Serial bank-robbing pensioner misses court thanks to perfect excuse – she died

A bank robbing pensioner failed to turn up to court after her latest escapades for a very good reason – she's actually dead.

Bonnie Gooch has been terrorising banks in Missouri, United States for decades, and has previously spent time in jail for two raids.

But when she was due to appear in court for her third raid, she no-showed.

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It later turned out that that was because she died sometime between being arrested and the new court day.

Local news outlet the Riverfront Times reported that she missed her arraignment on Monday (July 24) for a bank robbery she was accused of having committed in April near Kansas City.

According to Pleasant Hill Police Chief Tommy Wright, officers went to Gooch's home to serve an arrest warrant that had been issued for failing to appear in court, but when police knocked on the front door, it partially opened leading officers to enter.

It didn't take long for the officers to realise what happened as they found a deceased female in the back bedroom.

Though formal identification has not yet been made, an individual with the Cass County medical examiner's office confirmed to the paper that the body matches the description of a 78-year-old female.

A neighbour has claimed to several news outlets that Gooch was a "very sweet lady, from what we could tell from our daily small talks with her dog, checking the mail and so forth."

Yet Gooch was arrested not far from the Goppert Financial Bank this past spring when police pulled over her would-be getaway car.

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She allegedly committed the robbery by passing the teller a note saying: “This is a robbery – I need 13,000 small bills.

“No dye pack!”

Rather politely, the note ended: “Thank you sorry I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The April robbery was the third time Gooch had been accused of robbing a bank.

She pleaded guilty to robbing another bank in 2020, when she was 75, and she also robbed a bank in California in 1977, when she was in her early 30s.

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