The robbery the Bureau believed in · South Bend, 1994

Before October 27, 1994 — file 91A-IP-79372

What the file says: the FBI's released file in the Midwest bank-robbery investigations — obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and published as the "Midwest Bank Robberies" (BOMBROB) release — contains an Indianapolis Division teletype of February 1995 that names a South Bend robbery without dating or describing it. Two men arrested at Evansville on February 9, 1995, whose names the released file withholds, were in the Bureau's judgment possibly responsible for more than the Evansville jobs they were held on: "it is believed subjects possibly committed a bank robbery in South Bend, Indiana (91A-IP-79372)." The teletype dates the robbery only by its method. The pair's practice was to buy older getaway cars and vans for cash, usually in hundred-dollar bills, fit them with stolen plates, and abandon them near the banks; during their Evansville robbery of October 27, 1994, they switched cars into a vehicle that had been bought a few days before the South Bend robbery, and left it about five miles from the switch site. The South Bend job therefore stands in the file as earlier than late October 1994, at a bank the released pages do not name.

Its standing: this entry prints a Bureau belief, stated in the Bureau's own hedged words, and nothing more. The teletype anticipated that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana would seek indictments of the pair on multiple bank robbery and weapons charges on February 22, 1995; whether the South Bend attribution was ever charged, proved, or dropped is not in the released record, and the entry does not pretend otherwise. One caution belongs to the file itself: the same FOIA release interleaves a different and famous investigation, the BOMBROB case proper (Major Case 124, the Guthrie and Langan gang and its eighteen banks in seven states). No South Bend bank stands on that case's list in the released pages, and the two files must not be merged — the South Bend robbery of 1994 belongs to the Evansville pair's file, as a possibility the Bureau recorded and the public record leaves open.

Sources:

1. FBI, "Midwest Bank Robberies" FOIA release (BOMBROB), Section 01 — Indianapolis Division teletype, February 1995: the Evansville arrests of February 9, 1995; the subjects "believed to have committed" three other Evansville robberies and possibly a bank robbery in South Bend, Indiana (91A-IP-79372); the car-buying method and the switch vehicle bought days before the South Bend robbery and used October 27, 1994; anticipated Southern District of Indiana indictments, February 22, 1995. Subject names withheld in the release.
2. Same release — the Major Case 124 (BOMBROB proper) teletypes, naming eighteen banks in seven states, none in South Bend; the two investigations distinguished here as the Fort Wayne file's surviving record distinguishes them.