Man known as oldest bank robber dies

DALLAS -- J.L. Hunter "Red" Rountree, believed to be the oldest bank robber in the United States, has died in federal custody at age 92.

Rountree gained national attention for a late-in-life crime spree that began in 1998. He was prosecuted for bank robberies in Mississippi, Florida and most recently in Texas.

A spokesman for the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., said Rountree was transferred to the prison shortly after his January 2004 sentencing in Lubbock. He died Oct. 12, two months shy of his 93rd birthday.

A cause of death was not known, federal officials said.

"I think he was just getting old," prison spokesman Al Quintero said.

Born Dec. 11, 1911, in the family farmhouse near Brownsville, Texas, Rountree once was a successful businessman who made his fortune in Houston by building Rountree Machinery Co., a relative said.

About a year after his wife's death in 1986, Rountree, then 76, married a 31-year-old woman and spent $500,000 putting her through drug rehabilitation programs, he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

In 1998, at age 86, Rountree robbed SouthTrust Bank in Biloxi, Miss., and was sentenced to three years probation, fined $260 and told to leave Mississippi.

A year later, he robbed a NationsBank in Pensacola, Fla., but this time he was sentenced to three years behind bars. He was released in 2002.

In August 2003, Rountree robbed First American Bank in Abilene, Texas. He was sentenced to 12 and 1/2 years in prison.

In an AP interview, he offered a rationale for his late-blooming crime spree.

"You want to know why I rob banks?" Rountree said. "It's fun. I feel good, awful good. I feel good for sometimes days, for sometimes hours."

He told the Orlando Sentinel in 2001 that money and revenge were his motivation. A Corpus Christi bank that he'd done business with had forced him into bankruptcy, he told the newspaper, and he had not liked banks since then.

No family member claimed Rountree's body, Quintero said. He is buried in a cemetery near the Springfield prison.