FBI: 1 of 2 bank robbers who escaped federal Chicago jail arrested after dayslong manhunt | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
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FBI: 1 of 2 bank robbers who escaped federal Chicago jail arrested after dayslong manhunt

FILE - This undated photo provided by the FBI shows Jose Banks, one of two inmates who escaped from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. FBI spokeswoman Joan Hyde said Joseph "Jose" Banks, 37, was captured without incident Thursday Dec. 20, 2012. Agents and officers from the Chicago FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force, along with officers from the Chicago Police Department, arrested Banks about 11:30 p.m. Thursday in Chicago, Hyde said in a news release. (AP Photo/FBI, File)

CHICAGO - One of two bank robbers was arrested late Thursday after a manhunt following the pair's daring escape from a high-rise federal jail in Chicago, the FBI said.

FBI spokeswoman Joan Hyde said Joseph "Jose" Banks, 37, was captured without incident. Agents and officers from the Chicago FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force, along with officers from the Chicago Police Department, arrested Banks about 11:30 p.m. Thursday in Chicago, Hyde said in a news release.

The arrest came days after Banks and Kenneth Conley somehow broke a large hole into the bottom of a 6-inch wide window of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, dropped a makeshift rope made of bed sheets out and climbed down about 20 stories to the ground.

The escape went unnoticed for hours, with surveillance video from a nearby street, showing the two, no longer wearing orange jail-issued jumpsuits hop into a cab shortly before 3 a.m. on Tuesday.

But when the facility did discover the two men were gone at about 7 a.m., what was found revealed a meticulously planned escape, including clothing and sheets, shaped to resemble a body, under blankets on beds, bars inside a mattress and even fake bars in the cells.

A massive manhunt involving state, federal and local law enforcement agencies was launched, as SWAT teams stormed into the home of a relative of Conley, only to learn the two had been there but had left, and searched other area homes and businesses — including a strip club where Conley once worked.

The search for Conley, 38, continued early Friday.

Law enforcement officials did not answer a host of questions, including how the men could collect about 200 feet of bed sheets, and what they might have used to break through the wall of the federal facility.

The 37-year-old Banks, known as the Second-Hand Bandit because he wore used clothes during his heists, was convicted last week of robbing two banks and attempting to rob two others. Authorities say he stole almost $600,000, and most of that still is missing.

During trial, he had to be restrained because he threatened to walk out of the courtroom. He acted as his own attorney and verbally sparred with the prosecutor, at times arguing that U.S. law didn't apply to him because he was a sovereign citizen of a group that was above state and federal law.

Conley, 38, pleaded guilty last October to robbing a Homewood Bank last year of nearly $4,000. Conley, who worked at the time at a suburban strip club, wore a coat and tie when he robbed the bank and had a gun stuffed in his waistband.

News from © The Associated Press, 2012
The Associated Press

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