Bad Hair Bandit Suspect Was Prison Nurse, Husband Was An Inmate
BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- A woman the FBI believes robbed as many as 20 banks throughout the West worked as a nurse at an Idaho state prison facility where she likely met the convicted forger who investigators say drove the getaway car.
Cynthia Van Holland, 47, was arrested Monday with her husband, 26-year-old Christopher Scott Alonzo, after a bank robbery in Auburn, Calif.
Authorities say Van Holland is the "Bad Hair Bandit," who used wigs to disguise herself during bank heists in Montana, Oregon and Washington state.
Alonzo, a northern Idaho resident, spent time in Idaho prisons and jails on fraud, forgery and escape convictions.
Placer County, Calif., sheriff's Lt. Mark Reed said witnesses saw Van Holland jumping into a car just after a robbery in Auburn. She and Alonzo were arrested a short distance away on Interstate 80.
Investigators believe Van Holland met Alonzo while he was incarcerated at an Idaho Department of Correction facility and she worked as a nurse for a private contractor, Correctional Medical Services.
"IDOC records show that the department ran a background check on Van Holland in November of 2005 so that she could work as an LPN for CMS, the company that provided health care to IDOC inmates," Jeff Ray, an Idaho prisons spokesman, said in a written statement.
Van Holland doesn't have a criminal record in Idaho, according to a check of court records.
Public records show she listed Idaho addresses in Boise, Twin Falls and Jerome earlier this year. She worked at the Kootenai County Jail in northern Idaho for a private contractor as a part-time nightshift nurse starting in April, and her last day at work was just a week ago, on Aug. 10.
A phone message left at what a male voice described as the "Van Holland residence" in Jerome, an agricultural town in southern Idaho's dairy country, was not immediately returned.
Van Holland married Alonzo on March 14 in Coeur d'Alene. On the marriage license, she indicated she was living in Tacoma, Wash.
Alonzo remains in Idaho's parole system after a long history of criminal convictions.
He was arrested in 2002 and charged with five counts of felony forgery before pleading guilty to reduced charges. He served jail time for fraud convictions in 2004, then went to prison a year later after being found guilty of fraudulent use of a transaction card and forgery.
In January 2008, Alonzo was arrested after escaping from a correctional facility in Ada County, then sentenced to at least another year in prison, court records show.
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
