Fugitive couple agree to deportation to U.S.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- A U.S. couple wanted by the FBI for a series of armed bank robberies across the American West agreed to be deported from South Africa Friday.

Craig Michael Pritchert, 41, and Nova Ester Guthrie, 28 -- dubbed the modern-day Bonnie and Clyde by newspapers for their alleged crime spree -- looked calm but serious as they told the Cape Town Magistrates Court they had no objection to being deported.

The fugitives, who were on the FBI's most-wanted list, had been living in the country illegally since 2000.

They were expected to fly to the United States on Monday, according to state prosecutors working on the case.

There are federal warrants for their arrest in Denver and Phoenix, and they were likely to be deported to one of those two cities, said U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Judy Moon.

Pritchert and Guthrie are suspected of armed robberies in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Texas and Oregon in the 1990s. They had lived near Durango in southern Colorado.

Pritchert is accused of entering the banks with a semiautomatic handgun and using duct tape, cheap handcuffs or plastic ties to bind bank employees.

Guthrie drove the getaway car, authorities said.

Several other international fugitives have fled to Cape Town in recent years, among them, convicted German fraudster Jurgen Harksen; Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a suspect in the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and James Kilgore, the last member of the Symbionese Liberation charged with murder in a 1975 bank robbery.