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for seven years a group of bank robbers flaunted their expertise in front of security cameras
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and law enforcement could do little more than watch and marvel they left no forensic evidence behind
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and always got away before police arrived but how they stood what they said and the clothes they wore all told a story
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one that could be deciphered by forensic science [Music] [Music] um [Music] calabash north carolina is a quiet
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fishing town located just over the state line from myrtle beach south carolina to sum it up is a perfect place to live
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quiet the best seafood in the world and that's how calabash was known in september of 1991 in broad daylight
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two masked men with handguns walked into one of the local banks a teller pushed the silent alarm
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but the robbers got away with forty thousand dollars before police arrived the closest police station was our
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county complex which is about 25 to 30 miles away the bank was equipped with surveillance
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cameras that used 35 millimeter film in most instances we have bank surveillance videotapes which don't give
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us a lot of quality and don't allow us the opportunity to enhance the photos
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the pictures showed a well-organized crime some individuals go in banks with no gloves no mask and no plan those are the
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easiest ones to catch the folks that are well planned well orchestrated prove to
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be the most difficult challenge in law enforcement the men entered the bank just after an
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armored truck made its daily delivery of cash from the federal reserve bank they
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didn't walk around the bank like nervous or anything and they had a getaway car
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waiting and they were watching the getaway car the whole time they could see us at the door
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the high resolution pictures gave investigators a good look at the getaway car driven most likely by a third
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accomplice we were able to determine it was a camaro we were able to determine the
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year of the vehicle certain packages that came with the vehicle that were not standard
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but without the license plate number it would be difficult to find the car with so few clues the robbery went
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unsolved until one year later it happened again at the very same bank it was turning our quiet town
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known for its seafood into a quiet town known for its bank robberies a bank employee recognized them
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she recognized the voice the way they stood the same directives she was positive the same people were robbing
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her over and over again in fact the statement she made was deja vu of the robbers is about five foot eight
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and nearly 300 pounds it was fairly uh distinct they got identified that way as being
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the same people [Music] the robbers warned the tellers not to throw dye packs in the money bags
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dye packs are rigged to explode later leaving a permanent die on the bills one of the news crews had come down it
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sort of made me mad that reporter stood in the middle of the street in calabash and made the comment if you want to rob
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a bank calabash is the place to come and do it over the next several years these same
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men robbed other banks in the area the getaway cars were stolen and abandoned miles away
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they were not making a lot of mistakes they were going in they were getting what they needed to get and they got out
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of the bank we had no hairs we had no fibers we had no confessions we had no money
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we had very few bits of real physical evidence [Music] over a four-year period there were six
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bank robberies stretching from calabash north carolina down to myrtle beach across the state line
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each robbery lasted between two and five minutes and none of the branches had armed security personnel
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very meticulous very structured very organized in out and gone and you're in a rural area i think
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you have to be both lucky and good and the crimes were becoming increasingly violent one usually the obese robber in
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this case went behind the tellers counter and threatened to kill him and the other
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one rounded up any customers or other bank employees sometimes force them into one office or forced them onto the
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ground in one particular bank robbery a warning shot was fired at a bank manager
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we had several instances where tellers were struck were dragged or beaten were threatened
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in one instance when an employee hesitated in opening the bank vault it almost cost her her life
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she was shaking so badly she couldn't do the combination that individual cocked the weapon against her head and
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said this is your last chance you open the vault or you're dead investigators tried to predict where and
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when the robbers would strike again but they never imagined what would happen next
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the robbers returned to calabash and hit the same bank for the third time it turned out to be their biggest heist
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to date they walked out of the bank with a hundred seventy-five thousand dollars
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but this time there was a witness outside i had to kind of take a double take to
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make sure i was seeing what i thought i saw and and then i realized it was a bank robber in progress
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king saw two men run from the bank and get into a green car driven by a third man
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[Music] king wrote down the license plate number then did something law enforcement
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officers discourage he followed them the chase reached speeds of 80 miles per hour
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at one point the robbers stopped their car turned around and confronted him they were sitting in the intersection
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stopped aimed back in my direction and one of the guys was out of the car with with a gun
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and so i just laid over in the seat and just kicked it you kicked the gas and just shot by as fast as it could
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he still had the license plate number which identified the car as stolen it was later found abandoned in the same
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area as the other getaway cars along a deserted road in south carolina we told him how brave and how not brave
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it was particularly the death that he helped us but we didn't want him to get
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hurt and luckily he didn't i don't think what i did was anything close to heroic i think it was just a
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it was a civic duty almost to to to try to help catch these guys the robbers didn't strike again until
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almost a year later this time in myrtle beach about 20 miles away they always seem to be one step ahead of
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law enforcement and investigators were beginning to understand why it was something they saw in a
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surveillance picture for prosecutors and cops that work in bank robberies not many robbers wear
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holsters okay and this guy wore a police type holster on his belt to carry his gun which was quite distinct
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and it was clear that the two men inside the bank knew how to handle a weapon this wasn't the first time this
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individual had ever picked up a gun and we felt like there was some training involved and planning involved in these
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robberies there was also something strange about the way one of the robbers stood
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the old weaver stance which was a type of a stance that you're trained to do in
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police work back in the late 80s and 90s and he just had a manner in which he held his his gun in
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his hand that was unusual it's hard to describe we thought there was a high possibility that it was somebody that
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had maybe gone through some kind of law enforcement training or even military training
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investigators now knew how the robbers were getting away with the crimes [Music]
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police now believe that the men robbing banks throughout north and south carolina were somehow involved in law
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enforcement over a six-year period they had gotten away with close to a half million
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dollars their favorite target was the small town of calabash at the time the nearest police station
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was a 20-minute drive away they robbed the same bank three times i think that they had a nerve to go into
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these banks on more than one occasion but also to stay into the inside the banks as long as they stayed in
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why the individuals chose north carolina national bank three times we do not know
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but we do know that apparently they did this because they have been successful and i think with each robbery it became
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easier and easier and they became more confident the robber's next target was a bank
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right up the street a customer at the drive-thru window witnessed the robbery he also noticed a third man in a pickup
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truck who appeared to be the lookout and he wrote down the license plate number when the robbers drove away in a red suv
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the customer followed them that individual followed both of those vehicles along a route that in one of
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the previous bank robberies another witness had followed the getaway vehicle and they both took exactly the same
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route the bank customer eventually lost the robbers but the license plate number
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turned out to be an enormous break the truck belonged to alvin bellamy a landscaper who lived in rural south
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carolina the fbi went to the bellamy's home neither alvin nor the truck were there
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but alvin's wife was she proceeded to tell us where he was that he was with his brothers claude
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bellamy and larry bellamy so that is the first time we come up with three names around 1am
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a car approached the bellamy home but it wasn't alvin it was alvin's brother larry who was a lieutenant with
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the myrtle beach police department they gave me the name of lieutenant larry bellamy and the
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my initial reaction was they've made a bad mistake there's no possible way that
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that they've got the right person or that they should even be looking at this
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particular person larry vehemently denied any involvement in the robberies alvin came home a short time later in
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the truck identified as the lookout vehicle the fbi found a hundred and sixteen dollars in brand new bills in alvin's
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wallet fresh crisp fives and ones i started writing down the serial numbers to the one and five dollar bills
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there was basically one of those ploys that you use i told him that i was going to take him
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back to the bank and compare it with the stolen money from the bank he got very agitated got very upset demanding he'd
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never seen that money before the next morning investigators went to the third brother's home nearby
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claude bellamy was a heavyset man with a similar bill to the man in the security
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pictures he was also a former policeman he also denied any involvement in the robberies and investigators found no
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large sums of money in his home but in his bedroom closet investigators found a black and white
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czech jacket it happened to be the only garment hanging in that closet which was interesting to me and why you would
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have this coat hanging separately in a room they didn't use a closet it didn't
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appear to use the jacket was sent to fbi expert david davies he's a photographic technologist
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with 20 years experience in garment identification at first glance davies knew he was dealing with a
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mass-produced product you could have 10 million jackets that look like that davies used computer enhancement
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software to improve the quality of the bank's security photos [Music] he then photographed a model wearing the
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jacket standing the same way as the robber shirts and jackets are manufactured differently depending on the price and
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quality of the garment for example in more expensive shirts the manufacturer lines up the breast pockets
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to match the overall pattern on the garment anytime you have a pattern that has to
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be aligned it's got to be done by a human and it costs the company money therefore the more alignment you have in
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the pattern the more expensive your shirt is going to be in an inexpensive shirt the manufacturer
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in this case the arrow company doesn't even attempt a match by going to aero
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we ask the people who are there okay exactly what are you trying to line up here
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exactly what are you doing when you make this shirt the manufacturer aligned the breast
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pocket at a 45 degree angle because of the pattern all points of alignment at the seams happen at random
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the more seams i can see and the more uniqueness that i can determine in this case
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the bank robbers stood at the same place and basically turned around a couple times
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and i had some outstanding views of various scenes and davies discovered the alignment of
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the pattern at all of those random points was identical in the surveillance pictures
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davies noticed another distinctive mark a discoloration in the fabric on the left sleeve
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i saw a little light mark in what should have been a gray square you're seeing the uh
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the white threads that's below the dyed gray he found the same anomaly a tear in the material
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in the exact same spot on bellamy's jacket i was absolutely sure that it was that
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jacket so there's no doubt whatsoever no doubt the examination of plaid shirt by
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the fbi was exceptional we've never seen or heard of this before this was a new
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process to us what i couldn't tell was who the bank robber was but what i could tell was
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the jacket robbed the bank investigators now had to prove that one of the bellamy brothers wore
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the jacket [Music] and they also wanted to find the money [Music] the fbi's photographic analyst
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determined that the jacket found in claude bellamy's home had been worn by one of the bank robbers
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from the surveillance pictures it appeared to be larry bellamy larry was a lieutenant in the myrtle
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beach police department his supervisor warren gaul recognized him in the pictures by the way he held
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his gun i have been on the range numerous times with larry when we were qualifying
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for the police department and i knew his stance i knew his pose and it was exact
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larry's shooting stance was unique it was a combination of two different styles taught at the police academy
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larry had never really adjusted to the new stance and shot with a hybrid sort of stance in between the old square stop
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and shouldered stance and the newer weaver stance that was quite distinctive a number of these witnesses had been on
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the shooting range practicing with them for years and recognized that shooting stance
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larry knew a great deal about bank robbery because he was a crime scene specialist
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he worked bank robberies as a crime scene officer he took fingerprints photographs he communicated with bank
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tellers and employees in the fbi in the incidents that occurred in myrtle beach he was aware of evidence he was aware of
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what is looked for in terms of evidence at a crime scene incredibly larry bellamy helped investigate one of
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his own crimes hindsight being 2020 looking back at the day that we located this stolen car i remember larry
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bellamy showing up on the scene offering his assistance to us because he was a crime scene
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officer with the myrtle beach police department larry's timesheets indicated he was not
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working when the robberies occurred investigators also discovered an interesting clue in the way the getaway
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vehicles were abandoned they were so successful for so many years that they just got sloppy and towards
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the end they started using their own cars to carry out the robberies investigators found the red suv used at
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their last robbery at a safe house the brothers rented about a hundred miles away in aberdeen north carolina
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by the time the fbi found it everything else was gone we never recovered the money from these
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bank robberies and there was a total take of approximately eight hundred thousand dollars
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when you break down that amount of money over that time frame split maybe three ways
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we felt that it would be easy to spend that type of money without a great deal of notice
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or even if they put it away which to this day we don't know ironically the bellamy brothers lived
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just across the highway from the robbers roost golf club in 2000 they were arrested and charged with
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numerous counts of bank robbery they pleaded not guilty but the forensic garment analysis was
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more than enough to satisfy the jury most of the evidence they had was circumstantial
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and this was the only forensic evidence that was basically a fingerprint that was very unique
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that pointed to one of the bank robbers all three were convicted larry and claude were each sentenced to
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50 years in the federal penitentiary they were the men who had taken an oath to protect these people from violent
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criminal activity and they're the very people preying upon them and so we felt that there was a
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certain amount of culpability that went to those two that didn't go to alvin
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alvin was sentenced to 15 years and i think it was the shirt that an fbi investigator at the lab was able to
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identify that this is the exact shirt that was worn in this robbery and it matches identical to the surveillance
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film inside the bank i think that that became the straw that broke the camel's
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back and broke the case [Music] [Applause] [Music] you