Prosecutors charge retired LAPD detective with bank robbery

Surveillance video showed that the robber resembled the Snowbird Bandit, who had been the subject of a manhunt by the FBI and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department since March, according to the affidavit.

The criminal complaint filed against him in U.S. District Court on Friday charges Adair with a single bank robbery in his hometown of Rancho Santa Margarita, about 60 miles (100 km) southeast of Los Angeles.

Following his arrest, an Orange County Sheriffs spokesman said Adair was considered a suspect in all five Snowbird Bandit robberies.

Authorities arrested Adair on Wednesday in Rancho Santa Margarita.

The bank bandit, who allegedly pulled five robberies, got his nickname from his white hair and from speculation he was an elderly man, NBC Los Angeles reported.

Adair was named in a criminal complaint accusing him of stealing $1,658 from the First Citizens Bank in Rancho Santa Margarita on Tuesday.

After authorities publicly released video surveillance photos of the suspect, the defendant’s family called investigators and said Adair “is retired, on a fixed income, and a heavy gambler”, Gicking wrote.

“I fell to my knees”. Randolph Bruce Adair lived on a modest pension. He joined the department in 1967 and retired in 1988, department officials said. During his time there, he graduated from the top of his police academy class and helped arrest the assassin of Robert Kennedy and founded a charity football team, the Register reported.

“I told them we were concerned for everybody’s safety, no matter what, and he was not in his right mind”, she said, crying.

Adair has had a series of heart attacks in the last couple of years, the family told the Register. “It’s insane. How does a walking dead man rob a bank?”

Adair is expected to appear in federal court on Monday.