Criminals can sometimes be funny.
Not ha-ha funny, but funny in an odd sort of way. There are rare occasions when they seem both humorous and unusual.
And then there's Jesse Allen Burney, a 34-year-old bank robber from Harrisburg, Pa., who dropped in on Whiteford on April 27, 2015. That's when, according to his recent guilty plea to the charges, he robbed a PNC Bank at 2408 Whiteford Road.
He's not a first-timer. He spent nearly a decade in prison for a bank robbery he admitted committing in January 2005. He was released from that stint on May 30, 2014.
His earlier robbery must have been weighing heavily on him, prompting him to rob the Whiteford bank, in part, to pay his debt from the earlier crime. He demanded $100,000 from the bank, he told police, because that's how much he owed in restitution from the 2005 heist.
So, he had this whole plan for how he would rob the bank and get away without anyone knowing he did it. He had his robbery disguise – motorcycle helmet with the front shield pulled down to hide his face, a tactical vest, gloves and a backpack. The backpack would be invaluable because that's where he would stash the cash and no one would be suspicious because he would be like many other motorcycle riders.
He had his getaway vehicle – a dirt bike – to race away from the scene. He had another vehicle stashed elsewhere so he could ditch the motorcycle and continue on in a different vehicle no one would be looking for.
He also had a tarp and, yeah, that backpack.
He robbed the bank, as he has admitted doing, raced away on a dirt bike that he stashed on a country road and covered with a tarp. He jumped into an SUV, that as it turns out, was registered to his mother and sped away.
Yet much like the federales chasing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the 1969 movie by the same name, Burney couldn't figure out how the police found him and why he couldn't shake them.
It was simple: GPS. That simple technology that leads so many of us to places we would otherwise not find, was hidden among the stolen money and led police right to him as he hid in some woods.
All of that would be funny, if not for the people in the bank he terrorized and threatened to harm or kill. There's nothing funny about that, or about the 21 years in federal prison Burney is expected to get when he's sentenced.