Apparently not this guySo one of the most infamous non-fiction criminals in recent New Jersey history was captured this week. The so-called Hat Bandit robbed 18 banks in Central Jersey over the course of a year and a half, earning his media-friendly appellation via his habit of wearing a different chapeau to each heist. His modus operandi was to strike mainly on the weekends, never producing a weapon, and never attempting to obscure or conceal his face. This brazenness coupled with his non-violent tactics typified the charm of the Hat Bandit. He was widely perceived as a "gentleman bandit," as the Star-Ledger's Mark DiIonno aptly put it: an everyman indistinguishable in a sea of middle-class middle-aged white males who managed to vex the authorities for months on end despite, or perhaps because of, his ordinariness.
In the end though, it turns out that the Hat Bandit was not quite the criminal mastermind he was made out to be. Rather than de-materializing into thin air, he apparently just drove away in a black Nissan Altima- a detail the police claim to have had already known. His arrest was expedited when a bank teller at the location of his final heist, a Bank of America on Route 22 in Union, surreptitiously followed the Hat Bandit into parking lot and was able to catch part of his license plate number. Thus able to pare down the pool of suspect vehicles from an initial 14,000, the police traced the Altima to the Hat Bandit's girlfriend, who promptly flipped, telling authorities that she had seen her boyfriend recently counting out large amounts of currency. Thus HB's life on the lam came to an abrupt end when he was apprehended at home in a Monday morning FBI raid.
James G. Madison, 50, of Maplewood was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Newark on charges stemming from the Union BoA robbery, and is alleged to have carried out the 17 preceding heists credited to the Hat Bandit. Far from some disaffected suburban lawyer, stock broker, or Big Pharma exec carrying on a romantic double life as an outlaw, Madison has a violent criminal past: in 2005 he was paroled after serving 18 years in prison for an aggravated manslaughter conviction stemming from the 1987 slaying of his girlfriend in their shared North Plainfield apartment. Madison adamantly denies that he is the Hat Bandit, protesting that he doesn't "wear hats."
If this guy is indeed the Hat Bandit, I am profoundly disappointed, hoping as I was for some absolutely psychotic hedge fund manager or dentist giving monogrammed silk handkerchiefs to a harem of mistresses while balancing a trophy wife, a mortgage on a McMansion in Chatham or the Caldwells, a mortgage on a shore home in Mantoloking, a son at Pingry and a daughter at Princeton, and lease payments on a Porsche Cayenne, a Lincoln Navigator, and a BMW Z4 roadster. Or at least someone hellbent on constructing an orphanage. But no, it turns out that this guy is probably just some douchebag who had an incredible run of luck and finally got caught in an incredibly obvious manner. To make matters worse he's a convicted killer, thereby eliminating any chance that Paul Giamatti will be playing him in a mildly amusing Coen Brothers comedy (which is fine, they probably would have just transplanted the story to some more homogeneous Midwestern setting anyhow).
Well, anyway, while I can't say that I regret the end of the Hat Bandit's run, I will miss following his exploits in the local papers. For a while the whole deal had a kind of Bonnie and Clyde/Dillinger folk hero quality, but now all of the major questions have been answered and the mystery has been bleached out of it. We know who he is, what he was doing when he wasn't robbing banks, and most importantly, when the law was finally going to catch up with him. Allegedly.
In the end though, it turns out that the Hat Bandit was not quite the criminal mastermind he was made out to be. Rather than de-materializing into thin air, he apparently just drove away in a black Nissan Altima- a detail the police claim to have had already known. His arrest was expedited when a bank teller at the location of his final heist, a Bank of America on Route 22 in Union, surreptitiously followed the Hat Bandit into parking lot and was able to catch part of his license plate number. Thus able to pare down the pool of suspect vehicles from an initial 14,000, the police traced the Altima to the Hat Bandit's girlfriend, who promptly flipped, telling authorities that she had seen her boyfriend recently counting out large amounts of currency. Thus HB's life on the lam came to an abrupt end when he was apprehended at home in a Monday morning FBI raid.
James G. Madison, 50, of Maplewood was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Newark on charges stemming from the Union BoA robbery, and is alleged to have carried out the 17 preceding heists credited to the Hat Bandit. Far from some disaffected suburban lawyer, stock broker, or Big Pharma exec carrying on a romantic double life as an outlaw, Madison has a violent criminal past: in 2005 he was paroled after serving 18 years in prison for an aggravated manslaughter conviction stemming from the 1987 slaying of his girlfriend in their shared North Plainfield apartment. Madison adamantly denies that he is the Hat Bandit, protesting that he doesn't "wear hats."
If this guy is indeed the Hat Bandit, I am profoundly disappointed, hoping as I was for some absolutely psychotic hedge fund manager or dentist giving monogrammed silk handkerchiefs to a harem of mistresses while balancing a trophy wife, a mortgage on a McMansion in Chatham or the Caldwells, a mortgage on a shore home in Mantoloking, a son at Pingry and a daughter at Princeton, and lease payments on a Porsche Cayenne, a Lincoln Navigator, and a BMW Z4 roadster. Or at least someone hellbent on constructing an orphanage. But no, it turns out that this guy is probably just some douchebag who had an incredible run of luck and finally got caught in an incredibly obvious manner. To make matters worse he's a convicted killer, thereby eliminating any chance that Paul Giamatti will be playing him in a mildly amusing Coen Brothers comedy (which is fine, they probably would have just transplanted the story to some more homogeneous Midwestern setting anyhow).
Well, anyway, while I can't say that I regret the end of the Hat Bandit's run, I will miss following his exploits in the local papers. For a while the whole deal had a kind of Bonnie and Clyde/Dillinger folk hero quality, but now all of the major questions have been answered and the mystery has been bleached out of it. We know who he is, what he was doing when he wasn't robbing banks, and most importantly, when the law was finally going to catch up with him. Allegedly.
