Veteran NYPD detective charged as serial bank robber www.privateofficer.com
Veteran NYPD detective charged as serial bank robber http://www.privateofficer.com
By VERENA DOBNIKAssociated Press Writer
NEW YORK AUG 31 2008 — Athelson Kelson returned from the Vietnam War tormented by what he’d seen and done, but he found a release in the New York Police Department, where he became a star detective and an anti-terrorism expert.
“It haunted him, the killing, and being a great cop was his salvation,” his mother, Hilda Kelson, said Saturday.
When Kelson’s marriage fell apart and he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer in June, he again found an outlet for his anguish. But this time, it came on the other side of the law, police say.
They say the 59-year-old NYPD retiree and decorated veteran assumed a shocking new role — as a serial bank robber suspected of pulling off nine heists in three months.
Kelson surrendered to police on Thursday, two days after the last robbery. On Friday, he was arraigned in Queens in connection with a July 10 bank robbery in Queens. The judge ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
His lawyer, Harold Ramsey, said Saturday that the accusations, if true, “make out a tragic story.” He added that astonished acquaintances of Kelson’s had called to say the allegations seemed entirely out-of-character for the former detective.
Before the arrest, police investigating the stickups had marveled at the robber’s apparent nonchalance about being recognized. He donned a baseball cap and sunglasses but was easily identifiable in surveillance tapes, in part because he wore distinctive jewelry, including a flashy watch and ring.
Police even dubbed the robber the Bling Bandit because of his jewelry. Investigators now say that the ring may have been an NYPD retirement gift — a blue and gold replica of a police detective’s shield. That ring helped identify Kelson, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
The former detective might have wanted to get caught, his 82-year-old father, Thomas Kelson, told The Associated Press.
“I think he was trying to commit suicide by someone else’s hand, suicide by cop,” Kelson said. “It was one way of going out without suffering, without pain — to end it real quick.”
The police commissioner called the detective’s fall “sad and shocking.”
Until he retired three years ago after 33 years on the force, Athelson Kelson was a highly respected law enforcement official whose work included hunting down bank robbers. He also was a member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Undercover, he gained the trust of the Black Panthers and personally arrested a Black Liberation Army leader after tracking him to Los Angeles.
“He served in some of the most sensitive and dangerous undercover assignments in the NYPD,” said Detectives’ Endowment Association president Michael Palladino, calling the arrest “very disheartening.”
But Kelson’s parents said they weren’t surprised.
“We knew that something was going to happen. He was a sick man,” said his mother.
His struggles started decades ago, she said, when the 19-year-old came home after being drafted into the Army and serving one year in Vietnam. He’d been wounded in the war, and his medals, which included the Purple Heart, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star, did little to ease his mind.
“He said he went through hell in Vietnam,” Hilda Kelson said. “He said that as a soldier, you’d have a kid pointing a gun at you, and you’d have to shoot him ’cause it was your life or theirs.”
Amid nightmares of the war and post-battle trauma, he married and moved to a house in Hempstead, on Long Island, with his wife, Bette.
Kelson worked as a correction officer before joining the NYPD and appeared to find stability there, if not peace.
Lately, though, things had disintegrated again. Court records show Kelson lost a home in Jamaica, Queens, to foreclosure.
After retirement, he looked for another job but never took one, his mother said. His marriage hit the skids. His ex-wife now lives in Columbia, S.C.
The retired detective lived alone in an apartment in Queens, not far from the home where he lived with his parents, brother and sister after the family relocated from Baltimore in 1962.
In the past six months, Kelson would call his parents four or five times a day, said his mother, but declined their advice to go into therapy. “He would say how much he loved us, how much he respected the fact that he had such great parents, and how fortunate he was having us this long,” she said.
And “once in awhile,” she added, “he’d say maybe he’d be better off if he was just dead.”
Only weeks after learning his grim cancer prognosis, he visited his parents in Randallstown, Md., joining his sister and childhood friends for his mother’s surprise 85th birthday party.
“He looked happy,” his mother said, and didn’t let on how ill he really was.
By then, investigators said, the robberies had already begun. The first was on June 12. In some of the heists, the bandit displayed a handgun.
Kelson has only been formally charged with one robbery so far. Prosecutors said that on July 10, he walked into a JPMorgan Chase bank in Queens and handed the teller a note reading, “Do not press the alarm, give me all the large bills in your drawer, I have a gun, I do not want to hurt anyone, no dye, no bait money, you have 10 seconds.”
The teller handed him $600 and he fled, Queens prosecutors said.
Kelson faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.
There could be additional charges filed. The police commissioner said employees of banks elsewhere in Queens and on Long Island picked Kelson out of a lineup.
As he awaits his next court appearance on Sept. 12, his mother expects a call from her son before she and her husband try to visit him.
“I just put it all in God’s hands,” she said. “Whatever happened was supposed to happen; this was his way of reaching out to show that he needed help.”
NEW YORK AUG 31 2008 — Athelson Kelson returned from the Vietnam War tormented by what he’d seen and done, but he found a release in the New York Police Department, where he became a star detective and an anti-terrorism expert.
“It haunted him, the killing, and being a great cop was his salvation,” his mother, Hilda Kelson, said Saturday.
When Kelson’s marriage fell apart and he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer in June, he again found an outlet for his anguish. But this time, it came on the other side of the law, police say.
They say the 59-year-old NYPD retiree and decorated veteran assumed a shocking new role — as a serial bank robber suspected of pulling off nine heists in three months.
Kelson surrendered to police on Thursday, two days after the last robbery. On Friday, he was arraigned in Queens in connection with a July 10 bank robbery in Queens. The judge ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
His lawyer, Harold Ramsey, said Saturday that the accusations, if true, “make out a tragic story.” He added that astonished acquaintances of Kelson’s had called to say the allegations seemed entirely out-of-character for the former detective.
Before the arrest, police investigating the stickups had marveled at the robber’s apparent nonchalance about being recognized. He donned a baseball cap and sunglasses but was easily identifiable in surveillance tapes, in part because he wore distinctive jewelry, including a flashy watch and ring.
Police even dubbed the robber the Bling Bandit because of his jewelry. Investigators now say that the ring may have been an NYPD retirement gift — a blue and gold replica of a police detective’s shield. That ring helped identify Kelson, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
The former detective might have wanted to get caught, his 82-year-old father, Thomas Kelson, told The Associated Press.
“I think he was trying to commit suicide by someone else’s hand, suicide by cop,” Kelson said. “It was one way of going out without suffering, without pain — to end it real quick.”
The police commissioner called the detective’s fall “sad and shocking.”
Until he retired three years ago after 33 years on the force, Athelson Kelson was a highly respected law enforcement official whose work included hunting down bank robbers. He also was a member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Undercover, he gained the trust of the Black Panthers and personally arrested a Black Liberation Army leader after tracking him to Los Angeles.
“He served in some of the most sensitive and dangerous undercover assignments in the NYPD,” said Detectives’ Endowment Association president Michael Palladino, calling the arrest “very disheartening.”
But Kelson’s parents said they weren’t surprised.
“We knew that something was going to happen. He was a sick man,” said his mother.
His struggles started decades ago, she said, when the 19-year-old came home after being drafted into the Army and serving one year in Vietnam. He’d been wounded in the war, and his medals, which included the Purple Heart, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star, did little to ease his mind.
“He said he went through hell in Vietnam,” Hilda Kelson said. “He said that as a soldier, you’d have a kid pointing a gun at you, and you’d have to shoot him ’cause it was your life or theirs.”
Amid nightmares of the war and post-battle trauma, he married and moved to a house in Hempstead, on Long Island, with his wife, Bette.
Kelson worked as a correction officer before joining the NYPD and appeared to find stability there, if not peace.
Lately, though, things had disintegrated again. Court records show Kelson lost a home in Jamaica, Queens, to foreclosure.
After retirement, he looked for another job but never took one, his mother said. His marriage hit the skids. His ex-wife now lives in Columbia, S.C.
The retired detective lived alone in an apartment in Queens, not far from the home where he lived with his parents, brother and sister after the family relocated from Baltimore in 1962.
In the past six months, Kelson would call his parents four or five times a day, said his mother, but declined their advice to go into therapy. “He would say how much he loved us, how much he respected the fact that he had such great parents, and how fortunate he was having us this long,” she said.
And “once in awhile,” she added, “he’d say maybe he’d be better off if he was just dead.”
Only weeks after learning his grim cancer prognosis, he visited his parents in Randallstown, Md., joining his sister and childhood friends for his mother’s surprise 85th birthday party.
“He looked happy,” his mother said, and didn’t let on how ill he really was.
By then, investigators said, the robberies had already begun. The first was on June 12. In some of the heists, the bandit displayed a handgun.
Kelson has only been formally charged with one robbery so far. Prosecutors said that on July 10, he walked into a JPMorgan Chase bank in Queens and handed the teller a note reading, “Do not press the alarm, give me all the large bills in your drawer, I have a gun, I do not want to hurt anyone, no dye, no bait money, you have 10 seconds.”
The teller handed him $600 and he fled, Queens prosecutors said.
Kelson faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.
There could be additional charges filed. The police commissioner said employees of banks elsewhere in Queens and on Long Island picked Kelson out of a lineup.
As he awaits his next court appearance on Sept. 12, his mother expects a call from her son before she and her husband try to visit him.
“I just put it all in God’s hands,” she said. “Whatever happened was supposed to happen; this was his way of reaching out to show that he needed help.”
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