The Stopwatch Gang - 1970s
Canadian natives Paddy Mitchell, Lionel Wright and Stephen Reid moved to California to get rich. And how. The trio of thieves earned their nickname by robbing banks — about 100 of them during the 1970s and 1980s — while one of them donned a prominent stopwatch all the while, ensuring that each heist took under two minutes to complete. They also donned presidential Halloween masks, a ploy featured in the Keanu Reeves thriller Point Break. Over the course of their statewide crime spree, they amassed more than $15 million in stolen cash. The men were captured in the late 1980s, though Mitchell managed to escape not once, but twice, before coming to an inglorious end during a botched, small-town robbery in Mississippi in 1994.
Proving that America really is a land of second acts, Reid later became a critically acclaimed author, writing Jackrabbit Parole from a prison cell in California. He married poet and author Susan Musgrave in 1987, shortly before being released. Inspired, Paddy Mitchell wrote a book of his own, an autobiography called The Bank Robber's Life, which he sells from behind bars via his own website. Rhapsodizing about his former days, Mitchell once told an Ottawa newspaper,"You want to know the greatest thrill in the world? It's being back at an apartment after a successful job, counting the money." Apparently, Reid needed a fix; in 1999, he plead guilty to a bank robbery and is currently serving an 18-year sentence.