship, and their two children. He maintained a locked room, which Delamotte was not allowed to enter. And he continued to leave town with no advance notice or advice about where he was going or how to contact him.
Meanwhile Kirkpatrick lived with Penney from 1990 until 1997, primarily in the Minneapolis area. Unlike Bowman, Kirkpatrick told Penney he robbed banks for a living, and she helped by making phone calls, laundering the proceeds, and paying the bills. Kirkpatrick explained that he rented, and she therefore was to pay for, two rooms because "Ray snored." He rented two rooms in Fife, Washington before the Seafirst robbery using the alias of "Don Wilson," gave the bills to Penney, and she paid them.
Things started to unravel for Bowman when he failed to pay rent on a storage locker. On May 22, 1997 the manager at Federal Van and Storage in Kansas City opened two of Bowman's footlockers in order to sell the contents. They included silencer parts, a bulletproof vest, a baseball cap with "Police" on it, a police scanner with attached ear piece, books on disguises, and videos about picking locks. The manager called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), which sent an agent to examine the contents. The manager later identified Bowman as "Charles Clark," the name used by the renter, from a photo montage.
About the same time Michael Senty, to whom Penney had paid $180,000 in cash to build a log cabin on the shores of Lake Superior, near Hovland, Minnesota, reported the suspicious cash transaction to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS began a money laundering investigation and served Penney at the cabin with a federal grand jury subpoena. Kirkpatrick called Bowman, who wasn't home, but Kirkpatrick told Penney that he would call every Friday at 4:45 p.m., and if Bowman were not there, would call back at 6:00 p.m., repeating the procedure the next day. Kirkpatrick packed up a number of items, left $350,000 with a friend, and headed for a storage unit in Las Vegas. When Bowman finally called, Penney told him pursuant to Kirkpatrick's instructions that "Uncle Tom had been to the house."
Around mid-October 1997, Bowman delivered two briefcases containing $480,000 to his brother, Dan Bowman, from whom he had been estranged since 1985. He told him that it was not "drug money," and to give the briefcases to Bowman's daughters if anything happened to him. Dan Bowman subsequently turned the money over to the FBI. It had bills marked with Seafirst Bank's Washington State ABA number, "19-2," and the routing number specifically assigned to the Lakewood Seafirst Bank, "84087." In addition, there was a single strap from one of the bundles that was stamped with Seafirst Bank's Washington ABA number and the Lakewood branch routing number, along with a Seafirst teller's number, "122," initialed and dated by her the day of the robbery, February 10, 1997.
Kirkpatrick was arrested returning from Las Vegas on November 10, 1997. In the car there was a note with the numbers "11070" and "64119, " Ray Bowman's P.O. Box number and zip code; $1,808,776 in cash; numerous credit cards in the name of "Donald Wilson"; two police scanners with ear pieces; a "10 code" sheet listing police radio codes; plastic electrical ties; and four fake moustaches. After trying to bail Kirkpatrick out with $100,000 in cash, Penney was arrested on November 14 for money laundering. She subsequently pled guilty to an Information charging her with laundering the proceeds of Kirkpatrick's bank robberies. A December 2 search of their cabin turned up photographs of Ray Bowman's children on the refrigerator.
During November, Delamotte noticed that Bowman's disposition changed and when asked why he was so upset, Bowman told her that "something happened to a friend of his and he didn't know if it was going to affect him or not. " On December 19 the FBI executed a search warrant at Bowman's residence and found notes placing Bowman in Fife, Washington just prior to the robbery of Seafirst Bank; $89,000 in the basement safe; a "10 code" list of police radio codes; makeup, wigs, beards and mustaches with spirit gum to attach them; plastic electrical ties; police scanners with ear pieces; a bulletproof T-shirt and vest; locksmith manuals and a key code, key blanks, a key making machine, and lock picking equipment. He was arrested for possession of an unregistered silencer (found in the trunks stored at Federal Van and Storage in Kansas City), and ultimately was tried and convicted on this offense. On February 11, 1998 the FBI conducted lineups in Seattle; both Bowman and Kirkpatrick refused to speak, or to produce handwriting or voice exemplars.
On August 5, 1998 a federal grand jury returned a fourcount superseding indictment against Bowman for conspiracy to commit bank robbery, armed bank robbery, use and carrying of a firearm, and interstate transportation of stolen property, in violation of 18 U.S.C. SS 2213(a) and (d), 371, 924(c)(1), and 23141. The armed bank robbery charge (count 2), the use and carrying of a firearm charge (count 3), and the interstate transportation of stolen property charge (count 4), all arose out of the Seafirst robbery. Six different bank robberies (occurring in six different states) were charged as overt acts, although evidence was presented only as to these five:
1. Hawkeye Bank and Trust Company, Des Moines, Iowa -November 7, 1987 ($48,500)
At 3:30 a.m. on November 6, 1987, Bowman and Kirkpatrick broke into the Des Moines, Iowa home of a Hawkeye Bank employee. Both men wore trench coats, fedoras, fake mustaches, and wigs; Bowman also wore white makeup and cologne. The employee, his wife, and their child, traveled with Bowman and Kirkpatrick to the bank at gunpoint, where Bowman tied them up with plastic electrical ties. Kirkpatrick was fiddling with something in his ear. The kidnapped employee provided them with one combination to the vault and the assistant manager provided the other when she arrived. Kirkpatrick and Bowman left with $48,500.
At the Seattle lineup, over ten years later, the employee's son identified Bowman; the employee identified someone other than Bowman; and his wife could not identify anyone. Two other Hawkeye employees who came into work during the robbery identified someone other than Bowman.
2. Michigan National Bank, Saginaw, Michigan -May 28, 1992 ($122,386)
Twenty minutes before opening on May 28, 1992, Bowman and Kirkpatrick entered a Saginaw branch of Michigan National through a locked door. Both men wore navy blue windbreakers and blue baseball caps; Bowman again had on white makeup and a fake mustache while Kirkpatrick wore a wrist cord with a key attached to it and had in an ear piece...
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