West Chicago Man Gets 46 Months For Bank Robbery
CHICAGO (CBS) -- An unemployed West Chicago man has been sentenced to nearly 4 years in prison for the 2009 robbery of a bank in southwest suburban Bolingbrook.
William W. Baaske was also placed on two years of supervised release after he completes his sentence and ordered to make $8,111 restitution to West Suburban Bank, 672 E. Boughton Rd., which he robbed on Dec. 3, 2009.
Baaske, 45, had been convicted of robbing the bank by giving a teller a note claiming he was carrying a gun. He was sentenced to 3 years and 10 months in prison on Friday at a hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Milton I. Shadur.
Authorities in Joliet and Bolingbrook began investigating Baaske after two financial institutions were robbed there within two weeks of one another under similar circumstances.
A man on Nov. 19, 2009 entered Merchants & Manufacturers Bank at 601 E. Cass St. in Joliet and gave a note to a teller that implied he was carrying a handgun, police said that year. The teller gave the robber an undisclosed amount of money, which the suspect put inside a blue plastic bag before leaving the building.
Police said a man, later identified as Baaske, went 14 days later to the West Suburban Bank branch in Bolingbrook. The man again implied he was armed but did not display a weapon, and escaped in a blue sport utility vehicle with $8,111.
A police stakeout on Dec. 12, 2009 ended in Baaske's arrest at a service station in far southwest suburban Manhattan.
Authorities quickly obtained a search warrant and found $99 in dye-stained money inside Baaske's blue, 2008 Ford Escape. Exploding dye packets are sometimes secreted inside stacks of paper money given to bank robbers.
The status or possible resolution of the Merchants & Manufacturers Bank holdup was not known Friday.
(The Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this report.)
