On February 10, 1997, the Seafirst Bank branch of Lakewood, Washington, was robbed of $4,461,681 in cash by Billy Kirkpatrick and Ray Bowman, also known as the Trenchcoat Robbers.
Billy Kirkpatrick, from Hovland, Minnesota, and Ray Bowman, from Kansas City, Missouri, were two criminals from the Midwest known as the Trenchcoat Robbers, who performed robberies across the United States from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Because they wore trench coats during their robberies, the two were named the Trenchcoat Robbers by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who had very little information on the culprits.
[4] They stayed at a hotel in Kent, and took time to blend in with the locals, eating at high-end restaurants and attending a piano recital at the University of Washington.
They cased the bank, finding out the vault was "packed with an extraordinary amount of cash" to cover an upcoming payday of soldiers at Fort Lewis, and devised a getaway route.
[1] The two stole a Jeep Cherokee using a set of manufacturer's master keys that Kirkpatrick had bought in the mail after posing as a locksmith.
[5] Kirkpatrick and Bowman had spent the night after the heist in a hotel in Portland, Oregon, and then split up, with each person taking half of the money.
After the trips, he put the rest of the money in three safe deposit boxes in Kansas City, in Kirkpatrick's newly built custom log home in the northern Minnesota woods, and $338,000 was given to Bowman's friend in a trunk.
On November 10, on his way back to Minnesota, he was stopped by a Nebraska state trooper, Chris Bigsby, for driving seven miles per hour over the speed limit.
Facing 20 years in prison, Penney cooperated with the FBI, and gave up the name of Kirkpatrick's partner, "Ray", who was in Kansas City.
[2] Police and federal agents raided Bowman's house in December, where they found "$97,000 [in] cash, key-making and lock-picking equipment, and a small armory of guns and ammunition".