No Regrets
then driven it to the Laurelhurst area and parked it within blocks of the Prudential Bank. That accomplished, he’d taken a cab back to his apartment.
The next morning, which was the Monday of the robbery, Sam said, he’d driven his VW bug to the block where witnesses had spotted it. He’d used the stolen pickup to get to the bank. At that point, everything was going just as he had planned.
But not for long. All of his careful choreography had evaporated as he turned to exit the bank with his bounty. Even so, his voice was relatively calm as he described his struggle with the old man and having to shoot him— something he had never envisioned. Then there was the “WHOOSH!” as the dye trap exploded in the cab of the truck.
He’d dumped the pickup, retrieved his VW bug, and returned to his apartment. Working feverishly, he’d pulled off his stained clothing and fished out some of the bills with the darkest dye color and placed them in a plastic garbage bag. He threw the bag off the Aurora Bridge at the deepest part of the Lake Washington ship canal.
At two o’clock on Tuesday morning, he’d bought some blue spray at a 7-Eleven store and attempted to paint over the rear fender of the bug, but it was raining so hard that the paint kept running, and the results weren’t what he hoped for. Jesse also said that his suitcase, the one federal agents had seized as he landed in Honolulu, contained athousand dollars, some of the few unstained proceeds from the Prudential Bank robbery, as well as some cash from “a previous one.”
Asked what ammunition he used in the .357, he said he’d used Remington hollow-point, semijacketed, 158-grain ammunition. It was quickly apparent that Sam Jesse had felt far more comfortable talking about his plans for the bank robbery, and the way it had gone down, than he did talking about the death of William Heggie.
He told the FBI agents that he had never intended to kill anyone. He hadn’t noticed the old man in the bank until he was robbing the teller. Out of the corner of his eye, he’d seen the man trying to put a key into the bank’s door. The agitated bank manager made three attempts to lock the door without success, and Sam said he’d decided he had to get out of the bank quickly. He grabbed the money bag and headed for the door, bumping into the elderly man.
“When I got to my truck, I saw that the guy had followed me,” Jesse said. “I only meant to scare him when I pointed the gun right at him. But instead of backing off, he just reached out and grabbed the gun with both his hands, and he started trying to wrestle it away from me.
“I was wearing gloves, trying to pull the gun back. I heard the gun hammer cock, and there was an explosion. The old man said something like, ‘Oh, my God,’ and he fell down. I just panicked and drove off. I guess I was about one hundred yards from the bank when the dye pack detonated.”
Sam Jesse admitted he had no partner, and no gang. He waived extradition and was flown back to Seattle, charged now with first-degree murder and first-degree robbery, his bail set at a quarter of a million dollars. It was an ignominious end for a young man who had fantasized a life ofleisure, the fruits of a masterminded plan to rob banks. He had never envisioned jail. Jail was what happened to dummies who didn’t plan things out carefully.
Anyone who looked at the case saw the uselessness of it all. Bill Heggie was dead, even though it was quite possible that Sam Jesse never meant for it to happen. Each of them had reacted irrationally, but a loaded gun is a loaded gun. Anyone who carries one has to be aware that it has the potential to fire. For all intents and purposes both Heggie’s and Jesse’s lives ended in that terrible split-second when the hammer on the .357 slipped into the cocked position, even though the weapon had been intended just to frighten a bank teller into handing over money without question.
Nothing had turned out the way Sam planned on New Year’s Eve. Instead of living it up in Honolulu, he was locked up with hundreds of other prisoners, packed into the antique King County Jail. He was devastated, pacing like a caged animal. More than most men, he simply could not accept a life behind bars. That was the one contingency that had never occurred to him.
Sam Jesse never went to trial. On the evening of March 16, he told his cellmates he wasn’t hungry and they went off to eat supper without him. When they returned,
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