CHICAGO (AP) — Two bank robbers pulled off a daring escape from downtown Chicago's high-rise jail Tuesday by apparently scaling down about 20 stories using a makeshift rope tied to the bars in a cell window.
Police helicopters and canine units swarmed the area, but not until more than three hours after Joseph "Jose" Banks and Kenneth Conley went unaccounted for during a 5 a.m. headcount, U.S. Marshal's Service spokeswoman Belkis Cantor said.
Both men were still at large late Tuesday night.
Investigators found a broken window in the men's cell, where window bars were found inside a mattress, according to an FBI affidavit filed late Tuesday. Fake metal bars also were found in the men's cell, a rope was tied to a window bar, and each man's bed was stuffed with clothing and sheets to resemble a body, the affidavit said.
President Bill Clinton & Monica Lewinsky
On December 19, 1998, the House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. Clinton, the second president in American history to be impeached, vowed to finish his term.
John Kehoe
On December 18, 1878, the last of the Molly Maguires, John Kehoe is executed in Pennsylvania. The Molly Maguires, an Irish secret society that had allegedly been responsible for some incidences of vigilante justice in the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania, defended their actions as attempts to protect exploited Irish-American workers. In fact, they are often regarded as one of the first organized labor groups.
Barbara Jane Mackle
On December 17, 1968, Barbara Jane Mackle, a student at Emory College and the 20-year-old daughter of a millionaire real-estate developer is kidnapped from the Rodeway Inn in Decatur, Georgia.
Thelma Todd
On December 15, 1935, comedic actress Thelma Todd is found dead. Todd was a popular actress of the late 1920s and early 1930s and was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1905. Appearing in over 40 movies between 1926 and 1935, she is best remembered for her comedic roles in films such as Monkey Business and Horse Feathers.
Edward Green
Edward Green was the 32 year old postmaster of Malden, Massachusetts. He is commonly believed to have committed the first (non-war related) armed bank robbery in American history. Green had a bad drinking habit and was heavily in debt, when on December 15, 1863, he robbed the local bank.
On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the city’s firefighters. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick O’Connor, the facts—or a lack of them—didn’t add up. Justice on Fire is OConnor’s detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters’ deaths and the terrible injustice that followed. Also available from Amazon
