terrytowel
07-11-2026, 03:26 PM
This NYT article paints a different picture than what Unsolved Mysteries showed. In addition a news report the day after the robbery below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj8WbI5LMzQ
When Victor Gerena drove to work at the Wells Fargo depot here Sept. 12, no one was surprised when he parked his car inside the company garage instead of in the parking lot outside. There had been problems with thefts in the parking lot.
But when Mr. Gerena drove out of the secure garage late that night, according to the police, he took with him $7 million in cash and left behind two co-workers bound with tape and white nylon twine. It was the nation's second- largest cash robbery.
Three months later, Federal and local law enforcement officials are still searching for Mr. Gerena and the money. The investigation has taken countless hours of work by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the bureau's 59 field offices, other Government agencies and the West Hartford police. The results, so far, have been only tantalizing leads.
The Wells Fargo Armored Service Corporation, where Mr. Gerena worked as an armored truck guard, has offered rewards totaling $500,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction and the return of the $7 million. Federal agents said it was the largest reward ever offered for a single crime in the United States. 'Sightings' Around Country
On the desk of Alonzo L. Lacey Jr., the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. in Connecticut, is a stack of yellow teletype messages, reporting ''sightings'' of Mr. Gerena. They have come from most every state and some other countries.
Bounty hunters have called seeking information that may lead them to Mr. Gerena and a share of the money, law enforcement officials said.
The most tangible clue so far has been three letters signed by Mr. Gerena. They were sent to Michael J. Graham, a Hartford lawyer; Ana Elizabeth Soto, Mr. Gerena's fiancee, and Gloria Gerena, his mother. The F.B.I. says handwriting analyses and other tests by its laboratory in Washington confirm that Mr. Gerena wrote the letters.
The three letters were in one envelope, postmarked in Buffalo, on Nov. 13 and received at Mr. Graham's law office in Hartford two days later. Mr. Graham represents Miss Soto.
Law enforcement officials said they had stepped up their search along the United States-Canadian border. The Canadians were also searching across the border.
A Well-Prepared Plan
Law enforcement officials cited several factorsthat, they said, had hindered a quick solution.
Mr. Gerena, the officials said, appeared to have a well-prepared plan that enabled him to drop from sight immediately after the robbery - the crucial time period in most investigations.
Although not ruling out the possibility of accomplices, the officials said they believed Mr. Gerena acted alone.
And finally, they said, Mr. Gerena is a quiet person not given to bragging or calling attention to himself, and he had no prior criminal record, which might have indicated a pattern of behavior.
''He allegedly hauled 900 pounds of money somewhere, so he had a good plan,'' Mr. Lacey said
Nonetheless, Mr. Lacey and Francis G. Reynolds, the West Hartford Police Chief, said, in separate interviews, that they expected to track him down. Something of a Loner
Victor Manuel Gerena Jr., 25 years old, had worked for Wells Fargo since May 1982, starting as a security guard at stores in downtown Hartford and switching last January to the company's armored car service.
Wells Fargo employees and members of the Gerena family have declined to talk to reporters since the robbery, but other people who knew Mr. Gerena described him as highly intelligent and friendly, but something of a loner.
''I think everyone knows a piece of Victor, but nobody knows the whole Victor,'' said A. Ray Petty 3d, a family friend.
Mr. Petty, the principal of the Hartford Special Education Learning Center, has helped Mr. Gerena over the years. ''He is a very private person,'' Mr. Petty said. ''He doesn't share everything with everyone.''
Mr. Gerena was born in the South Bronx June 24, 1958. Friends said his mother, Gloria, seeking a safer environment, moved with Victor and his four brothers and sisters in 1970 to Charter Oak Terrace, a public housing project in Hartford. 'Everybody's First Choice'
At Bulkeley High School in Hartford, Mr. Gerena was a young man with a promising future. He was on the football and wrestling teams. His grades were good. And when he graduated in 1976 he received a $1,000 scholarship that a local foundation awards to outstanding, needy students.
''Victor was everybody's first choice,'' said a Hartford business executive who helped select the scholarship winners.
At the urging of a high school guidance counselor, Mr. Gerena enrolled in Annhurst College in rural northeastern Connecticut. In hindsight, it was a poor choice, according to his friends.
Annhurst, a small Roman Catholic college for women, had just begun to admit men. It closed in 1979.
Mr. Gerena, a street-wise young man from the inner city, had difficulty adjusting to the school's rigid rules. Students were required to be in their rooms by 10 P.M. with lights out an hour later.
''There was just no sense in his staying out there,'' Mr. Petty said. ''It was a mismatch. Maybe that was the start of Victor's problems. You go away to college with high expectations and then, even though it wasn't your fault, you have to come back home as a failure.'' 2 Marriages Didn't Last
Over the next four years, according to friends, Mr. Gerena married twice and fathered a child by each wife, but the marriages did not last. He took a succession of jobs to try to keep up with child support payments and from time to time enrolled in college courses but did not finish. He wanted to be an Army officer but abandoned that after signing up with a reserve unit.
In 1981 Mr. Petty helped Mr. Gerena get a job as a paraprofessional in the Burns School in Hartford. He worked with problem pupils in a class that Mr. Petty said was ''out of control.'' ''He was excellent,'' Mr. Petty said. ''He was so good at maintaining discipline, and he was great with kids.''
But Mr. Gerena was frustrated at making only $6,000 a year, Mr. Petty said. The job, and Mr. Gerena's latest plan to be a teacher, ended a few months later when he began missing work.
At the Wells Fargo job, Mr. Petty said, ''he was making about $4 an hour, barely more than the minimum wage.''
''He was having some financial problems and feeling that he'd gotten the short stick in society,'' he said. ''And he was entrusted with $7 million in cash.'' The Day of the Robbery
On the day of the robbery - Monday, Sept. 12 - Mr. Gerena went to work about 10:30 A.M., Miss Soto told the police. She had been living with him in a second-floor apartment in a yellow- shingled house on Warner Street in Hartford.
She said he had borrowed 75 cents from her for bus fare. Later that morning, she went to City Hall to pick up their marriage license. They had planned to be married the following Friday.
The West Hartford police have a different version of Mr. Gerena's travel to work. They said he drove to Wells Fargo in a 1973 dark-green Buick Electra four-door sedan, which he rented the previous Saturday from the Ugly Duckling Rent-a-Car agency.
Sworn statements to the West Hartford police by Mr. Gerena's two Wells Fargo co-workers after the robbery provided the following account:
Mr. Gerena was the guard on an armored truck driven by Timothy R. Girard, 21 years old, of Tolland. That day they dropped off a shipment of money and made stops to pick up cash from businesses on the return trip to the depot, which is in a sparsely populated industrial park in West Hartford. They arrived about 9 P.M., backed into an empty garage bay and began unloading the money. 'Put Your Hands in the Air'
James S. McKeon, 25, of Hartford, the branch manager, said he was sitting at a desk making a count of the money when Mr. Gerena came up from behind and pulled Mr. McKeon's gun from its holster.
Mr. McKeon said: ''He then stuck this loaded gun behind my head and said, 'Put your hands in the air. This is serious. It is not a joke.''
Mr. McKeon also quoted Mr. Gerena as saying, ''I am tired of working for other people. I have nothing against you. Do what I say and you will not get hurt.''
Mr. Gerena bound the two men with twine and tape, dragged them to the floor and threw jackets over their heads.
He told them he was injecting them with a drug to put them to sleep. Both men said Mr. Gerena had stuck a needle in their arms, but they did not fall asleep. Investigators said they had been unable to detect a drug in the blood, but they said they did not doubt that some substance had been injected.
Both men said they heard Mr. Gerena as he moved carts of money from the open vault, which held other shipments. They also said Mr. Gerena beeped his car horn, but investigators said they could not establish whether that was a signal to someone else.
A few minutes after Mr. Gerena drove out of the garage, the two men managed to free themselves and sounded the alarm. It was 11:05 P.M.
The $7 million taken was exceeded only by the $11 million in cash that was stolen last December from the Sentry Armored Car Courier Company in the Bronx. Three men were convicted last week on charges stemming from that robbery. About $1 million has been recovered. The 'Getaway Car' Found
Fifteen hours after the robbery, the police found a rental car that they said Mr. Gerena had used. It was abandoned at a motel in Hartford, about five miles from the robbery site. The police found a shotgun and a pistol.
The motel is adjacent to Brainard Field, a small airport, and also to Interstate 91, a major north-south highway.
Two days after the robbery the police arrested Miss Soto and charged her with making false statements and hindering the prosecution. The state charges were eventually dropped, however, to avoid interfering with an ongoing Federal grand jury investigation of the robbery.
For the Federal and local investigators, who meet almost daily in a conference room at the West Hartford police headquarters to discuss the latest developments in the case, the first important breakthrough came with the arrival of the three letters from Buffalo.
Investigators said the letter to Mr. Graham thanked him for representing Miss Soto. The other letters said that Mr. Gerena was fine and that he regretted any trouble the robbery and investigation might have caused Miss Soto and his mother, according to investigators.
Mr. Graham, who turned the letters over to the police, said family members thought the handwritting appeared to be similar to Mr. Gerena's. But he said they had told him that the contents of the letters raised doubts about their authenticity.
Michael Kogut, a spokesman for the F.B.I. in Buffalo, said 20 to 25 agents had been assigned to make an intensive investigation of the area before word of the letters was made public.
The widespread distribution of photographs of Mr. Gerena in upstate New York and Canada spawned many calls from people who said they had seen him. ''We checked each and every one out, negatively,'' Mr. Kogut said.
The calls have slowed to a trickle in recent days, he said, but the investigation goes on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj8WbI5LMzQ
When Victor Gerena drove to work at the Wells Fargo depot here Sept. 12, no one was surprised when he parked his car inside the company garage instead of in the parking lot outside. There had been problems with thefts in the parking lot.
But when Mr. Gerena drove out of the secure garage late that night, according to the police, he took with him $7 million in cash and left behind two co-workers bound with tape and white nylon twine. It was the nation's second- largest cash robbery.
Three months later, Federal and local law enforcement officials are still searching for Mr. Gerena and the money. The investigation has taken countless hours of work by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the bureau's 59 field offices, other Government agencies and the West Hartford police. The results, so far, have been only tantalizing leads.
The Wells Fargo Armored Service Corporation, where Mr. Gerena worked as an armored truck guard, has offered rewards totaling $500,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction and the return of the $7 million. Federal agents said it was the largest reward ever offered for a single crime in the United States. 'Sightings' Around Country
On the desk of Alonzo L. Lacey Jr., the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. in Connecticut, is a stack of yellow teletype messages, reporting ''sightings'' of Mr. Gerena. They have come from most every state and some other countries.
Bounty hunters have called seeking information that may lead them to Mr. Gerena and a share of the money, law enforcement officials said.
The most tangible clue so far has been three letters signed by Mr. Gerena. They were sent to Michael J. Graham, a Hartford lawyer; Ana Elizabeth Soto, Mr. Gerena's fiancee, and Gloria Gerena, his mother. The F.B.I. says handwriting analyses and other tests by its laboratory in Washington confirm that Mr. Gerena wrote the letters.
The three letters were in one envelope, postmarked in Buffalo, on Nov. 13 and received at Mr. Graham's law office in Hartford two days later. Mr. Graham represents Miss Soto.
Law enforcement officials said they had stepped up their search along the United States-Canadian border. The Canadians were also searching across the border.
A Well-Prepared Plan
Law enforcement officials cited several factorsthat, they said, had hindered a quick solution.
Mr. Gerena, the officials said, appeared to have a well-prepared plan that enabled him to drop from sight immediately after the robbery - the crucial time period in most investigations.
Although not ruling out the possibility of accomplices, the officials said they believed Mr. Gerena acted alone.
And finally, they said, Mr. Gerena is a quiet person not given to bragging or calling attention to himself, and he had no prior criminal record, which might have indicated a pattern of behavior.
''He allegedly hauled 900 pounds of money somewhere, so he had a good plan,'' Mr. Lacey said
Nonetheless, Mr. Lacey and Francis G. Reynolds, the West Hartford Police Chief, said, in separate interviews, that they expected to track him down. Something of a Loner
Victor Manuel Gerena Jr., 25 years old, had worked for Wells Fargo since May 1982, starting as a security guard at stores in downtown Hartford and switching last January to the company's armored car service.
Wells Fargo employees and members of the Gerena family have declined to talk to reporters since the robbery, but other people who knew Mr. Gerena described him as highly intelligent and friendly, but something of a loner.
''I think everyone knows a piece of Victor, but nobody knows the whole Victor,'' said A. Ray Petty 3d, a family friend.
Mr. Petty, the principal of the Hartford Special Education Learning Center, has helped Mr. Gerena over the years. ''He is a very private person,'' Mr. Petty said. ''He doesn't share everything with everyone.''
Mr. Gerena was born in the South Bronx June 24, 1958. Friends said his mother, Gloria, seeking a safer environment, moved with Victor and his four brothers and sisters in 1970 to Charter Oak Terrace, a public housing project in Hartford. 'Everybody's First Choice'
At Bulkeley High School in Hartford, Mr. Gerena was a young man with a promising future. He was on the football and wrestling teams. His grades were good. And when he graduated in 1976 he received a $1,000 scholarship that a local foundation awards to outstanding, needy students.
''Victor was everybody's first choice,'' said a Hartford business executive who helped select the scholarship winners.
At the urging of a high school guidance counselor, Mr. Gerena enrolled in Annhurst College in rural northeastern Connecticut. In hindsight, it was a poor choice, according to his friends.
Annhurst, a small Roman Catholic college for women, had just begun to admit men. It closed in 1979.
Mr. Gerena, a street-wise young man from the inner city, had difficulty adjusting to the school's rigid rules. Students were required to be in their rooms by 10 P.M. with lights out an hour later.
''There was just no sense in his staying out there,'' Mr. Petty said. ''It was a mismatch. Maybe that was the start of Victor's problems. You go away to college with high expectations and then, even though it wasn't your fault, you have to come back home as a failure.'' 2 Marriages Didn't Last
Over the next four years, according to friends, Mr. Gerena married twice and fathered a child by each wife, but the marriages did not last. He took a succession of jobs to try to keep up with child support payments and from time to time enrolled in college courses but did not finish. He wanted to be an Army officer but abandoned that after signing up with a reserve unit.
In 1981 Mr. Petty helped Mr. Gerena get a job as a paraprofessional in the Burns School in Hartford. He worked with problem pupils in a class that Mr. Petty said was ''out of control.'' ''He was excellent,'' Mr. Petty said. ''He was so good at maintaining discipline, and he was great with kids.''
But Mr. Gerena was frustrated at making only $6,000 a year, Mr. Petty said. The job, and Mr. Gerena's latest plan to be a teacher, ended a few months later when he began missing work.
At the Wells Fargo job, Mr. Petty said, ''he was making about $4 an hour, barely more than the minimum wage.''
''He was having some financial problems and feeling that he'd gotten the short stick in society,'' he said. ''And he was entrusted with $7 million in cash.'' The Day of the Robbery
On the day of the robbery - Monday, Sept. 12 - Mr. Gerena went to work about 10:30 A.M., Miss Soto told the police. She had been living with him in a second-floor apartment in a yellow- shingled house on Warner Street in Hartford.
She said he had borrowed 75 cents from her for bus fare. Later that morning, she went to City Hall to pick up their marriage license. They had planned to be married the following Friday.
The West Hartford police have a different version of Mr. Gerena's travel to work. They said he drove to Wells Fargo in a 1973 dark-green Buick Electra four-door sedan, which he rented the previous Saturday from the Ugly Duckling Rent-a-Car agency.
Sworn statements to the West Hartford police by Mr. Gerena's two Wells Fargo co-workers after the robbery provided the following account:
Mr. Gerena was the guard on an armored truck driven by Timothy R. Girard, 21 years old, of Tolland. That day they dropped off a shipment of money and made stops to pick up cash from businesses on the return trip to the depot, which is in a sparsely populated industrial park in West Hartford. They arrived about 9 P.M., backed into an empty garage bay and began unloading the money. 'Put Your Hands in the Air'
James S. McKeon, 25, of Hartford, the branch manager, said he was sitting at a desk making a count of the money when Mr. Gerena came up from behind and pulled Mr. McKeon's gun from its holster.
Mr. McKeon said: ''He then stuck this loaded gun behind my head and said, 'Put your hands in the air. This is serious. It is not a joke.''
Mr. McKeon also quoted Mr. Gerena as saying, ''I am tired of working for other people. I have nothing against you. Do what I say and you will not get hurt.''
Mr. Gerena bound the two men with twine and tape, dragged them to the floor and threw jackets over their heads.
He told them he was injecting them with a drug to put them to sleep. Both men said Mr. Gerena had stuck a needle in their arms, but they did not fall asleep. Investigators said they had been unable to detect a drug in the blood, but they said they did not doubt that some substance had been injected.
Both men said they heard Mr. Gerena as he moved carts of money from the open vault, which held other shipments. They also said Mr. Gerena beeped his car horn, but investigators said they could not establish whether that was a signal to someone else.
A few minutes after Mr. Gerena drove out of the garage, the two men managed to free themselves and sounded the alarm. It was 11:05 P.M.
The $7 million taken was exceeded only by the $11 million in cash that was stolen last December from the Sentry Armored Car Courier Company in the Bronx. Three men were convicted last week on charges stemming from that robbery. About $1 million has been recovered. The 'Getaway Car' Found
Fifteen hours after the robbery, the police found a rental car that they said Mr. Gerena had used. It was abandoned at a motel in Hartford, about five miles from the robbery site. The police found a shotgun and a pistol.
The motel is adjacent to Brainard Field, a small airport, and also to Interstate 91, a major north-south highway.
Two days after the robbery the police arrested Miss Soto and charged her with making false statements and hindering the prosecution. The state charges were eventually dropped, however, to avoid interfering with an ongoing Federal grand jury investigation of the robbery.
For the Federal and local investigators, who meet almost daily in a conference room at the West Hartford police headquarters to discuss the latest developments in the case, the first important breakthrough came with the arrival of the three letters from Buffalo.
Investigators said the letter to Mr. Graham thanked him for representing Miss Soto. The other letters said that Mr. Gerena was fine and that he regretted any trouble the robbery and investigation might have caused Miss Soto and his mother, according to investigators.
Mr. Graham, who turned the letters over to the police, said family members thought the handwritting appeared to be similar to Mr. Gerena's. But he said they had told him that the contents of the letters raised doubts about their authenticity.
Michael Kogut, a spokesman for the F.B.I. in Buffalo, said 20 to 25 agents had been assigned to make an intensive investigation of the area before word of the letters was made public.
The widespread distribution of photographs of Mr. Gerena in upstate New York and Canada spawned many calls from people who said they had seen him. ''We checked each and every one out, negatively,'' Mr. Kogut said.
The calls have slowed to a trickle in recent days, he said, but the investigation goes on.