A senior citizen who spent decades behind bars for a spree of bank robberies was arrested again last week after allegedly targeting a series of Chicago-area financial institutions, authorities said.
Donald “Doc” Bennett, 83, was caught and charged in the Feb. 14 heist of a Chase Bank – and is linked to a half-dozen more stickups — after he was released in 2020 from his second stint behind bars, according to reports.
The convicted felon, along with an accomplice, allegedly flashed a gun while robbing the Chase of about $7,000 on Valentine’s Day, according to a criminal complaint filed by the FBI.
Bennett, of Kentucky, and Edward Binert, 55, were arrested at the latter’s Illinois home last Wednesday.
The pair were linked to the crime in part because they allegedly used their real names to rent a getaway car, a special agent wrote in an affidavit.
Bennett, who once earned the nickname the “leaping bandit” decades earlier for the way he hopped over bank counters, according to the Chicago Tribune, was additionally linked by the feds to six other robberies at Chase or Fifth Third Banks dating back to last June.
While the octogenarian was no longer pulling similar stunts, he allegedly kept to his age-old method of donning a wig during the bank heists.
During an Aug. 25 robbery at a different Chase in Oak Lawn, Bennett is suspected of swiping $30,886 while he wore a brown wig under a ball cap and surgical masks, the criminal complaint states.
“I know that six of the seven bank robberies have the following similarities: the robber was a single older white male wearing a face covering, who brandished a handgun; the robber demanded bank funds from a teller; and a rental vehicle was used as the getaway vehicle,” according to an agent in the criminal complaint.
Bennett wore wigs during a string of robberies in the 1980s, according to a Chicago Tribune story at the time.
He was also sentenced to 24 years following a bank robbery and assault with a deadly weapon conviction in 1967, the FBI said.
Binert, his suspected accomplice, allegedly admitted to the FBI following his arrest that he was involved in the Feb. 14 theft and that Bennett rented the getaway vehicle. He said the two met while in federal prison in 2006.
Both men are facing charges of armed robbery, which Bennett appeared to foreshadow in 1989 when he was captured for a separate set of bank robberies.
When a police officer asked Bennett back then what he would do when he’s released from prison, Bennett replied, “Jump counters again. But it probably won’t be as easy,” the Chicago Tribune reported at the time.