Woman's plea details bank robbery scheme

Prosecutors allege her boyfriend's dwindling drug deals spawned idea

Friday, Jan. 2, 2009

The new details from the holdup last September at the Esperanza branch of PNC Bank were revealed this week by the U.S. Attorney's Office as it reported that a Lexington Park woman has pleaded guilty to bank robbery and conspiracy charges from her role in the crime.

Quinita Jessie Ennis, 30, bought a rifle last summer for her boyfriend Joseph Franklin Brown Jr., a drug dealer living in California, Md., prosecutors alleged in the woman's plea agreement.

Brown gave Ennis the money to purchase the Hi-Point 9 mm weapon, prosecutors allege, and when she bought the gun, "Ennis represented that she was the actual purchaser … when she knew that she was purchasing the firearm on the behalf of Brown."

Brown's income from drug dealing waned as the summer continued, prosecutors allege, and Brown and frequent visitor William Cordell Johnson planned the bank robbery — specifically at the PNC branch.

Ennis started tracking the travel patterns of branch manager Latoya Booth, prosecutors reported, including "the location of her residence, the time and route she used to leave her minor children with her mother, and the procedures used by employees of the PNC Bank Esperanza branch prior to opening the bank."

Ennis drove Brown and Johnson on Sept. 24 to a location near Booth's Calvert County home, where prosecutors allege that the two men used the rifle to abduct Booth and her two children. The two men traveled in Booth's SUV with her and her children to St. Mary's County, and Ennis kept in touch with them by cell phone as she also drove to St. Mary's.

Brown got out of the bank manager's SUV near the bank, authorities report. Johnson ordered Booth to drive to the bank and get money, while he held her 18-month-old son hostage in her vehicle. The manager's 5-year-old daughter was allowed to enter the bank with her, and remained there with another employee as the manager came back out with the money.

Johnson took about $169,900 from the bank manager and forced her to drive him to a nearby elementary school, where she and her son were released, authorities report. Johnson drove the manager's SUV to a nearby pharmacy, where he abandoned the vehicle.

Ennis by then had already picked up Brown, and they followed Johnson to the pharmacy before the trio rode together to Brown's home to count the stolen money, according to the federal prosecutors.

Ennis received about $30,000, prosecutors report, and she traveled with Brown, Johnson and fourth suspect Edwin Jonathan Jones to Atlantic City casinos that night.

Ennis later made plans to move with Brown to North Carolina, prosecutors report, and she used some of her share of the bank's money to seek airplane tickets for a trip to Las Vegas and wire $9,000 to Brown in North Carolina. Ennis was arrested Oct. 3 at her workplace in Lexington Park, with about $16,000 in her purse.

During the week after the robbery, prosecutors report, Brown and Johnson buried the rifle behind a shed in the back yard of Brown's residence. Brown and Johnson bought safes and buried the safes with about $84,000 of the stolen money in Brown's back yard. Brown and Johnson attempted to burn camouflage clothing, sunglasses, a stocking hat and gloves used in the robbery.

An indictment states that Brown and Johnson went to Virginia and North Carolina with some of the stolen funds. By the first weekend in October, law officers in Raleigh had arrested Brown and Johnson.

Jones has been charged, prosecutors report, with being an accessory after the fact for allegedly assisting Brown and Johnson during the 10 days after the robbery to hinder their arrest. Original charging papers filed by St. Mary's detectives described Jones as the suspect who began talking several weeks before the holdup about how he would rob a bank by kidnapping a manager and her children. Court papers state he had an address in Lusby within walking distance of Booth's home.

Ennis' sentencing is scheduled for March 30. No dispositions of the charges against Brown, Johnson or Jones from the holdup have been reported by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

jwharton@somdnews.com