Police: Robbers watched bank manager for weeks

CALIFORNIA, Md. (AP) — The four suspects in a bank robbery apparently spent weeks watching the bank manager they kidnapped and forced to withdraw money, police said.

The suspects are accused of carrying out a bold plan early on Sept. 24, kidnapping the manager, holding her toddler son hostage and forcing her to take $168,000 from the bank.

On Monday, St. Mary's County authorities described how the quartet — three men and a woman — allegedly executed a bank robbery scheme.

"It's pretty clear that they did their homework," said Lt. Rick Burris, commander of the St. Mary's Bureau of Criminal Investigations.

Joseph Brown, 36, of California, Edwin Jones, 40, of Lexington Park, Quinita Ennis, 30, and William Johnson, 37, are charged with kidnapping and other offenses.

Ennis and Jones were arrested Friday night in Lexington Park. They did not have lawyers at Monday's hearing at St. Mary's District Court, where they were ordered held without bond.

Johnson and Brown were arrested Saturday in Raleigh, N.C., and awaiting extradition.

Investigators found about $110,000 of the stolen money Friday, a lot of it in two safes buried in Brown's back yard, police said. He and the other three gambled the rest — about $58,000 — away, in Atlantic City, or spent it on clothes, computers, iPods and plane tickets to Las Vegas, authorities said.

"All the coconspirators basically went on a shopping spree," Burris said.

For a while, suspicion fell on the bank manager, Latoya Booth, because the plan was so unusual. Authorities said Monday that neither she nor any other bank employee is believed to have been involved.

Charging documents state Brown and Johnson kidnapped Booth, the 18-month-old boy and a 5-year-old girl from outside their Lusby home in Calvert County.

They drove in Booth's car to the PNC branch in California, where they forced Booth and her daughter to go inside and take out $168,000 in two white bags, police said. Booth was allowed to leave her daughter in the bank. A bank employee called 911.

Brown and Johnson left Booth and her son at a nearby school, police said. Brown and Johnson abandoned Booth's car and met with Ennis, who drove them to Brown's house.

The fist tip about the case came from an informant who said Jones had talked about the robbery "several weeks" before it happened, charging documents say.