Jeffrey and Jill Erickson

Their modus operandi was for Jeffrey to announce a hold-up while wearing a fake beard and carrying a police scanner, while Jill prepared the getaway cars.

In 1977, after graduating from Niles West High School, where he was a member of the swim team, Jeffrey joined the United States Marine Corps,[1] where he acquired excellent marksmanship skills.

[1] After dating for six months, they moved in together, partly as a result of the strain Jill was feeling due to her parents' impending divorce.

[4] His modus operandi— brazenly entering the bank wearing a fake dark beard, baseball cap, sunglasses, and driving gloves, while carrying a police scanner and announcing a hold-up—would be repeated with the same military precision in most of the pair's subsequent robberies over the next two years.

[4] On November 4, 1991, Palatine police officer Kevin Maher was following a Japanese-made car and noted it had an expired registration sticker.

On November 18, a man wearing a fake beard robbed a First Chicago Bank branch in Elk Grove Village.

Jeffrey's brother, Jim Erickson, stated that doctors found she was suffering from schizophrenia and had been prescribed Prozac (aka Fluoxetine).

She was found slumped on the seat with blood streaming from her head, and was pronounced dead at Humana Hospital in Hoffman Estates at around 6 p.m.[1] The coroner stated that, while Jill was hit by police bullets, her death was caused by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

[4] A search of the townhouse revealed 38 guns of different types and 25 boxes of ammunition, along with smoke grenades, gas masks, burglary tools, a police radio scanner, and $1,742 in cash.

[4] On July 20 shortly before 5:30 p.m., Erickson was being escorted from the courtroom in the Dirksen Federal Building to the Metropolitan Correctional Center by way of a basement area.

[2] Using a stolen handcuff key,[5] he managed to free one of his shackled hands, disarmed a deputy United States marshal to obtain her service revolver, then fatally shot her partner, Roy "Bill" Frakes, twice in the back of the head.

[5] However, a shootout then ensued, with Erickson shooting Chicago Police Department veteran detective and Special Deputy Marshal Harry Belluomini once in the chest.

By then, possibly being fatally wounded himself, Erickson ventured halfway up a ramp leading to the street, dropped to one knee,[5] and shot himself in the head, dying almost instantly.