Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 7 - Cloak of Deceit - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

For seven years, a trio of men robbed one bank after another. They always got away before the police arrived, and they left no evidence behind. But the way they stood and the clothes they wore told a story that could be read by forensic scientists.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

The Bellamy brothers, former law enforcement, committed a series of bank robberies in North Carolina before being caught through forensic evidence.

Key points

The Perfect Crime. For seven years, a group of bank robbers executed heists flawlessly, leaving law enforcement baffled.
A Town Transformed. Calabash, known for its seafood, became infamous for bank robberies after repeated heists.
The Inside Job. Investigators discovered that the robbers had law enforcement backgrounds, complicating the case.
The Unraveling. The Bellamy brothers were arrested after a breakthrough in the investigation linked them to the robberies.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I think it was just a civic duty to try to help catch these guys.

A witness reflecting on his decision to follow the robbers.

7:46WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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