Two St. Louis Police Detectives, Two FBI Agents Here are Honored
Jeremy Kohler, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A national police organization recognized the work of two St. Louis police detectives and two St. Louis-based FBI agents this week who had worked together to solve a string of bank robberies and abductions last year.
Detectives Frederic Wayne Klobe and Patrick J. Drennan, and Special Agents George Roberts and Eric Simmons received honorable mention Wednesday at the ninth annual “Top Cops Awards” by the National Association of Police Officers during a ceremony in New York.
They were Missouri’s finalists.
The joint city police-FBI investigation led to convictions of three men from the St. Louis area. Holdups at six banks from December 1999 to June 2001 included home invasions and abductions of bank officials forced to try to open vaults and ATMs.
The robbers took female bank employees from their homes to closed bank branches while relatives were held hostage at gunpoint at home. No one was seriously hurt. The robbers used more than $ 100,000 in loot to take trips and buy cars.
DNA evidence from hair and other samples from the defendants’ placed them at the bank officials’ homes.
Investigators got a break when a convenience store owner reported he’d sold a money order for some dye-stained cash. Detectives surmised the bills had been stolen in one of the robberies and marked when a dye pack exploded.
The officers stopped payment on the money order and within days learned that a weapons dealer in Tennessee had tried to cash it. The dealer supplied investigators with information that led to the suspects.
Klobe said the yearlong investigation was frustrating.
“But once we zeroed in on these guys, our frustration just went out the window. You get reinvigorated because you’re getting ready to stop them.”