All language subtitles for FBI True Season - 2 ep5

- Call came in
for a bank robbery

in, uh, Newton, Massachusetts.

The hood was up,
black mask covering his face,

and out came the gun.

And he's waving it all around.

- What did you call him,
the Southside Bandit?

- Southside Bandit.

- One of the best predictors

of future violent
criminal behavior

is a history
of violent criminal behavior.

- He actually grabs
the manager,

and he puts the gun
to the manager's head.

- Now we've hit another level.

It just keeps escalating.

We're on this target.

We think he's
gonna hit a bank,

and we're not in position.

- If someone tries
to stop him,

there's a good chance

he's gonna turn around
and shoot them.

- In the FBI, we make
a lot of headlines.

#

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people
want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze!
- FBI.

- FBI!
- Action!

- But they don't know
the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking
agent-to-agent.

#

This is "FBI True."

#

- Kristy Kottis is
a 24-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked gangs, crimes
against children,

as well as human
and drug trafficking.

Kottis was the supervisor

of the FBI's
threat response squad,

overseeing the Bureau's
response to terrorism threats

in New York City.

#

- So tell me
about this bank robbery,

serial bank robber,

the, uh--
what did you call him?

The Southside Bandit?
- Southside Bandit.

- Now, who named him that?
The squad, you?

- No, I did.
- You did?

You got that?
It's a nice name.

- Yeah.
- And why do we call him that?

- All the banks were in
South Newton, Massachusetts,

which is south of Boston.

- Bob DiSalvatore
spent six years

in the Malden PD
narcotics unit,

where he led
undercover operations

throughout the Boston area.

He was later assigned

to the FBI
Violent Crime Task Force

as a special deputy
U.S. Marshal,

investigating bank robberies
and other violent crimes.

#

- Call came in
for a bank robbery

in Newton, Massachusetts.

A guy came in the bank,
face completely covered.

#

He had gloves on, and he
immediately produced a handgun

and took over the whole bank.

- He was engaging
with customers and employees,

and making verbal threats.

- Randy Jarvis has over
27 years of combined service

in the U.S. Army and the FBI.

As assistant special agent
in charge

at the Boston field office,
Randy oversaw

dangerous criminal
investigations.

He finished his career
at Boston Division

as the supervisory
special agent

of the violent crimes unit.

- There was an escalation
in the language,

telling people
to get the fuck down.

You can tell
he wants this done.

He wants to get in and out.

- He's waving that gun around.

He's sticking it
in their faces.

And he hit every single teller.

He didn't just go
to one teller.

He took over the whole bank.

The three tellers were
very, very afraid.

- Yeah, the emotional damage
that, um, bank robbers do is--

is more than I think people
even recognize, you know?

- It's almost like they came
into their house

and threatened them.

And I think that most
of the--most of the tellers

were feeling like,
"I just got violated."

- You're the teller standing
on the other side

of the counter, it--

I mean, that's
extremely real to you.

- As he was leaving the bank,

he demanded everybody
lay down on the ground.

Then he would leave and, uh,
he could get away quicker,

without anybody
following him outside

to see where he was going.

We call that an armed takeover.

So that automatically ratchets

the investigation up
considerably.

This was, like, going
to the top of the list.

#

I worked
with the Newton police.

We did our interviews,
and we found out

how much money was stolen.

#

The next one was about--

almost exactly
one month later...

#

At the Bank of America.

Same exact MO.

He had
the gray hooded sweatshirt.

The hood was up,
black mask covering his face.

And again, out came the gun,
and he's waving it all around.

And he got, uh--

he got
a sizable amount of money.

- So when you looked
at the bank surveillance film,

you noticed that
it's the same guy.

- Same guy.
- Are you worried at this point

that, you know--hey,

someone like that,
he's gonna escalate

and eventually get
so comfortable

that he is gonna, like, cap
somebody?

- That is absolutely--

you know, maybe someone
wants to be the hero.

"Hey, I--I can stop this guy.
I can stop him."

So that's always in our mind,
that "Oh, my God, he's"--

if someones tries to stop him--

'cause he's very violent.
He's very aggressive.

If someone tries to stop him,
there's a good chance

he's gonna turn around
and shoot them.

#

Normally, we would collect

the best picture
of the suspect,

and we would go
onto a website--

it's called Mass Most Wanted.

So I would post the picture
right away onto this website

asking for the help,
for the public's help,

to say, "Anybody know
this person?

"You can call me
confidentially.

There is--there is
reward money available."

- If we are able to get
a lead to identify somebody

and write an affidavit
and get an arrest warrant,

and then go arrest them
with all the right resources,

we love to do that, right?

Because that makes it safer

for the person
we're going after,

makes it safer
for law enforcement.

- So every time you hear
that there's

a bank robbery in Newton,

are you thinking,
"It's my guy"?

- Oh, my God, yes.
I--I kind of get--

- Yeah, yeah.

- Every time I go,
a bank robber.

Here we go again.

- How often is he going?

So he's done two--

- Well, that was, uh,
January 25 to February 25.

So there's a 30-day break
in between.

But in Boston, 90%
of our bank robbers

were, um, people
with a drug problem.

If it's--if it's a kid
who has a drug problem,

especially
a really bad heroin problem,

they can burn through $1,000,
$2,000, in a couple of days.

So every other day,
every--every three days,

he's gonna rob a bank.

This guy was getting
a lot of money,

but he was still
lasting them 30 days.

So I'm thinking,
"Well, you know, maybe he's--

"maybe he's not a junkie.

Maybe he doesn't fit
the profile."

- Right.
- Maybe he's doing this

for another reason.

The third bank was
the Century Bank in Newton.

#

- Now we've had
three bank robberies.

So you guys are starting
to use mapping, at least.

Like, he goes here,
what exits are close to there.

- You're looking at stuff
south of 90, you know,

'cause 90 cuts in

from the east to west
into Boston,

and that's where,
geographically, this started.

We felt as if there must be
some connection there.

We just--
- Does he live in Newton?

Is he from Newton?

Why is he picking Newton?

Is he familiar with Newton?

We're putting assets
on the street.

We got guys.

I'm like,
"I don't know who he is.

"I don't know
what he's driving.

"I do know that he's hitting
banks in South Newton,

"so let's flood South Newton
so that if one comes in,

"we're there,

and we can maybe get
there and catch him."

And the next robbery
that happened

was the Village Bank in Newton.

At one point, he actually
grabs the manager,

and he puts the gun
to the manager's head.

- Now we've hit
another level, right?

It keeps escalating.
- Yeah.

- Because we started out
with the engaging verbally,

making the threats,
and now--now he's putting

his hands on people.

- Not only is he progressing
in his violence

and his attitude toward
the--the people in the bank,

but he's also doing it
more frequently, now.

He's went from 30 days

to less than 30,
now to 20 days.

And we see that he's
really progressing,

and he's gonna crash.

Something bad's gonna happen.

He may get to the point
where he's doing one every day.

It's like
the slowest car accident.

You see it coming.

He eventually stepped
outside of Newton.

He went to the next town over,
Wellesley.

There was a lady with a very
young child in the bank,

and he was very threatening
to everybody in the bank,

including the mother
and child.

That was bank number five.

- You know, one of the things
they teach you

out of Quantico
right from the jump,

starting in the violent crime
program, right,

is that one
of the best predictors

of future violent
criminal behavior

is a history
of violent criminal behavior.

- We would say, "Who's our list
of bank robbers

that maybe just got out
of jail, okay?"

Because this guy looks like
he knows what he's doing.

He's in and out of that bank
within a minute

to a minute and a half.

He--the gun is out right away.

He's herding everybody
into the middle of the bank,

and then he's telling them to
get on the ground afterwards.

Like, most people
that go into a bank,

they don't have a plan.

This guy has a plan.

I would contact

the county houses
of correction,

and I would say,
"Who did you just release?

"Who's been released
in the last 30 days

that did prior bank robberies
before?"

And I wasn't getting
any luck with that, either.

- We're working
with, uh, you know,

public affairs
and our media rep,

and doing whatever we can.

- At this point,
we don't have any identity.

We're not getting
any luck at all

with cameras
in the neighborhoods,

or picking him up going
to and from the bank.

- Really?
- No.

- So when do you get
your first break in this case?

You know what I mean?

- All right,
so then we got lucky.

The next bank he did was up

in, uh, Plaistow,
New Hampshire.

He robs the bank,
does his normal thing.

That gun is out.
He's yelling and screaming.

He's yelling and screaming,
telling everybody

to get on the ground.

"Give me all the money
out of the drawers."

And as he leaves,
the manager follows him.

So he sees him leave
the front of the bank,

and he runs across the street,
crosses over a road.

All of a sudden, he sees
a gold Dodge Durango come out

of the parking lot,
high rate of speed,

and go off really quick.

So he says,
"I think that's him."

And the manager gets,
like, the first three numbers

of the--of the car.
4-8-3, it was, I think.

And, um, I'm like,
"Whoa, this is great."

So--
- It's fantastic.

- I start checking
the databases,

the Registry of Motor Vehicle
databases in Massachusetts.

And I can put in a string,

begins with or ends with
or contains.

So I put in 4-8-3
as the first three numbers,

and gold Dodge Durango.

I think I got,
like, two or three.

- Oh, perfect.
- Boom. Yeah.

One of them came back

to a lady who lived
in Haverhill.

#

So I start looking
at her, but she's--

she's a good person.

She goes--she has a job,
she goes to work,

she pays her bills.

She's got
no criminal record at all.

But then we notice
that this girl--

she doesn't live
in Haverhill anymore.

She was listed
as living in Haverhill,

the car is registered
to Haverhill,

but she recently moved
to Newton.

She literally lives
across the street

from the fourth bank.

We also get into the--more
of the social media stuff.

- Yep.
- So when I get--

I look at her,
she has associates.

One of the associates
is Wilfredo Alarcon.

Hispanic male.

He's 5' 9", stocky build,

and he has a extremely violent
criminal history.

Armed robberies,
firearm charges.

I'm thinking, "I got him.

I think I got him.
I think it's my guy."

- Now things started to make
a little bit more sense, right?

We certainly felt like
we had the right guy.

Now we're able to start
deploying some--some tools.

So we--we get out
that physical surveillance,

and we start following
these people.

- We--we don't have
any forensic evidence

to put him inside a bank.

I don't have a photo array

that I was able to show
to a teller

and say, "That's the guy."

I don't have a note
that I'm able to process

and maybe get fingerprints
or DNA from.

- Right.
- So how do we catch him?

We almost gotta catch him
in the act.

I check in
with his probation officer,

and he's like,
"Yeah, he's got a job.

Uh, he works
at this gym in Boston."

I talked to the gym.
They're like,

"Yeah, he was here
for like, two, three weeks.

It didn't work out.
I fired him."

And I go back to, like,
the very beginning

of--why is this guy
doing these robberies?

So we're following him,
and as we're following him,

he goes into East Boston,

and he picks up this girl
who's probably

about half his age.

- Oh, okay.

- Um, and he is lovey-dovey.

Every day, he would go
to her in East Boston.

He would say goodbye
to his wife in Newton

and go
to his girlfriend's house.

We're snapping away.
We're taking pictures.

He's taking her to the store.
He's buying her things.

- Oh, nice.

- At one point,
he buys her luggage.

I believe we caught him
buying lingerie.

- Oh, that's nice.

- This is
why he's robbing banks.

He's got two lives.

I'm gonna run
two--two families,

I gotta have money.
So now I know.

- A decision is made
that we need

to install a tracking device
on his car,

because we can't
get close to him.

- Right.
- 'Cause he's gonna spot us,

and then something bad's
going to happen.

So--
- So what kind

of tracking device
do you decide

to use in this matter?

- It's a GPS.

It has a very, very
powerful magnet on it.

Most of the time
you install, you go--

you go underneath the car.

I would log in
to the software program,

and I would see breadcrumbs,

where little red dots
are his route.

- Now we're up
on tech surveillance.

This thing's starting
to ratchet up,

because when you get
to that point,

we can't let an
armed bank robbery go down

where we're not doing
our part in staying on him.

If you look at how
this started, right--

first five south of 90, then
the trajectory up to Plaistow.

It was well advertised
within the squad at that point

that, hey, if this guy
in this vehicle

breaks north of the tunnel,
it's game on.

Just after 9:00
in the morning,

a text message came in to me.

So now we're in the scramble.

It's the 911 response.

We're trying to get out there.

Our SWAT team that day
was in the harbor,

doing a training run.

And I said,
"I need you back here.

"We're--we're tracking
this car.

We think he's gonna hit
a bank."

We knew that there was
an interchange,

like, seven miles
up the highway,

where 93 intersects with 95.

So he makes a beeline for us.

He hits the--the shoreline

as we're just coming up
on that interchange.

And I said,
"Hey, put your pipper"--

and the pipper's this little--

it's crosshairs on the camera.

And I said,
"Put it on this interchange.

I'll tell you when he passes."

And I said, "All right, he's
hitting the interchange now."

And the guy had the pipper
right on the highway,

and he's like, "I got him."
- Nice.

Aircraft's doing well,

but now we're getting low
on gas.

- Oh, no.
- Because they were on

an alternate training day...
- Right.

- And we pulled them in
for this mission.

So again, we weren't gassed up,
fueled up for the run.

To complicate matters
even further,

we're on this target.

We think he's
gonna hit a bank,

and I don't have
an arrest warrant.

So we're working the channels,
and as we're doing this, now,

he comes out of the tunnel.
And 30 minutes later,

he pulls over
at that marketplace there

in Haverhill, and there was
a bank

buried at the back middle
of this parking lot.

So we're thinking,
"Oh, boy, here it goes."

And we're not in position.

- The mobile STOP team
has arrived.

They're parked, ready--
ready to go on the signal.

And uh, now it's a waiting game

because, like he said,

we don't have
the arrest warrant.

We have to catch him
in the act.

We have already talked
to the prosecutor--

what do you need to get us
to that arrest?

And she says,
"Any action that he does

"where it looks to you,

"in your training
and experience,

that he is going to do it."

- Then the--the aircraft
starts calling out

what's going on in the vehicle.

And at one point,
they see that he gets out,

he opens up his hood,
and then he does something.

And we can't really tell
what's going on,

but it looks like
he--literally, it looked

like he was spray painting
something underneath his hood,

which made no sense to us.

- He gets back
in his car, and he goes

to another mall, in Methuen.

- And when he pulled
into this parking lot,

we notice a bank.

But he's parked
away from the bank.

He positioned himself
in front of the Home Depot

a few rows off,
and, you know,

not like he was going
in the front door,

but amongst other vehicles.

- So basically,
you're in the parking lot.

The state police are ready.

They've got command
of, like, when to go.

The bad guy is
in the parking lot,

and the bank is there.

- We see him.

He's putting the hoodie on.
He's putting the mask on.

One of the troopers
was able to see his hands,

and you could clearly see
that he had white gloves on.

That's the overt act.

We got it.

- He's out of the vehicle,
making his move.

We think we know
where he's going.

We're not completely sure,
but we think.

- He's taking his time,
crossing a road,

and then into
the next parking lot area.

So he's walking right
straight line, straight line,

to the front door of the bank.

- I'm at the bank,
and I'm watching this.

And I'm like,
"Okay, how much closer

"is he gonna get to me?

Because at some point, I have
decisions I have to make."

Now, I--from where
I'm positioned,

I can see the STOP team
coming down in their truck.

I heard the call
over the radio.

They announced it,
execute, execute,

and handed it over
to the STOP team,

and they buzzed right past me.

- He never saw it coming.

- Yeah.
- It was beautiful.

He's walking towards the bank.

They came up on his flank,
but he didn't see them,

so he just pulled in.

They looked like
a regular black truck,

you know.

They all jump out.

Flashbang hits the ground.

He's then ordered
to get on the ground.

He complies right away.

I'm sure he's devastated,
with the flashbang going off.

They move right in on him.

They just handcuff him
right away,

and then
he's turned over to us.

And then we enter
the--enter the scene.

And you can see that
on the video, it's where--

all of us now coming in.

Randy's coming from the bank.

I'm coming
from where I was parked.

- So when they took him down
in the parking lot,

and um, they rolled him over,
and they do the pat-down

and cuff him, did they find
anything on him?

- He had the gloves on.

He had the mask, pulled down,

that he could pull up
to his face.

And he had, uh, the gun.

- Painted black.
- Painted black.

The gun was not real.

It was a small pellet gun.

He had bought a can
of black spray paint,

and when we observed him
under the hood,

spray painting something,
it was the gun.

- Yeah. And someone
of this violent ilk,

he had no problem putting a--

a gun in someone's face,

because it was only a toy
to him.

But to everyone else,
it was real.

#

- After we handcuffed him
and got him over

to the Methuen
Police Department

to get booked
for the current charge

of attempted bank robbery,
he did not want to talk to us.

I asked him if he wanted
to give a statement,

he was read his Miranda rights,

and he said, no,
not interested.

I think he told me to go
fuck myself, very much.

- Oh, pleasant.

- So then I knew, okay,

I've got him for this one.

I got to get him
for the six other ones.

Remember now, I still got
that lady in Newton.

We fly into, uh, Newton.

I knock on the door,
she answered the door,

and we identify ourselves,

and I start explaining
to her why we're there.

Uh, "We just arrested,
uh, Wilfredo.

You know him?"
"Yes, he lives with me.

"He's my husband.

So then we start telling her
why we arrested him,

and she's like, "No, no, no,
no, no, you don't understand.

"He's a good guy, good guy.

He takes care of us.
He goes to work every day."

I'm like,
"Ma'am, I've been looking

"at Wilfredo now
for about a week,

"and he does not go
to work every day.

"I'm about to show you
what he does with your car

on a daily basis."

And I proceeded to show her
a nice 8-by-11--

- Glossy?
- Glossy pictures...

- Nice.
- Of him lovey-dovey

on the new girlfriend
in East Boston.

- Nice.
- And he's buying her stuff,

and he's buying her lingerie.

Everything changed.

She did a complete 180.

"Oh, my god, that mother"--

and she's screaming
and swearing,

and she's like, "I"--
you know, "I do everything.

"I do everything.

"He doesn't give me any money.

To hell with him."
She goes, "Come here."

She says,
"I wanna show you something."

So she brings me
into the bedroom,

and she opens a closet door.

And there's a pair
of sneakers that we know

from the bank robbery,
one of the bank robberies,

that he wore.
And it's got red dye on it

from one of the dye packs

that he was given
that exploded.

She goes,
"Yeah, that's not all.

"When I came home that night,

"he was in the shower,
scrubbing his chest,

"getting the red--
getting red paint off.

"I asked him what happened.

He told me to mind
my own business."

And I asked her,
"Ma'am, I'm saying, I--

"I'm going to ask you to,
you know--

"I'm going to serve you
with a grand jury subpoena.

I need you to testify
to all this."

And she said, "Not a problem."

And sure enough,
she came into the grand jury

about two weeks later,
and she testified

to everything she told me.

And then I went
and talked to the girlfriend

in East Boston--
from East Boston--

and I explained to her
everything.

And she didn't know
about his other life,

that he was married
to this woman in Newton,

and she was just--

she met him at the gym.

- Right.
- She was an employee there.

And uh, I said, "Well,
you're gonna have

to come and testify
that you, you know--"

about all this stuff.
And she did.

#

- You know, people
have a tendency

to romanticize bank robbers.

You know, I've seen it
in TV shows

and in movies, you know.

But these really are--
they're--they're, uh, people

that wreak havoc
on other people's emotions.

They're violent criminals.

- We have seen this
over the course of time,

where a lot
of these people never return

to work after being
victimized like that,

because they just--

the--the fear factor is too
high for them to come back.

So if you were
a violent criminal

trying to create victims
from our citizens,

we did everything we could
to take you off the streets.