http://www.msnbc.com/news/944187.asp
BARNEGAT, N.J., July 25 — Kathleen Wortman Jones was just another financially strapped New Jersey homeowner until the day she drove up to the Sun National Bank with her 14-year-old twin daughters. Desperate to save her house from foreclosure, the 34-year-old mother of four served as the getaway driver after the girls robbed the bank of $3,050.
THE HEIST involved the entire family, according to prosecutors. In addition to Jones and the twins, a 16-year-old daughter was arrested for conspiracy and husband Kevin Jones was charged as an accessory.
But it was the participation of the girls that stunned police.
“Fourteen-year-old girls steal lipstick, not rob banks,” said Detective Michael Duffy. “The fact that such young girls — children, really — were involved in such a serious crime does set you back a little.”
Jones had already seen her share of setbacks. A teenage bride, she gave birth to her first child at 17 and the twins at 19. After her first marriage broke up, she met Kevin Jones, who was working as a sheetrock installer after a three-year prison term for selling cocaine. The couple had a daughter together before marrying in 1996.
She took odd jobs — as a Kmart cashier, an orderly at a nursing home — to help pay the bills for a family unit that now included his disabled mother and, sometimes, two of his children from a previous relationship.
FROM BANKRUPTCY TO ROBBERY
In 2000, they moved into a modest four-bedroom ranch house. Last year, they went for months at a time without making the $1,000 mortgage payments. In July, Kathleen Jones filed for bankruptcy.
Things worsened in September, when Kevin Jones was hospitalized with congestive heart failure and could not work.
After the mortgage company that held the $94,223 note filed a foreclosure notice, Kathleen Jones’ children took matters into their own hands, according to Kevin Jones.
“They figured ‘If Daddy goes to work, he’s going to die. Let’s go get the money,”’ he said. “It was the children that thought this up, not her. She woke up and caught them stealing my car to do a robbery. She drove that car to make sure her kids were safe, that whatever happened to them would happen to her.”
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Kevin Jones was asleep when they left on the morning of Oct. 29, 2002, for the bank, about five miles from their home.
There, the twins — identified in court papers only as E.W. and C.W. — hopped out. One donned a black knit ski mask, the other a nylon stocking. One carried a silver pistol, which turned out to be a toy that fires pellets at a Velcro target. In they went, like “a teenage Thelma and Louise,” as one detective put it.
A GAMBLING JUNKET
It was two days before Halloween when the 5-foot-2 girls announced the stickup.
“What is this, a joke?” the branch manager said.
“No, we ain’t (expletive) joking,” one of them replied. “Give us your money.” She handed a black plastic trash bag to a teller.
The teller stuffed the cash in and the girls ran out, one removing her mask as she ran past a drive-thru window before jumping into Mom’s 1992 Buick Skylark for the getaway.
Dad found out about the robbery when they got home.
“What was I supposed to do? Say, ‘Here, police, my wife and kids just robbed a bank’? My only thought at that time was ‘What do we do now?”’ Kevin Jones said.
The family drove to Atlantic City, where the girls hung out on the Boardwalk as the parents gambled in a casino. On the ride home, Kevin Jones allegedly threw the toy pistol in a trash bin.
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