If you're just watching cable news to fulfill an addiction to things political, you may have missed the story of D. B. Tuber, the clever, mysterious criminal who pulled off an armored car robbery in Monroe, Washington on Tuesday, September 30. 2008
D. B. Tuber isn't his real name, of course, it's the nickname someone somewhere (seriously, I don't know how he got it) has already given the guy who masterminded a heist that could have come straight out of a Hollywood script. The nick is an obvious homage to the pseudonymous Dan "D. B." Cooper, the mysterious skyjacker who parachuted with his ill-gotten gains from an airliner way back in 1971 and was never seen again.
Yeah, yeah, people who write about certain types of crime use the "out of a Hollywood script" trope a lot, but just wait -- you'll see what I mean. And at the end of it all you'll get a half-assed theory/suggestion from me as to who might have concocted such an admittedly clever scenario.
The caper started off on Craigslist.org. An enticing ad was posted on or about September 27 seeking laborers for a landscaping job that was to begin on the 30th in Monroe. The job would pay $28.50 an hour. The poster, who used the e-mail address
[email protected], was very specific about what laborers were supposed to wear: "workers must purchase safety glasses or equivalent eye protection, ventilator mask, yellow safety vest, long sleeves and no shorts, along with proper foot protection." The poster also stated that anyone showing up that Tuesday morning should have "landscaping experience."
Tuesday morning rolled around and a man wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt, a blue hat, and camouflage shorts strolled across the parking lot of the Bank of America on Route 2 in Monroe. He wore a particle mask (similar to a surgical mask if seen from a distance) and carried some sort of sprayer.
He ran up to the armored car and the guard parked there in the lot and sprayed the guard, disabling him. The robber grabbed a bag of money and he took off in the direction of the nearby Skykomish River.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that two men who witnessed the robbery took off after the guy, but he was too fast. A third witness spotted a man fitting the robber's description near Woods Creek. It isn't actually clear as to whether the guy truly hopped in an inner tube to make his getaway, but police did find a tube next to the river. Hell, it makes a good story, so for the moment, we'll just imagine he did.
The cops came and found themselves confronted with the 12 or so guys who had shown up for the job advertised on Craigslist. Most of them were dressed as they'd been told to dress. Therefore, they were dressed like the guy who'd just robbed the armored car.
There was no landscaping job. There were only 12 guys looking to make a buck who were scammed into essentially being the robber's camouflage.
As Monroe Police Operations Commander Gary Clopp dryly told one paper, "It is obvious that some pre-planning took place."
I'm not so cocky as to write the following and call it gospel. At best it's a guess, an intuition.
This story made me think of an alleged armored car robber and killer named Jason Derek Brown. Brown has been on the run from the law since 2004.
This isn't as big a stretch as it may seem. For one thing, Brown has been spotted recently, in his home state of Utah.
Brown is wanted for the November 29, 2004 robbery and murder of armored car guard Robert Keith Palomares in Ahwatukee, AZ, just outside of Phoenix.
Read the way America's Most Wanted describes the attack on Palomares:
As Keith left the theater complex, a hooded man, dressed entirely in black, came running, his gun drawn. Then, without speaking a word, police say the gunman started firing at Keith's head. In all, six shots were fired, five striking the driver. Police say the gunman then grabbed the bag of money and took off towards an alley. The hooded fugitive hopped on a bike and fled...
A quick, running attack -- only in this case with a gun. The money was snatched and the robber ran for a non-standard getaway vehicle -- a bicycle.
The robber in Monroe fit Brown's general description -- right height range, and he looked to be in his mid-20s. While Brown is near 40, it isn't a big leap to think a witness might mistake the age of a guy in a situation like this. Jason Derek Brown is known to be athletic and fit, and he has a peculiar habit of shaving all his body hair, save the hair on his head. That sort of thing might take a few years off a guy's appearance.
Brown has ties to the Northwest. AMW listed locations Brown has frequented in the past. In addition to Salt Lake City, Brown may be hiding in places like Portland, Oregon and Vancouver and Whistler, Canada.
Brown is also into water sports like boating and fishing.
You can begin to see why the crime committed by the mysterious D. B. Tuber might make Jason Brown come to mind.
There's another reason. It's out there, but it's the sort of thing that might just keep bothering me if I didn't just go ahead and throw it against the wall, see if it sticks.
I did a Google search on a phrase from the Monroe Craigslist ad: "safety glasses or equivalent eye protection."
There were nine hits. Three were news articles about this case, four were identical texts on auto repair. Another hit had something to do with aviation. The interesting result was from a Utah State Government manual dictating proper handling of hazardous waste. Utah -- Jason Brown's home state.
I'm fully aware of how tangential these connections are. Sometimes, though, a large number of connections that might be minimal by themselves can be compelling when they're added together. Here we have someone who either is Jason Derek Brown himself or he has a hell of a lot in common with the Top Ten fugitive. Frankly, I think you could ignore the fact that Brown has frequented that part of the northwest and certainly ignore the oddly tell-tale phrase from Craigslist and still find the robber's approach to the Monroe crime interesting. He cleverly set up a smokescreen with the fake ad. Then he approached wearing a disguise that was, in context, not all that odd. He blitzed the guard, just as Brown allegedly did in Arizona, but fortunately for the Washington guard, he used pepper spray instead of a gun. He took off on foot towards a body of water -- a similar escape to Brown's.
In the end, I honestly expect that police will find that someone else committed this crime. There are known details that might point away from Brown, after all -- for instance, how did the robber know to set up the ruse with the laborers at the right time that Tuesday morning? That took either careful observation or inside knowledge.
But I just found the possible connections to the fugitive too interesting to ignore. If justice prevails and Jason Derek Brown ends up in federal prison with D. B. Tuber, whoever he is, at least the guys will have something to talk about.
, however I think in general a fugitive with this much publicity does not want to be in America. They supposedly turned up the heat in Thailand, so that would be my educated guess based on leads. But if I didn't know that lead and this is really grasping at straws here so who knows- it would be France followed by British Columbia in Canada.