American Dream | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Audrey Fernandez: I think he said something along the lines of, "Robbing banks is easy. I can get
away with it." It wasn't exactly his quote, but it was somewhere on those lines. I just laughed
it off. "Of, course. Yeah. Sure you can." Phoebe Judge: Audrey Fernandez had been friends
with Clay Tumey since they were in high school in Texas in the '90s. They reconnected on Myspace
around 2006, and started a relationship. Audrey Fernandez: Anyone that knows Clay,
he says things that can or can't be true with a straight face, and you don't know if it's a
joke or not, because it could very well be true. Phoebe Judge: But this wasn't the first time Clay
Tumey had made a joke about robbing a bank. Larry Smith: I remember him just blurting out
one day that he was going to rob a bank one day to see if he could get away with it.
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
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
to be a police officer, and Clay Tumey grew up to be a turbine mechanic. But Clay never
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,
but we like bank robbery in America. Phoebe Judge: He never outgrew his obsession,
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
up bank robberies, like how often do they happen? And what I found was that there were a lot of
banks getting robbed in the country back then. Phoebe Judge: This was 2006. Not only did he
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,
and Clay thought that if he was really, really prepared, he could absolutely pull it off.
He started training the way someone might train to run a marathon or teach themselves a new language,
and he made himself an expert in what to do. [Music.] I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
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
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
my mind is, "Do I have to wear a mask?" I would just be thinking — what were the things that you
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,
I wasn't worried about a mask. To me, walking into a bank with a mask, everybody knows what
you're doing the minute you're there. My thought process was: get in and get out without anybody
knowing, except for the teller that I robbed. Phoebe Judge: Clay wanted everything to be simple:
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
a sticky note. That's all you need. That could be the weapon. And once I realized it was that easy,
I started thinking, "OK, if I can just go into the bank and stand there like a normal
customer and not really tip anybody off that I'm there to do something bad. And I can just have
my note ready and wait in line, and when the next available teller was ready, I could just
hand them the note and never say a word." Phoebe Judge: You must've thought a little
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
in terms of instructions, and I wanted it to have an instruction for them, something for them to do.
In other words, "Give me money." Then I wanted it to say something that would hopefully ease
their stress level. Then I also wanted them to know that I didn't want them to look at me. So,
the three things that I wrote were, "Give me your fifties and hundreds. I'm not going
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.
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
of my childhood, and I grew up. I've been here a few times. My first checking account
was here, so I've been here more than once. Phoebe Judge: A few weeks ago I went to Texas, and
he took me there. It was Sunday, and the bank was closed so we looked through the windows. He walked
me through exactly what he did. First, he wrote his note on an envelope. He wanted the teller to
put the money in the envelope and hand it back to him so there'd be no evidence left behind.
He parked his truck across the street and sat there for a minute getting his courage up. Then
he walked into the bank, said, "Hello," to the receptionist, and got in line to see a teller.
Clay Tumey: And when the lady says, "I can help you over here," I walked over to the window,
and I just gave her the slip, as though it were any other normal piece of paper. She read it, and
she went into this robotic, very slow motion, make sure she does everything right, puts the money in
the thing. I specifically asked for fifties and hundreds, so she was very particular about making
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
more like... This is crazy, but it's more like that when you see a cop in your rear view mirror.
You straighten up and you do things right. You're not necessarily afraid that the cop's
going to kill you, but you know that you got to do things right. It was that kind of fear.
She very clearly followed the directions, except for the one that said, "Don't look
at me," because that's the first thing she did. That's the first thing they always did was they
look at you as if to verify that you're not just playing a joke on them. She handed me the money,
and I just nodded and turned around and left. Phoebe Judge: He got back in his truck and
drove out of the parking lot. There were no police following him. His plan had worked.
Clay Tumey: Wow. I said the F word as loud as I probably could, and it was exciting. I
couldn't believe that I really had done that, and that it was really that easy.
It was so quiet and just a peaceful... It was really strange, but it was also very,
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,
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
had the American dream. Everything was just, if you had aligned it out, just check off the box.
Phoebe Judge: Clay's mother, Sherrie Lee. I met her when I invited myself to a family pool party.
Kids rode around on four-wheelers, and someone was cooking on an industrial sized grill.
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
out of the ordinary, I guess you would say. Clint Tumey: You know what the sun and moon is,
right? I think it's a good analogy. Phoebe Judge: This is Clay's older brother,
Clint. He couldn't stop laughing when I asked if he and Clay had a lot in common.
Clint Tumey: It's hard to put into words. We have the same parents, which I think
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.
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,
he decided he'd just go take it for himself. Clay Tumey: I kind of had an issue with money in
general, and I thought I had some people in my family that did very well financially and some
that were hurting. And I thought that gap was too big. I just had issues with money in general. So
I decided, "I'm going to go take this money and do what I want to do with it." So, that's what
I did. When the thing matured, I went, and I transferred all that money to my personal account.
Then I just started giving it away slowly over the next probably two or three weeks,
just doing what I thought was "right." Phoebe Judge: Clay says he used the money
to help a guy who'd gotten his car stereo stolen and to help another friend who had gotten a little
behind on a house payment. Seems nice enough. But I don't know if you can call yourself Robin
Hood when you're stealing from your own mother. Sherrie got a letter from the bank telling her
that her account was empty. She drove down to the bank and watched the surveillance camera
footage to try to help the security guards figure out who had stolen from her. It was a grainy,
blurred image, but a mother can recognize her son pretty much anywhere. And there he was.
Clay Tumey: I mean, everybody my age, my race, my size, whatever, we pretty much look the same on
those cameras. Now, in 2006, things were a little bit different than they are now in 2015, but
even still their priority is not to catch criminals who are coming in and doing these
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
kind of close to where you were living. Clay Tumey: Yeah, I lived in Rockwall at
the time, and I was probably 10 miles away. Phoebe Judge: Clay drove me to bank number two,
the American National Bank in Rockwall, Texas. So, this is actually kind of the closest option.
Clay Tumey: Yeah. It's almost bike-riding distance. It's really close to where I was living. Phoebe Judge: Which goes counter to
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
clearly. It wasn't a good idea to do something so close to my house, but at the same time, that's
what made it more appealing, I guess. It's kind of like the one where my step-mom worked. It's a bad
idea to do that, and that's what made it fun. Phoebe Judge: Again, he used his note method,
and again, it worked. He walked out of there with just over $7,000, no trouble.
But a month later, when he walked into a Chase Bank in Allen, Texas, Clay met his match.
Clay Tumey: So, I was in the bank, and the lady, "I can help you over here." So,
I walked up to her, and I gave her the envelope. I'll never, ever forget this. It's clear as day in
my memory. She did this thing where it's almost like a teenage girl who's just put up with her
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,
and I could see clear as day that it wasn't all of anything. And she puts the envelope,
and she slides it back. I didn't even pick it up. I just looked at it, and I said,
"You can..." This is one of the only times I ever actually spoke during a robbery. I said,
"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."
[Music.] Phoebe Judge: Clay was furious. You can see it in his face when he tells the story now, even all these years
later. But he'd made rules for himself, and rule number one was never to attract any attention. So,
he turned around and headed back to his truck. Clay Tumey: Immediately she started screaming,
"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
three options. He could run, and hopefully beat anyone who started to chase him. He could stand
there and turn around and pretend that the teller had lost her mind, which seems like
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,
and when I got to the door, she had been screaming at the top of her lungs to lock the door,
so I wasn't sure if it was going to open. When I got to the first set of doors, I leaned on it,
and it opened. I was like, "All right. Cool. One more set, I'm good to go." I got to the
second set of doors and leaned against it. I wouldn't use my hands because fingerprint
stuff. I leaned against it, and it opened. Phoebe Judge: It opened, and when he got onto
the sidewalk, he managed to meet someone even more out of their mind than he was.
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
like, "Ah, you don't want to go. It's busy. You might want to go through the drive-through." And
he was like, "Yeah. Nah, I'm just going to be a couple of minutes." So, he goes to open the door,
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,
completely offended that the bank had locked its doors in the middle of the day.
Clay Tumey: Anybody who had seen anything was now watching this lunatic go crazy on a door that was
locked. So, I walked across the parking lot. I had parked on the other side of a Starbucks,
so you couldn't see my truck from the bank. Phoebe Judge: He got into his truck and stayed
put as police cars started arriving, sirens blaring. The man who was pounding on the doors
was arrested, and when he thought it was safe, Clay drove away. But instead of driving as far
away as possible, Clay chose to drive just across the street — literally just across the street — to
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
I would ever do is stop at that chili's for some queso. [Laughter.] We're not far away from this
bank. We are across the street from this bank. Clay Tumey: Yeah. That's one of the things that I
thought was really entertaining, at the time. Phoebe Judge: According to Clay, that was it.
After that very close call, he retired. All told, he admits to robbing three banks and getting away
with about $11,000. But that's just what he admits to. But you robbed banks for a year.
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
assume a lot of things. Look, it was a blast. It's not that I was doing it every day or even every
week. It was just whenever I felt like doing it. Phoebe Judge: Three banks was also the number he
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.
Clay Tumey: A lot of people think that I had a guilty conscience or that I had some
other motive in turning myself in, but the real reason was I just wanted to get it behind me and
do my time, not have to worry about it and then get out and then start over from there.
Phoebe Judge: Clay had a young son. He figured he could do his time and get out before his son
was old enough to really remember things. So, he called the police, and at first he tried to
get away with only telling them about one robbery. They said, "No way. We've seen the security tapes
for that one, and it doesn't look like you're a first-timer." So, Clay admitted to two more.
On the 26th of June 2008, he was indicted on three counts of bank robbery, a federal crime,
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
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
a lot of things, and none of them have been successful in getting me to give any indication
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.].
There's also the question of why, and we talked about that a lot. I kept thinking that if I asked
the question enough different ways, I'd somehow be able to figure him out. He told me he'd always
imagined he would end up being famous one day, he says maybe a rockstar. He says he never
thought he'd wind up being a regular guy in Texas, because he always felt like he was different.
On the one hand, I kind of got that. But another part of me wondered if he might be a narcissist.
Clay Tumey: Yeah, narcissism was my middle name. I mean, everything was all about me. I knew better.
My ego was just out of control, and I thought that the world was just stupid or stingy, or
all these things that I thought I could correct. And it started with that little bit of money, and
eventually spiraled all the way down to the point to where I was waking up in a jail cell, trying to
figure out what the hell was wrong with my life. Phoebe Judge: He got out in 2010, just before
his son's fourth birthday, and spent time working in the oil fields in west Texas,
where a lot of felons end up. He says the question he gets asked most is not why he did
it. People don't really seem to care about that. They just want to know how he pulled it off.
[Music.] Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and me. Audio engineering help from Rob Byers and Russ Henry. Julienne Alexander
makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com,
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
a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. We'd like to give a warm welcome to one of
the newest members of the PRX family, the Esquire Classics Podcast. The first three episodes feature
the backstories to some of Esquire Magazine's most unforgettable reporting. Check out episode one,
a nuanced investigation into the iconic photograph of a man falling from one of the
towers on September 11th, 2001. You can find out more at classic.esquire.com/podcast. Go listen.
Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Jingle: Radiotopia, from PRX.

What if your childhood hero you wanted to grow up to become was Butch Cassidy, Jesse James, or John Dillinger? In 2006, Clay Tumey became an outlaw just like his childhood heroes and led a life of crime committing robberies.

Learn more about Clay’s story in The Blue Chip Store https://lucidbookspublishing.com/our-books/the-blue-chip-store-how-bank-robbery-changed-my-life/

Music in this episode: “60's Quiz Show” by Podington Bear “Happytime” by Podington Bear “Undersea Garden” by Podington Bear “Indirect” by Blue Dot Sessions “Let's Make a Pact” by The Losers “Diamonds” by Rhys Ziemba “The Plastic Cow Goes Moooooog” by Future Sauce

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://link.chtbl.com/n33u0HsA

Say hello on Twitter (@CriminalShow), Instagram (@criminal_podcast), and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ThisIsCriminal/.

Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice https://bit.ly/accomplicenewsletter.

We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.

Artwork by Julienne Alexander http://www.yssrs.com/.

Check out our online shop https://store.dftba.com/collections/criminal.

Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 31 originally published 11/27/15 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-31-american-dream-11-17-2015

Brief Summary

Clay Tumey shares his humorous journey of planning and executing bank robberies, revealing motivations and the thrill of crime.

Key points

The Bank Robbery Plan. Clay Tumey meticulously planned his bank robbery, believing he could get away with it.
The First Successful Heist. Clay successfully robs a bank, leaving with $2,850, feeling exhilarated.
Turning Himself In. Clay decides to turn himself in after robbing three banks, wanting to start fresh.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Robbing banks is easy. I can get away with it.

Audrey Fernandez recalls Clay's bold claim.

0:01WatchNov 8, 2022

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

More from Criminal | A Podcast About Crime

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.