On September 2, 2016, then 70-year-old Lawrence Ripple robbed a Kansas City bank, but it wasn’t because he wanted money.
Ripple was tired of living with his wife, as we reported back in January:
Court documents show that Ripple gave a Bank of Labor teller a note demanding cash and warning he had a gun. After he grabbed nearly $3,000, Ripple didn’t flee: He sat in the lobby and told a guard he was the “guy he was looking for.”
An FBI agent says Ripple had argued with his wife earlier and told her in writing he’d “rather be in jail than at home.”
On Tuesday, Ripple told a federal judge that heart surgery had left him depressed and unlike himself when he committed the crime.
Ripple pleaded guilty to bank robbery in January and could have spent up to 37 months in prison, which would have gotten him some time away from his wife.
But his attorney and federal prosecutors asked a U.S. District Court judge for leniency, and that request was supported by the vice president of the bank and the teller whom Ripple frightened, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Catania.
Citing Ripple’s health issues, remorse, and unlikeliness to offend, the judge sentenced him to six months of home confinement.
Ripple will also serve three years of supervised probation and 50 hours of community service, and was ordered to pay $227.27 to the bank he robbed to compensate employees for their time off because of the robbery. In addition, he was ordered to pay $100 to a crime victims’ fund, according to The Kansas City Star.
He has been attending mandated counseling sessions with his wife.
In court, Ripple said that he felt better after finding the right medication and said prison would be more of a punishment for his wife than for him.
“I feel great now,” Ripple said. “I feel like my old self.”
