Bad Hair Bandit

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Wig-Wearing ‘Bad Hair Bandit’ Was Prison Nurse, Officials in Idaho Say She had a penchant for clumsy wigs, traveled with her cat and worked as a prison nurse in Idaho — when she was not crisscrossing the Pacific Northwest robbing banks. But after a string of successful hits on at least 19 banks in four states, Cynthia Van Holland — who law enforcement officers believe is the suspect known as the Bad Hair Bandit — ran into bad luck. An alert witness saw her running to a car after the robbery of a Bank of the West branch office in Auburn, Calif., on Monday and noted the license number. Shortly afterward, Placer County sheriff’s deputies arrested Ms. Van Holland, 47, and the driver of the silver Sebring, her husband, Christopher Alonzo, 26. A cat was found in the back seat of the car with “a litter box, toys and all the things a cat would need,” said Dena Erwin, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department. The cat was taken to an animal shelter, Ms. Erwin said. Female bank robbers have become more common in the last 20 years, said Brad Bryant, chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s violent crimes and major offenders unit, but they remain in the minority. In 2010, 8 percent of bank robberies were by women. Like their male counterparts, women who rob banks are often driven by a drug or gambling addiction, Mr. Bryant said, but unlike men, they prefer nonviolent methods. “We see a lot fewer instances in which the female bank robber will display a weapon,” he said. “Women are more likely to do what we call a note job or to just make an oral demand to the teller.” The suspect in the robbery— who was first spotted on a surveillance tape at a US Bank in Tacoma, Wash., on Dec. 22, her blond hair pulled up into a black baseball cap — would stand in the bank line and then hand the teller a note saying that she was armed and demanding money. She is

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