Have you got a retirement plan?

This fellow certainly had. When you think about it, though his choice of ‘retirement community’ leaves something to be desired, all his needs were seen to. :smiley:

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20041122172409990024&cid=431

Only AOL members can get that link.

Here you go:

Nation’s Oldest Known Bank Robber Dies
Former Businessman Turned to Crime for ‘Fun’
By BETSY BLANEY, AP


DALLAS (Nov. 22) - J.L. Hunter “Red” Rountree, the nation’s oldest known bank robber, who turned to crime in his 80s and said the robberies made him feel good for days afterward, died in a prison hospital. He was 92.

A spokesman for the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., said Rountree was transferred there shortly after his sentencing in January for a bank holdup in Abilene when he was 91.

He died Oct. 12, two months shy of his 93rd birthday.

The Abilene job was the last of three bank robberies Rountree began in 1998, when he was 86. In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this year, he said he walked slowly to a teller’s window, handed over an envelope indicating his intent and was greeted with a surprised, “Are you kidding?”

The teller complied anyway, but Rountree was later caught and sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison - a death sentence for a man of his age.


“You want to know why I rob banks?” Rountree said in the interview. “It’s fun. I feel good, awful good. I feel good for sometimes days, for sometimes hours.”

Born Dec. 11, 1911, in his family’s farmhouse near Brownsville, Rountree was once a successful businessman who made his fortune in Houston by building Rountree Machinery Co., a relative said.

Before that, he had a business bank loan turn sour and the bitterness stayed with him, he indicated in the March interview from his wheelchair in prison.

About a year after his wife’s death in 1986, Rountree, then 76, married a 31-year-old woman and spent $500,000 putting her through drug rehabilitation programs, he said.

In 1998, Rountree robbed SouthTrust Bank in Biloxi, Miss., and was sentenced to three years probation, fined $260 and told to leave Mississippi.


A year later, he robbed a NationsBank in Pensacola, Fla., but this time he was sentenced to three years behind bars. He was released in 2002.

In August 2003, Rountree robbed First American Bank in Abilene.

No family member claimed Rountree’s body, said Al Quintero, a prison spokesman. He is buried in a cemetery near the Springfield prison.


11/22/04 17:21 EST

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

My appologies to non-aol folk. Being mostly computer illiterate, these basic things escape (or simply avoid) my scutiny. Thanks Aderyn_du for posting it in readable form for everyone. In the future I’ll do the same with any aol schtuff. :slight_smile:

J.L. Hunter “Red” Rountree, the nation’s oldest known bank robber, who turned to crime in his 80s and said the robberies made him feel good for days afterward, died in a prison hospital. He was 92.

…Y’know, that’s not a bad idea. I’ve always said that when I’m old and gray, and I’ve not a lot to lose, perhaps I’d take up doing some bank-robbing. As long as no one got hurt… :smiling_imp:

But, that’s a long ways away. I don’t even know what my “career” is going to be!!! :roll:

Just think, after being arrested, convicted, sent to jail and all…everything would be taken care of…food, clothing, medical and funeral arrangements. And all you would have to do is attempt or succeed in robbing a bank, then turn yourself in.

Being a tax payer, I would like to have this knid of security when I know that my time is rather on the limited side…and no one is around who wants to take care of me. :smiley:

Yes I’d like some one to retire Donald Rumsfeld.

Permanently.

Yes indeed, I have given a great deal to thought to my retirement plan. After much research and thought on this, I have come to the conclusion that the secret is to die percisely one day before your creditors catch up with you. :smiley: