- Call came in for a bank robbery
in, uh, Newton, Massachusetts.
The hood was up, black mask covering his face,
and out came the gun.
And he's waving it all around.
- What did you call him, the Southside Bandit?
- Southside Bandit.
- One of the best predictors
of future violent criminal behavior
is a history of violent criminal behavior.
- He actually grabs the manager,
and he puts the gun to the manager's head.
- Now we've hit another level.
It just keeps escalating.
We're on this target.
We think he's gonna hit a bank,
and we're not in position.
- If someone tries to stop him,
there's a good chance
he's gonna turn around and shoot them.
[dramatic music]
- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.
♪
Drug busts,
mob stings,
terrorist takedowns.
- Get down! Get down!
- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it.
- Freeze! - FBI.
- FBI! - Action!
- But they don't know the half of it.
[indistinct radio chatter]
What really goes down,
we save that for each other
when we're talking agent-to-agent.
♪
This is "FBI True."
[percussive music]
♪
- Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FBI.
She worked gangs, crimes against children,
as well as human and drug trafficking.
Kottis was the supervisor
of the FBI's threat response squad,
overseeing the Bureau's response to terrorism threats
in New York City.
♪
- So tell me about this bank robbery,
serial bank robber,
the, uh-- what did you call him?
The Southside Bandit? - Southside Bandit.
- Now, who named him that? The squad, you?
- No, I did. - You did?
You got that? It's a nice name.
- Yeah. - And why do we call him that?
- All the banks were in South Newton, Massachusetts,
which is south of Boston.
- Bob DiSalvatore spent six years
in the Malden PD narcotics unit,
where he led undercover operations
throughout the Boston area.
He was later assigned
to the FBI Violent Crime Task Force
as a special deputy U.S. Marshal,
investigating bank robberies and other violent crimes.
[tense music]
♪
- Call came in for a bank robbery
in Newton, Massachusetts.
A guy came in the bank, face completely covered.
♪
He had gloves on, and he immediately produced a handgun
and took over the whole bank.
- He was engaging with customers and employees,
and making verbal threats.
- Randy Jarvis has over 27 years of combined service
in the U.S. Army and the FBI.
As assistant special agent in charge
at the Boston field office, Randy oversaw
dangerous criminal investigations.
He finished his career at Boston Division
as the supervisory special agent
of the violent crimes unit.
[electronic beeping]
- There was an escalation in the language,
telling people to get the fuck down.
You can tell he wants this done.
He wants to get in and out.
- He's waving that gun around.
He's sticking it in their faces.
And he hit every single teller.
He didn't just go to one teller.
He took over the whole bank.
The three tellers were very, very afraid.
- Yeah, the emotional damage that, um, bank robbers do is--
is more than I think people even recognize, you know?
- It's almost like they came into their house
and threatened them.
And I think that most of the--most of the tellers
were feeling like, "I just got violated."
- You're the teller standing on the other side
of the counter, it--
I mean, that's extremely real to you.
- As he was leaving the bank,
he demanded everybody lay down on the ground.
Then he would leave and, uh, he could get away quicker,
without anybody following him outside
to see where he was going.
We call that an armed takeover.
So that automatically ratchets
the investigation up considerably.
This was, like, going to the top of the list.
♪
I worked with the Newton police.
We did our interviews, and we found out
how much money was stolen.
♪
The next one was about--
almost exactly one month later...
♪
At the Bank of America.
Same exact MO.
He had the gray hooded sweatshirt.
The hood was up, black mask covering his face.
And again, out came the gun, and he's waving it all around.
And he got, uh--
he got a sizable amount of money.
- So when you looked at the bank surveillance film,
you noticed that it's the same guy.
- Same guy. - Are you worried at this point
that, you know--hey,
someone like that, he's gonna escalate
and eventually get so comfortable
that he is gonna, like, cap somebody?
- That is absolutely--
you know, maybe someone wants to be the hero.
"Hey, I--I can stop this guy. I can stop him."
So that's always in our mind, that "Oh, my God, he's"--
if someones tries to stop him--
'cause he's very violent. He's very aggressive.
If someone tries to stop him, there's a good chance
he's gonna turn around and shoot them.
[percussive music]
♪
Normally, we would collect
the best picture of the suspect,
and we would go onto a website--
it's called Mass Most Wanted.
So I would post the picture right away onto this website
asking for the help, for the public's help,
to say, "Anybody know this person?
"You can call me confidentially.
There is--there is reward money available."
- If we are able to get a lead to identify somebody
and write an affidavit and get an arrest warrant,
and then go arrest them with all the right resources,
we love to do that, right?
Because that makes it safer
for the person we're going after,
makes it safer for law enforcement.
- So every time you hear that there's
a bank robbery in Newton,
are you thinking, "It's my guy"?
- Oh, my God, yes. I--I kind of get--
- Yeah, yeah.
- Every time I go, a bank robber.
Here we go again.
- How often is he going?
So he's done two--
- Well, that was, uh, January 25 to February 25.
So there's a 30-day break in between.
But in Boston, 90% of our bank robbers
were, um, people with a drug problem.
If it's--if it's a kid who has a drug problem,
especially a really bad heroin problem,
they can burn through $1,000, $2,000, in a couple of days.
So every other day, every--every three days,
he's gonna rob a bank.
This guy was getting a lot of money,
but he was still lasting them 30 days.
So I'm thinking, "Well, you know, maybe he's--
"maybe he's not a junkie.
Maybe he doesn't fit the profile."
- Right. - Maybe he's doing this
for another reason.
[uneasy music]
The third bank was the Century Bank in Newton.
♪
- Now we've had three bank robberies.
So you guys are starting to use mapping, at least.
Like, he goes here, what exits are close to there.
- You're looking at stuff south of 90, you know,
'cause 90 cuts in
from the east to west into Boston,
and that's where, geographically, this started.
We felt as if there must be some connection there.
We just-- - Does he live in Newton?
Is he from Newton?
Why is he picking Newton?
Is he familiar with Newton?
We're putting assets on the street.
We got guys.
I'm like, "I don't know who he is.
"I don't know what he's driving.
"I do know that he's hitting banks in South Newton,
"so let's flood South Newton so that if one comes in,
"we're there,
and we can maybe get there and catch him."
And the next robbery that happened
was the Village Bank in Newton.
At one point, he actually grabs the manager,
and he puts the gun to the manager's head.
- Now we've hit another level, right?
It keeps escalating. - Yeah.
- Because we started out with the engaging verbally,
making the threats, and now--now he's putting
his hands on people.
- Not only is he progressing in his violence
and his attitude toward the--the people in the bank,
but he's also doing it more frequently, now.
He's went from 30 days
to less than 30, now to 20 days.
And we see that he's really progressing,
and he's gonna crash.
Something bad's gonna happen.
He may get to the point where he's doing one every day.
It's like the slowest car accident.
You see it coming.
He eventually stepped outside of Newton.
He went to the next town over, Wellesley.
There was a lady with a very young child in the bank,
and he was very threatening to everybody in the bank,
including the mother and child.
That was bank number five.
- You know, one of the things they teach you
out of Quantico right from the jump,
starting in the violent crime program, right,
is that one of the best predictors
of future violent criminal behavior
is a history of violent criminal behavior.
- We would say, "Who's our list of bank robbers
that maybe just got out of jail, okay?"
Because this guy looks like he knows what he's doing.
He's in and out of that bank within a minute
to a minute and a half.
He--the gun is out right away.
He's herding everybody into the middle of the bank,
and then he's telling them to get on the ground afterwards.
Like, most people that go into a bank,
they don't have a plan.
This guy has a plan.
I would contact
the county houses of correction,
and I would say, "Who did you just release?
"Who's been released in the last 30 days
that did prior bank robberies before?"
And I wasn't getting any luck with that, either.
- We're working with, uh, you know,
public affairs and our media rep,
and doing whatever we can.
- At this point, we don't have any identity.
We're not getting any luck at all
with cameras in the neighborhoods,
or picking him up going to and from the bank.
- Really? - No.
- So when do you get your first break in this case?
You know what I mean?
- All right, so then we got lucky.
The next bank he did was up
in, uh, Plaistow, New Hampshire.
He robs the bank, does his normal thing.
That gun is out. He's yelling and screaming.
He's yelling and screaming, telling everybody
to get on the ground.
"Give me all the money out of the drawers."
[dramatic music]
And as he leaves, the manager follows him.
So he sees him leave the front of the bank,
and he runs across the street, crosses over a road.
All of a sudden, he sees a gold Dodge Durango come out
of the parking lot, high rate of speed,
and go off really quick.
So he says, "I think that's him."
And the manager gets, like, the first three numbers
of the--of the car. 4-8-3, it was, I think.
And, um, I'm like, "Whoa, this is great."
So-- - It's fantastic.
- I start checking the databases,
the Registry of Motor Vehicle databases in Massachusetts.
And I can put in a string,
begins with or ends with or contains.
So I put in 4-8-3 as the first three numbers,
and gold Dodge Durango.
I think I got, like, two or three.
- Oh, perfect. - Boom. Yeah.
One of them came back
to a lady who lived in Haverhill.
♪
So I start looking at her, but she's--
she's a good person.
She goes--she has a job, she goes to work,
she pays her bills.
She's got no criminal record at all.
But then we notice that this girl--
she doesn't live in Haverhill anymore.
She was listed as living in Haverhill,
the car is registered to Haverhill,
but she recently moved to Newton.
She literally lives across the street
from the fourth bank.
We also get into the--more of the social media stuff.
- Yep. - So when I get--
I look at her, she has associates.
One of the associates is Wilfredo Alarcon.
Hispanic male.
He's 5' 9", stocky build,
and he has a extremely violent criminal history.
Armed robberies, firearm charges.
I'm thinking, "I got him.
I think I got him. I think it's my guy."
- Now things started to make a little bit more sense, right?
We certainly felt like we had the right guy.
Now we're able to start deploying some--some tools.
So we--we get out that physical surveillance,
and we start following these people.
- We--we don't have any forensic evidence
to put him inside a bank.
I don't have a photo array
that I was able to show to a teller
and say, "That's the guy."
I don't have a note that I'm able to process
and maybe get fingerprints or DNA from.
- Right. - So how do we catch him?
We almost gotta catch him in the act.
I check in with his probation officer,
and he's like, "Yeah, he's got a job.
Uh, he works at this gym in Boston."
I talked to the gym. They're like,
"Yeah, he was here for like, two, three weeks.
It didn't work out. I fired him."
And I go back to, like, the very beginning
of--why is this guy doing these robberies?
So we're following him, and as we're following him,
he goes into East Boston,
and he picks up this girl who's probably
about half his age.
- Oh, okay.
- Um, and he is lovey-dovey.
Every day, he would go to her in East Boston.
He would say goodbye to his wife in Newton
and go to his girlfriend's house.
We're snapping away. We're taking pictures.
He's taking her to the store. He's buying her things.
- Oh, nice.
- At one point, he buys her luggage.
I believe we caught him buying lingerie.
- Oh, that's nice.
- This is why he's robbing banks.
He's got two lives.
I'm gonna run two--two families,
I gotta have money. So now I know.
- A decision is made that we need
to install a tracking device on his car,
because we can't get close to him.
- Right. - 'Cause he's gonna spot us,
and then something bad's going to happen.
So-- - So what kind
of tracking device do you decide
to use in this matter?
- It's a GPS.
It has a very, very powerful magnet on it.
Most of the time you install, you go--
you go underneath the car.
I would log in to the software program,
and I would see breadcrumbs,
where little red dots are his route.
- Now we're up on tech surveillance.
This thing's starting to ratchet up,
because when you get to that point,
we can't let an armed bank robbery go down
where we're not doing our part in staying on him.
If you look at how this started, right--
first five south of 90, then the trajectory up to Plaistow.
It was well advertised within the squad at that point
that, hey, if this guy in this vehicle
breaks north of the tunnel, it's game on.
[tense music]
Just after 9:00 in the morning,
a text message came in to me.
So now we're in the scramble.
It's the 911 response.
We're trying to get out there.
Our SWAT team that day was in the harbor,
doing a training run.
And I said, "I need you back here.
"We're--we're tracking this car.
We think he's gonna hit a bank."
We knew that there was an interchange,
like, seven miles up the highway,
where 93 intersects with 95.
So he makes a beeline for us.
He hits the--the shoreline
as we're just coming up on that interchange.
And I said, "Hey, put your pipper"--
and the pipper's this little--
it's crosshairs on the camera.
And I said, "Put it on this interchange.
I'll tell you when he passes."
And I said, "All right, he's hitting the interchange now."
And the guy had the pipper right on the highway,
and he's like, "I got him." - Nice.
Aircraft's doing well,
but now we're getting low on gas.
- Oh, no. - Because they were on
an alternate training day... - Right.
- And we pulled them in for this mission.
So again, we weren't gassed up, fueled up for the run.
To complicate matters even further,
we're on this target.
We think he's gonna hit a bank,
and I don't have an arrest warrant.
So we're working the channels, and as we're doing this, now,
he comes out of the tunnel. And 30 minutes later,
he pulls over at that marketplace there
in Haverhill, and there was a bank
buried at the back middle of this parking lot.
So we're thinking, "Oh, boy, here it goes."
And we're not in position.
- The mobile STOP team has arrived.
They're parked, ready-- ready to go on the signal.
And uh, now it's a waiting game
because, like he said,
we don't have the arrest warrant.
We have to catch him in the act.
We have already talked to the prosecutor--
what do you need to get us to that arrest?
And she says, "Any action that he does
"where it looks to you,
"in your training and experience,
that he is going to do it."
- Then the--the aircraft starts calling out
what's going on in the vehicle.
And at one point, they see that he gets out,
he opens up his hood, and then he does something.
And we can't really tell what's going on,
but it looks like he--literally, it looked
like he was spray painting something underneath his hood,
which made no sense to us.
- He gets back in his car, and he goes
to another mall, in Methuen.
- And when he pulled into this parking lot,
we notice a bank.
But he's parked away from the bank.
He positioned himself in front of the Home Depot
a few rows off, and, you know,
not like he was going in the front door,
but amongst other vehicles.
- So basically, you're in the parking lot.
The state police are ready.
They've got command of, like, when to go.
The bad guy is in the parking lot,
and the bank is there.
[helicopter whirring]
- We see him.
He's putting the hoodie on. He's putting the mask on.
One of the troopers was able to see his hands,
and you could clearly see that he had white gloves on.
That's the overt act.
We got it.
- He's out of the vehicle, making his move.
We think we know where he's going.
We're not completely sure, but we think.
- He's taking his time, crossing a road,
and then into the next parking lot area.
So he's walking right straight line, straight line,
to the front door of the bank.
- I'm at the bank, and I'm watching this.
And I'm like, "Okay, how much closer
"is he gonna get to me?
Because at some point, I have decisions I have to make."
Now, I--from where I'm positioned,
I can see the STOP team coming down in their truck.
I heard the call over the radio.
They announced it, execute, execute,
and handed it over to the STOP team,
and they buzzed right past me.
- He never saw it coming.
- Yeah. - It was beautiful.
He's walking towards the bank.
They came up on his flank, but he didn't see them,
so he just pulled in.
They looked like a regular black truck,
you know.
They all jump out.
Flashbang hits the ground.
He's then ordered to get on the ground.
He complies right away.
I'm sure he's devastated, with the flashbang going off.
They move right in on him.
They just handcuff him right away,
and then he's turned over to us.
And then we enter the--enter the scene.
And you can see that on the video, it's where--
all of us now coming in.
Randy's coming from the bank.
I'm coming from where I was parked.
- So when they took him down in the parking lot,
and um, they rolled him over, and they do the pat-down
and cuff him, did they find anything on him?
- He had the gloves on.
He had the mask, pulled down,
that he could pull up to his face.
And he had, uh, the gun.
- Painted black. - Painted black.
The gun was not real.
It was a small pellet gun.
He had bought a can of black spray paint,
and when we observed him under the hood,
spray painting something, it was the gun.
- Yeah. And someone of this violent ilk,
he had no problem putting a--
a gun in someone's face,
because it was only a toy to him.
But to everyone else, it was real.
[dramatic music]
♪
- After we handcuffed him and got him over
to the Methuen Police Department
to get booked for the current charge
of attempted bank robbery, he did not want to talk to us.
I asked him if he wanted to give a statement,
he was read his Miranda rights,
and he said, no, not interested.
I think he told me to go fuck myself, very much.
- Oh, pleasant.
- So then I knew, okay,
I've got him for this one.
I got to get him for the six other ones.
Remember now, I still got that lady in Newton.
We fly into, uh, Newton.
I knock on the door, she answered the door,
and we identify ourselves,
and I start explaining to her why we're there.
Uh, "We just arrested, uh, Wilfredo.
You know him?" "Yes, he lives with me.
"He's my husband.
So then we start telling her why we arrested him,
and she's like, "No, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.
"He's a good guy, good guy.
He takes care of us. He goes to work every day."
I'm like, "Ma'am, I've been looking
"at Wilfredo now for about a week,
"and he does not go to work every day.
"I'm about to show you what he does with your car
on a daily basis."
And I proceeded to show her a nice 8-by-11--
- Glossy? - Glossy pictures...
- Nice. - Of him lovey-dovey
on the new girlfriend in East Boston.
- Nice. - And he's buying her stuff,
and he's buying her lingerie.
Everything changed.
She did a complete 180.
"Oh, my god, that mother"--
and she's screaming and swearing,
and she's like, "I"-- you know, "I do everything.
"I do everything.
"He doesn't give me any money.
To hell with him." She goes, "Come here."
She says, "I wanna show you something."
So she brings me into the bedroom,
and she opens a closet door.
And there's a pair of sneakers that we know
from the bank robbery, one of the bank robberies,
that he wore. And it's got red dye on it
from one of the dye packs
that he was given that exploded.
She goes, "Yeah, that's not all.
"When I came home that night,
"he was in the shower, scrubbing his chest,
"getting the red-- getting red paint off.
"I asked him what happened.
He told me to mind my own business."
And I asked her, "Ma'am, I'm saying, I--
"I'm going to ask you to, you know--
"I'm going to serve you with a grand jury subpoena.
I need you to testify to all this."
And she said, "Not a problem."
And sure enough, she came into the grand jury
about two weeks later, and she testified
to everything she told me.
And then I went and talked to the girlfriend
in East Boston-- from East Boston--
and I explained to her everything.
And she didn't know about his other life,
that he was married to this woman in Newton,
and she was just--
she met him at the gym.
- Right. - She was an employee there.
And uh, I said, "Well, you're gonna have
to come and testify that you, you know--"
about all this stuff. And she did.
[soft pensive music]
♪
- You know, people have a tendency
to romanticize bank robbers.
You know, I've seen it in TV shows
and in movies, you know.
But these really are-- they're--they're, uh, people
that wreak havoc on other people's emotions.
They're violent criminals.
- We have seen this over the course of time,
where a lot of these people never return
to work after being victimized like that,
because they just--
the--the fear factor is too high for them to come back.
So if you were a violent criminal
trying to create victims from our citizens,
we did everything we could to take you off the streets.