Deep in debt, N.J. family robs bank

[Rose Siding]

Deep in debt, N.J. family robs bank

A small ranch house in Barnegat, N.J., Friday, July 25, 2003, was home to Kathleen Wortman Jones, who was attempting to save the house from foreclosure when she served as getaway driver in a bank heist pulled off by her twin 14-year-old daughters. They got $3,050 in the robbery but never made a payment on the mortgage and were arrested three days later. (AP Photo/Mary Godleski)

BARNEGAT, N.J. -- Kathleen Wortman Jones was just another financially strapped New Jersey homeowner until the day she drove up to the Sun National Bank with her 14-year-old twin daughters.

Desperate to save her house from foreclosure, the 34-year-old mother of four served as the getaway driver after the girls robbed the bank of $3,050.

The heist involved the entire family, according to prosecutors. In addition to Jones and the twins, a 16-year-old daughter was arrested for conspiracy and husband Kevin Jones was charged as an accessory.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Family%20Bank%20Robbery

[salin]

1. What a warped story

While I empathize about the feelings of desperation when facing forclosure - this mother not only crossed the legal line - but she put her two daughters futures in jeopardy by having them directly involved in the crime. Surely that is a worse fate than the impending forclosure.

[1monster]

6. In the story I read earlier this morning, according to the mother,

the plan to rob the bank came from the daughters who were going to rob it on their own. She decided to drive the car to try to keep them safe... :eyes:

I guess being a responsible mother and making sure that her daughters did not rob the bank was something that never occurred to her.

But then, look what they did with the money. Not a penny of it went to pay the past due mortgage payments. The mother and the father went gambling with it.

[NNN0LHI]

8. They may have thought a warm jail cell might be better than a cold street?

I would not ever try and encourage this type of behaviour though. Actually not too many bank robbers get caught and the money is not too bad. But the drawbacks of something going wrong, of which there are many things that can go wrong, and going out in a hail of bullets far outweigh any advantages that I can see.

Don

[Demobrat]

2. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Laugh at the stupidity or cry for the desperation that drove them to do it, when I think about how many people are in similar situations. They may not all go out and rob banks, but these people were about to become homeless. I don't know exactly what I would be capable of if faced with the streets. Desperate people do desperate things.

[FlaGranny]

4. I agree with you mostly,

but one thing that bothers me about this story is that they went GAMBLING? in Atlantic City? I'd have had a little more sympathy for them if they had used to the money to try to catch up on their mortgage payment.

Somethings, if I think about it, I'm very sorry for the younger people of this world who have 40 or more years ahead of them to try to make their way in the world. Years and years of work to raise your family and maintain a home, huge amounts of money necessary to do it. Somehow, sometimes, it seems to me that humans probably were much happier before the invention of money.

[Demobrat]

11. Yeah, that gambling thing struck me too.

Which is where the laughter came in. Of course it's kind of hard to feel sorry for somebody who committed a crime and went straight to a casino. It makes you wonder why the mortgage wasn't being paid in the first place. But it puts one in mind of all the other families in the same situations who don't resort to something so outlandish. I really wonder what's to become of this country. I keep thinking about places like Guatemala, where the rich live like kings behind high walls, and the rest barely exist in their tin shacks on the other side of the barricade, where the children go naked while their parents wait for opportunities to serve the king for a pittance. This is where the Repukes want to take us, and their stupid followers go along because they're all picturing themselves as part of the privileged elite, not the naked poor. Boy are they in for a rude shock.

[UpInArms]

3. this is how our society has

become when there are no safety nets -

this mother - undereducated - worked at minimum wage positions - K-Mart and nursing homes -

husband - undereducated and in poor health - probably no health insurance -

children - too many and far too young and now with futures ruined -

$1,000 monthly mortgages for a home big enough to house them and no income to support the loan

with nowhere to go but the streets and no way to make better choices - because bad choices seem to snowball out of control -

this story was years in the making and hours in the undoing of an entire family unit

so where did they go with their loot??

to the casino -

for me, it's a weeper :(

[PaDUer]

10. Desperate...

might have thought they'd be able to win more money at the casino to pay other bills..People are desperate and have been losing lots of things since * gang took over..Everything, bread, etc., has been going higher daily and the jobs are gone..what's people to do? I'm surprised there's not more being done unless we don't hear of it.

[htuttle]

5. Sounds like the type of story you'd hear during the Depression

I'd expect to see more of this sort of thing as the economy gets worse.

('this sort of thing' meaning normally law-abiding citizens doing desperate things).

[NNN0LHI]

9. Sounds like a scene from Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936)

The movie was based on either the Depression era or shortly thereafter. The first scene of the movie is of sheep running through chutes to their slaughter.

Don

[MaineDem]

12. Exactly my thought

Something Steinbeck would have written.

[bitchkitty]

7. There are so many bad things

about this story that I don't know where to start. I do know one thing, though - this woman is an EXTREMELY unfit mother. What if one or both of her girls had been killed? The father seems no better. She was desperate enough to put her children in harm's way, but evidently not desperate enough to rob the bank her damned self. I would really like to slap this bitch to the floor.

I've made bad choices, and I've had a hard life at times. Everyone experiences loss of income, loss of material possessions in life. Not everyone robs banks, and there were other avenues open to this family. I would sell my tired ass on the street before I would use my children* in such a fashion.

*hypothetical ;)

[haele]

13. Intrestingly enough, you hit upon the very solution many...

18th and 19th century poor urban families ended up with once the father became disabled by either war or accident - the mother and/or older daughters went into prostitution, and the younger children very often went into petty crime - pickpocketing, petty burglary - that sort of thing. That was reality back then - as the poor "knew their place" and could only depend on the options "society" left for them and their survival.

This episode re-inforces my belief that there's a lot of fantasy built into our cultural ideal of community supported "modern safety net" and "dedication to the family" - enough so that the girls and mother actually took the extra step that they believed robbing a bank was the way to save themselves from forclosure - just like would happen in the movies.

As a society, we still believe that the poor deserve to be poor, and they usually must work three or four times as hard as someone with money or resources in hand to have the same rights to dignity - if they're lucky enough to be in the position to get "noticed" by someone who already has the power to advance their earning potential in the first place.
That's why the military is basically a poverty draft - it's one of the few social/government organizations where the poor can actually "get ahead" financially and socially on an equal footing with those who could go to college and get into a profession on their own merits instead of depending on the community for support and jobs.

Modern wealth and social economy all about community/social potential; no matter how hard the poor work, if they "earn" the right through luck and/or association, then they're set. Heaven help them if there's any sort of disability or a few bad choices made when they're trying to get their support network set up.

As for the gambling bit - that's still a way the desperate poor get suckered into losing all their money; they usually end up getting "ahead enough" that they start playing for the big jackpot they don't "need" instead of stopping once the inevitable losing starts eating away at the cushion they built up instead of stopping and leaving when they can. It's based on a feeling of desperation, again - those with money and resources to begin with don't usually get caught up in the trap because they don't feel the need as badly.


Haele