00:00:01
Audrey Fernandez: I think he said something along
the lines of, "Robbing banks is easy. I can get
00:00:07
away with it." It wasn't exactly his quote, but
it was somewhere on those lines. I just laughed
00:00:13
it off. "Of, course. Yeah. Sure you can."
Phoebe Judge: Audrey Fernandez had been friends
00:00:17
with Clay Tumey since they were in high school
in Texas in the '90s. They reconnected on Myspace
00:00:23
around 2006, and started a relationship.
Audrey Fernandez: Anyone that knows Clay,
00:00:28
he says things that can or can't be true with
a straight face, and you don't know if it's a
00:00:33
joke or not, because it could very well be true.
Phoebe Judge: But this wasn't the first time Clay
00:00:38
Tumey had made a joke about robbing a bank.
Larry Smith: I remember him just blurting out
00:00:43
one day that he was going to rob a bank one
day to see if he could get away with it.
00:00:46
Phoebe Judge: Larry Smith, Clay's
childhood best friend, remembers him making the joke when they were 15.
Larry Smith: And we laughed at him
00:00:53
and told him he was stupid and went on
about our way. But for whatever reason, that always stood out in my mind.
Phoebe Judge: Larry Smith grew up
00:01:00
to be a police officer, and Clay Tumey grew
up to be a turbine mechanic. But Clay never
00:01:06
stopped thinking about robbing banks.
Clay Tumey: Bank robbery is kind of the American dream. We make movies about it.
We talk about it, and I don't know why,
00:01:15
but we like bank robbery in America.
Phoebe Judge: He never outgrew his obsession,
00:01:19
and he says he knew it was getting more
serious when he started Googling it. Clay Tumey: Actually I think it was AOL search
bar. It wasn't Google back then, but I was looking
00:01:27
up bank robberies, like how often do they happen?
And what I found was that there were a lot of
00:01:33
banks getting robbed in the country back then.
Phoebe Judge: This was 2006. Not only did he
00:01:38
learn that there were a lot of banks
being robbed all over the country, but only about half of the robbers were ever
caught. The other half were getting away with it,
00:01:47
and Clay thought that if he was really, really
prepared, he could absolutely pull it off.
00:01:53
He started training the way someone might train to
run a marathon or teach themselves a new language,
00:01:58
and he made himself an expert in what to do.
[Music.] I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
00:02:10
Clay Tumey: Anything to do with
bank robbery, whether it was stats, whether it was really just any kind
of information I thought I could use
00:02:16
to my benefit when I started planning.
So, after a few months of doing that, I finally worked up the nerve to go do it.
Phoebe Judge: The first thing that would come into
00:02:25
my mind is, "Do I have to wear a mask?" I would
just be thinking — what were the things that you
00:02:29
were trying to check off and figure out?
Clay Tumey: Well, the number one thing was, if I can just look
normal, then nothing else really matters. So,
00:02:37
I wasn't worried about a mask. To me, walking
into a bank with a mask, everybody knows what
00:02:42
you're doing the minute you're there. My thought
process was: get in and get out without anybody
00:02:47
knowing, except for the teller that I robbed.
Phoebe Judge: Clay wanted everything to be simple:
00:02:52
no gun, no tough guy stuff. It would be
what's called "a note-only robbery." Clay Tumey: It's literally a note you write down
on a piece of paper. You could rob a bank with
00:03:01
a sticky note. That's all you need. That could be
the weapon. And once I realized it was that easy,
00:03:08
I started thinking, "OK, if I can just go
into the bank and stand there like a normal
00:03:12
customer and not really tip anybody off that I'm
there to do something bad. And I can just have
00:03:17
my note ready and wait in line, and when the
next available teller was ready, I could just
00:03:22
hand them the note and never say a word."
Phoebe Judge: You must've thought a little
00:03:26
bit about what that note would say.
Clay Tumey: I thought a lot about what that note would say. I probably thought too
much about it. I wanted it to be very clear
00:03:37
in terms of instructions, and I wanted it to have
an instruction for them, something for them to do.
00:03:43
In other words, "Give me money." Then I wanted
it to say something that would hopefully ease
00:03:49
their stress level. Then I also wanted them to
know that I didn't want them to look at me. So,
00:03:56
the three things that I wrote were, "Give
me your fifties and hundreds. I'm not going
00:04:00
to hurt you. Don't look at me."
Phoebe Judge: He chose his bank. Clay Tumey: We are at the
Chase Bank in Garland, Texas.
00:04:08
Phoebe Judge: And as you might've
noticed, Clay doesn't do things haphazardly. He chose this bank for a reason.
Clay Tumey: Yeah. My stepmother worked here most
00:04:18
of my childhood, and I grew up. I've been
here a few times. My first checking account
00:04:23
was here, so I've been here more than once.
Phoebe Judge: A few weeks ago I went to Texas, and
00:04:29
he took me there. It was Sunday, and the bank was
closed so we looked through the windows. He walked
00:04:35
me through exactly what he did. First, he wrote
his note on an envelope. He wanted the teller to
00:04:40
put the money in the envelope and hand it back
to him so there'd be no evidence left behind.
00:04:45
He parked his truck across the street and sat
there for a minute getting his courage up. Then
00:04:50
he walked into the bank, said, "Hello," to the
receptionist, and got in line to see a teller.
00:04:54
Clay Tumey: And when the lady says, "I can help
you over here," I walked over to the window,
00:05:00
and I just gave her the slip, as though it were
any other normal piece of paper. She read it, and
00:05:07
she went into this robotic, very slow motion, make
sure she does everything right, puts the money in
00:05:14
the thing. I specifically asked for fifties and
hundreds, so she was very particular about making
00:05:19
sure she did that, and handed me the money.
Phoebe Judge: Did she look scared? Clay Tumey: She looked scared, in not a
fear-for-your-life-type of scared. It was
00:05:30
more like... This is crazy, but it's more like
that when you see a cop in your rear view mirror.
00:05:39
You straighten up and you do things right.
You're not necessarily afraid that the cop's
00:05:44
going to kill you, but you know that you got
to do things right. It was that kind of fear.
00:05:48
She very clearly followed the directions,
except for the one that said, "Don't look
00:05:53
at me," because that's the first thing she did.
That's the first thing they always did was they
00:05:56
look at you as if to verify that you're not just
playing a joke on them. She handed me the money,
00:06:02
and I just nodded and turned around and left.
Phoebe Judge: He got back in his truck and
00:06:07
drove out of the parking lot. There were no
police following him. His plan had worked.
00:06:11
Clay Tumey: Wow. I said the F word as loud
as I probably could, and it was exciting. I
00:06:19
couldn't believe that I really had done
that, and that it was really that easy.
00:06:24
It was so quiet and just a peaceful... It
was really strange, but it was also very,
00:06:32
at the time, it was just worth it.
I loved the way it made me feel. Phoebe Judge: Clay had walked out of
that bank and driven away with $2,850,
00:06:42
money that he didn't even need.
Sherrie Lee: I mean, he had a good job. He had just bought a new home. He had a new
home with new furniture. He had new vehicles. He
00:06:53
had the American dream. Everything was just, if
you had aligned it out, just check off the box.
00:07:00
Phoebe Judge: Clay's mother, Sherrie Lee. I met
her when I invited myself to a family pool party.
00:07:06
Kids rode around on four-wheelers, and someone
was cooking on an industrial sized grill.
00:07:11
What was Clay like growing up?
Sherrie Lee: Oh, Clay was a mischievous little boy. Whatever I expected him to do, that
was boring to him. So, he just would do things
00:07:29
out of the ordinary, I guess you would say.
Clint Tumey: You know what the sun and moon is,
00:07:35
right? I think it's a good analogy.
Phoebe Judge: This is Clay's older brother,
00:07:42
Clint. He couldn't stop laughing when I
asked if he and Clay had a lot in common.
00:07:46
Clint Tumey: It's hard to put into words.
We have the same parents, which I think
00:07:55
he'd even agree it's quite amazing.
Phoebe Judge: There was one thing that happened that was impossible for his family
to chalk up to Clay's being different.
00:08:05
For a long time his mother had a
CD [Certificate of Deposit] in the bank worth $25,000. She'd set it up to cover
her funeral expenses, and when Clay was 25,
00:08:14
he decided he'd just go take it for himself.
Clay Tumey: I kind of had an issue with money in
00:08:19
general, and I thought I had some people in my
family that did very well financially and some
00:08:24
that were hurting. And I thought that gap was too
big. I just had issues with money in general. So
00:08:31
I decided, "I'm going to go take this money and
do what I want to do with it." So, that's what
00:08:35
I did. When the thing matured, I went, and I
transferred all that money to my personal account.
00:08:41
Then I just started giving it away slowly
over the next probably two or three weeks,
00:08:46
just doing what I thought was "right."
Phoebe Judge: Clay says he used the money
00:08:51
to help a guy who'd gotten his car stereo stolen
and to help another friend who had gotten a little
00:08:55
behind on a house payment. Seems nice enough.
But I don't know if you can call yourself Robin
00:09:00
Hood when you're stealing from your own mother.
Sherrie got a letter from the bank telling her
00:09:06
that her account was empty. She drove down to
the bank and watched the surveillance camera
00:09:10
footage to try to help the security guards figure
out who had stolen from her. It was a grainy,
00:09:16
blurred image, but a mother can recognize her
son pretty much anywhere. And there he was.
00:09:21
Clay Tumey: I mean, everybody my age, my race, my
size, whatever, we pretty much look the same on
00:09:29
those cameras. Now, in 2006, things were a little
bit different than they are now in 2015, but
00:09:35
even still their priority is not to catch
criminals who are coming in and doing these
00:09:42
little robberies here and there. And I
just thought, "I can totally do that." Phoebe Judge: How far are we
from... Right now we're actually
00:09:53
kind of close to where you were living.
Clay Tumey: Yeah, I lived in Rockwall at
00:09:58
the time, and I was probably 10 miles away.
Phoebe Judge: Clay drove me to bank number two,
00:10:03
the American National Bank in Rockwall, Texas.
So, this is actually kind of the closest option.
00:10:09
Clay Tumey: Yeah. It's almost
bike-riding distance. It's really close to where I was living.
Phoebe Judge: Which goes counter to
00:10:16
everything that we think we might
know about bank robbery, which is get away from anyone who might know you.
Clay Tumey: I wasn't really thinking very
00:10:23
clearly. It wasn't a good idea to do something so
close to my house, but at the same time, that's
00:10:29
what made it more appealing, I guess. It's kind of
like the one where my step-mom worked. It's a bad
00:10:34
idea to do that, and that's what made it fun.
Phoebe Judge: Again, he used his note method,
00:10:40
and again, it worked. He walked out of
there with just over $7,000, no trouble.
00:10:46
But a month later, when he walked into a Chase
Bank in Allen, Texas, Clay met his match.
00:10:51
Clay Tumey: So, I was in the bank, and
the lady, "I can help you over here." So,
00:10:56
I walked up to her, and I gave her the envelope.
I'll never, ever forget this. It's clear as day in
00:11:02
my memory. She did this thing where it's almost
like a teenage girl who's just put up with her
00:11:08
dad's silly jokes. Her shoulders... She
just rolls her eyes, and she [sighs] opens the drawer real slowly. And she grabs
a couple of hundreds and a couple of fifties,
00:11:19
and I could see clear as day that it wasn't
all of anything. And she puts the envelope,
00:11:24
and she slides it back. I didn't even pick
it up. I just looked at it, and I said,
00:11:29
"You can..." This is one of the only times I
ever actually spoke during a robbery. I said,
00:11:34
"You can do better than that."
And she puts her hands up, kind of like this shrug motion, palms
up, and she goes, "That's all I got."
00:11:42
[Music.]
Phoebe Judge: Clay was furious. You can see it in his face
when he tells the story now, even all these years
00:11:52
later. But he'd made rules for himself, and rule
number one was never to attract any attention. So,
00:11:58
he turned around and headed back to his truck.
Clay Tumey: Immediately she started screaming,
00:12:04
"Lock the doors! Lock the doors!" And
I was just like, "Shit. I'm screwed." Phoebe Judge: There was about 40 feet between
Clay and the bank doors. He realized he had
00:12:15
three options. He could run, and hopefully beat
anyone who started to chase him. He could stand
00:12:20
there and turn around and pretend that the
teller had lost her mind, which seems like
00:12:24
maybe an idea he saw in a movie once.
Or he could ignore it all and slowly continue walking, and that's what he did.
Clay Tumey: One step at a time to the door,
00:12:33
and when I got to the door, she had been screaming
at the top of her lungs to lock the door,
00:12:38
so I wasn't sure if it was going to open. When
I got to the first set of doors, I leaned on it,
00:12:44
and it opened. I was like, "All right. Cool.
One more set, I'm good to go." I got to the
00:12:49
second set of doors and leaned against it.
I wouldn't use my hands because fingerprint
00:12:53
stuff. I leaned against it, and it opened.
Phoebe Judge: It opened, and when he got onto
00:12:58
the sidewalk, he managed to meet someone
even more out of their mind than he was.
00:13:02
Clay Tumey: There was a guy
walking in as I'm walking out, close enough to where I would normally hold the
door open for him. And I shut the door. I was
00:13:10
like, "Ah, you don't want to go. It's busy. You
might want to go through the drive-through." And
00:13:14
he was like, "Yeah. Nah, I'm just going to be a
couple of minutes." So, he goes to open the door,
00:13:18
and it was already locked.
Phoebe Judge: For some reason, the man went completely wild. He was pounding
on the bank doors with both fists and yelling,
00:13:27
completely offended that the bank had
locked its doors in the middle of the day.
00:13:31
Clay Tumey: Anybody who had seen anything was now
watching this lunatic go crazy on a door that was
00:13:38
locked. So, I walked across the parking lot.
I had parked on the other side of a Starbucks,
00:13:46
so you couldn't see my truck from the bank.
Phoebe Judge: He got into his truck and stayed
00:13:51
put as police cars started arriving, sirens
blaring. The man who was pounding on the doors
00:13:56
was arrested, and when he thought it was safe,
Clay drove away. But instead of driving as far
00:14:02
away as possible, Clay chose to drive just across
the street — literally just across the street — to
00:14:08
a Chili's, where he ordered food.
Clay Tumey: I just really liked their chips and queso.
Phoebe Judge: The last thing in the world that
00:14:15
I would ever do is stop at that chili's for some
queso. [Laughter.] We're not far away from this
00:14:22
bank. We are across the street from this bank.
Clay Tumey: Yeah. That's one of the things that I
00:14:26
thought was really entertaining, at the time.
Phoebe Judge: According to Clay, that was it.
00:14:33
After that very close call, he retired. All told,
he admits to robbing three banks and getting away
00:14:40
with about $11,000. But that's just what he
admits to. But you robbed banks for a year.
00:14:49
It seems like if you were doing
this for a year, one could assume that maybe there are a lot more than three.
Clay Tumey: Yeah. One could assume that. One could
00:14:58
assume a lot of things. Look, it was a blast. It's
not that I was doing it every day or even every
00:15:07
week. It was just whenever I felt like doing it.
Phoebe Judge: Three banks was also the number he
00:15:12
was willing to tell the police
when he turned himself in. He says he knew that just because he hadn't
been caught didn't mean he never would be.
00:15:20
Clay Tumey: A lot of people think that I
had a guilty conscience or that I had some
00:15:24
other motive in turning myself in, but the real
reason was I just wanted to get it behind me and
00:15:31
do my time, not have to worry about it and
then get out and then start over from there.
00:15:36
Phoebe Judge: Clay had a young son. He figured
he could do his time and get out before his son
00:15:41
was old enough to really remember things. So,
he called the police, and at first he tried to
00:15:47
get away with only telling them about one robbery.
They said, "No way. We've seen the security tapes
00:15:52
for that one, and it doesn't look like you're
a first-timer." So, Clay admitted to two more.
00:15:58
On the 26th of June 2008, he was indicted on
three counts of bank robbery, a federal crime,
00:16:04
and sentenced to 36 months in prison.
[Music.] I have to say that after spending all day
with Clay I found it pretty hard to believe
00:16:18
that he had robbed only three banks.
I couldn't stop asking him about it. I'm going to guess like eight total.
Clay Tumey: A lot of people have guessed
00:16:27
a lot of things, and none of them have been
successful in getting me to give any indication
00:16:32
if they were accurate or inaccurate.
Phoebe Judge: I'm just going to go with, like, eight — eight to eleven. I'm
changing it a little bit. [Laughter.].
00:16:39
There's also the question of why, and we talked
about that a lot. I kept thinking that if I asked
00:16:45
the question enough different ways, I'd somehow
be able to figure him out. He told me he'd always
00:16:50
imagined he would end up being famous one day,
he says maybe a rockstar. He says he never
00:16:56
thought he'd wind up being a regular guy in Texas,
because he always felt like he was different.
00:17:01
On the one hand, I kind of got that. But another
part of me wondered if he might be a narcissist.
00:17:07
Clay Tumey: Yeah, narcissism was my middle name. I
mean, everything was all about me. I knew better.
00:17:15
My ego was just out of control, and I thought
that the world was just stupid or stingy, or
00:17:23
all these things that I thought I could correct.
And it started with that little bit of money, and
00:17:30
eventually spiraled all the way down to the point
to where I was waking up in a jail cell, trying to
00:17:36
figure out what the hell was wrong with my life.
Phoebe Judge: He got out in 2010, just before
00:17:42
his son's fourth birthday, and spent time
working in the oil fields in west Texas,
00:17:46
where a lot of felons end up. He says the
question he gets asked most is not why he did
00:17:52
it. People don't really seem to care about that.
They just want to know how he pulled it off.
00:17:57
[Music.]
Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and me. Audio engineering help
from Rob Byers and Russ Henry. Julienne Alexander
00:18:11
makes original illustrations for each episode of
Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com,
00:18:16
where you can also learn more about
our show and listen to past episodes. Criminal is recorded in the studios of
North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're
00:18:26
a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.
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00:19:10
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00:19:43
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
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