Homeless, cold and scared, Tommy Ray McAdoo said he held up a Nevada bank with a steak knife in November last year so he could return to the only place he has ever really known.
The 77-year-old lifelong criminal got his wish late on Tuesday when a federal judge in Reno sentenced him to another 15 years in federal prison for bank robbery with a dangerous weapon.
McAdoo’s US public defender pleaded for leniency, saying the former Seattle man was gravely ill with heart and kidney disease, and likely to die in prison even if the judge granted her request for less than five years.
“It would give him a sliver of hope, if he ever makes it that long,” Lauren Gorman said. “As he stands here today, he could go at any minute.”
However, US District Judge Robert Jones said he agreed with federal prosecutors, who argued McAdoo was still a threat to public safety given that he robbed a bank with a dangerous weapon at the age of 77.
“He has shown a willingness to commit a violent crime in order to obtain a benefit, including government housing” and care, Jones said.
McAdoo, who has been convicted of at least five different rank robbery charges in a criminal history dating to 1964, scribbled a demand for money on the back of a sports book sheet before making off with US$2,700 cash in a paper bag from a downtown Reno bank across the street from the courthouse where he was sentenced.
McAdoo, wearing a headset so he could hear the court proceedings, briefly addressed the judge at the end of Tuesday’s hearing.
“All I can say is I’m sorry,” he said, pausing before adding: “[Country singer] Patsy Cline had a song, I’m So Sorry. And that’s what I am now.”
FBI agents caught up with him just hours after the robbery while he was eating lunch at an old casino a few blocks away.
“He was just freezing and scared, and prison is a world he’s familiar with,” Gorman said on Tuesday. “He instinctively did what he knew would land him back there — he robbed another bank. In some respects, it’s understandable that someone who has been so profoundly institutionalized his entire life would have responded that way.”
Assistant US Attorney Megan Rachow said: “It’s tragic we are at this point, but we are this point because of steps the defendant has taken.”
“He reported to parole and probation that he wants to return to prison. He cannot function in society,” she said.
Rachow said McAdoo’s “absolutely extraordinary” criminal history — including assault with intent to commit murder and intent to commit rape — “starts at age 24 and was unaltered his entire life except when he was incarcerated.”
Gorman said he had stayed out of trouble since his most recent release from prison in 2008. Living in poverty on only his US$880 monthly Social Security check, he moved from Seattle to Reno in 2012 and tried to supplement his income gambling, “but generally lost”’ and ended up living on the streets and in homeless shelters.
He was hospitalized with intense chest pains in 2014, was diagnosed with coronary artery disease and urged to undergo heart bypass surgery, but refused, she said.
The FBI agents who arrested him found some bait money with recorded serial numbers near the casino and a cash-bundle wrapper in a bathroom.
According to court records, they requested McAdoo’s identification and asked him what he did for a living.
“I used to rob banks,” he replied.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion