“I’ll call the police.”
“No, no, they—they’ll kill him if you call the police.”
“This was unlike any bank robbery case I’d ever worked. She was going to do everything they wanted her to do.”
“Or her husband would be killed.”
“Don’t—don’t.”
“I had multiple crime scenes in Chattanooga, Knoxville. We were afraid people would die. This was going to happen again.”
“It’s been a long day for 31-year-old bank manager Heather Stevens. I need to really go to sleep. Okay.”
“But now that her seven-year-old is finally in bed, she can look forward to settling in for a quiet evening with her husband, Lyall. Well, how was she? She did not want to go to sleep.”
“Approximately 9:00 p.m., a knock came on their door. And the husband answered the door and as he opened the front door, two men barged in, guns drawn and wearing stocking masks. In a matter of seconds, Heather and Lyall’s heads are covered, hands are tied, and ankles chained, giving the intruders total control to start barking their twisted demands.”
“You work at a bank, right?”
“Yes.”
“We’re here to get all the money that’s in the bank. Tell me exactly what you’re going.”
“They basically told her that she was going to go to the bank the following morning and withdraw all the funds or her husband would be killed with a bomb device.”
“Did I get this wrong?”
“I’m going to show you how to disarm it. Don’t pay attention. It’s going to be a bad day for your husband.”
“And they showed her parts of a bomb device that they were going to attach to her husband. Well, there’s no question that if she didn’t get that money, he would be blown up.”
“You see that? You see that?”
“Yes.”
“And they showed her a wire that could be released from the device on the time clock itself, and that would allow the bomb to be deactivated. See this?”
“Her job was to cooperate fully and then they would release her husband and he would not be harmed.”
“The bank doesn’t open for another 9 hours, so the sadistic ringleader takes the opportunity to torment his prisoners.”
“Exactly what I say.”
“While his partner never says a word, they kept them in the same room in the living room on the sofa. One was on one end and one’s on the other end.”
“The weapon at one point was rubbed against the husband’s leg so that he could feel the steel.”
“All through the night, Heather’s forced to recite the plan over and over again.”
“And then I’m going to enter the money from this.”
“There was constant chatter by the main perpetrator. Huh?”
“Yeah, I heard you.”
“Talking incessantly, telling them how they expected them to react, how it would happen.”
“And the vaults.”
“Yes.”
“And above all else, constant reminders. Bombs on your husband. That if Heather fails to deliver the money by 9:00 a.m., her husband will be dead. Don’t touch her. Huh? Get up. Honey, where are you?”
“As the couple’s seven-year-old daughter sleeps peacefully upstairs, Heather and Lyall endure the longest night of their lives and maybe the last.”
“Please don’t take it.”
“Just before sunrise, Lyall is dragged out of the house. She was of the understanding that he was going to be taken to a location unknowns to her at the time, but that they would inform her after the money was recovered where he was and how she could save him.”
“Come on, man. Let us go.”
“I’m sure it was a state of panic, of extreme fright. She loved her husband dearly.”
“Don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt me.”
“Shut up.”
“Around 7:30 in the morning, Heather’s forced to face a whole new level of terror. It’s only a matter of time before her daughter comes downstairs ready for school. And the ringleader refuses to stay out of sight.”
“What are we going to tell her?”
“Well, just tell her that uh a friend from out of town stopped by. Put this hat on. I’ll be sitting here in the chair and I’ll have a hat on cap and a blanket over.”
“And then he motions to a frightened Heather to get her daughter.”
“Come on, we’re going to be late.”
“So, she goes in and tries to talk to him.”
“Mommy, who’s that?”
“Uh, he’s a friend of daddy’s. He stopped by last night.”
“Do you want to be my new friend?”
“He won’t talk to her. So that got her a little bit upset.”
“Hey, is that my box?”
“You know what?”
“Heather rushes her daughter out of the house. She needs to drop her off at school before going on to the bank. She was very pleased that they allowed her daughter to be removed from the situation, but she was extremely frightened the whole time. As she drives to work, a voice repeats the robbery plan, reminding you go to the mall and get all the money from the vault.”
“That her husband Lyall’s captors can hear every word she says. That’s a two-way walkie-talkie system, but they attached the microphone on her that was open constantly. They could hear her breathing, hear who she was speaking to at the bank.”
“After a night of torment, she’s convinced they’re watching her every… Don’t screw this up.”
“I’m almost there.”
“When she arrived at the bank, they all recognized the fact that there was a problem by the fear on her face.”
“I’LL CALL THE POLICE.”
“NO, NO, THEY THEY’LL KILL HIM IF you call the police.”
“Let me empty the drawers.”
“She gave the other employees at the bank just basic details. In the bag, the belt. And that she had to take all the money from the bank that she could load into the bag that they provided and that she had to comply or her husband would be killed. And she explained to them that we could notify the authorities only after my husband is released.”
“Should we call the cops?”
“No, please. God, no. Don’t call anyone until I know that he’s safe. Please don’t call any…”
“Well, naturally, they were shocked and alarmed, but they cooperated fully.”
“Instructions had been given to her to go approximately two blocks from the bank and leave the car. The drop spot, an empty parking lot. She was told to leave the keys in the car and then she could walk to a pay phone that was at a local restaurant nearby and that’s where she was to wait for a phone call. It’s after 8:35 and she stood there and she was supposed to wait until uh 9:00 a.m. and he would call her and tell her that her husband was okay. But she waited and waited till 9:00 and received no call. 9:05, she had basically given up that she wasn’t going to get that call.”
“Left to think her husband’s already dead, Heather races back to the bank. At that time, they notified authorities.”
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“I’m here with one of my co-workers. She said two men kidnapped her family last night and forced her to rob the bank we work at.”
“She robbed the bank?”
“Yes, they have her husband and they said they would kill him. They were supposed to call and let us know where he is, but they haven’t called.”
“We have units on the way. Stay on the line with me.”
“And they immediately contacted our office in Knoxville.”
“Since the days of Dillinger and his gang, jurisdiction over bank robberies has been the FBI’s. Our supervisor then uh asked Ralph Periggo and other agents to race to the bank.”
“I went to the residence. I noted there were no vehicles in the area. And I went to the front door and I noticed it was open probably 6 or 8 inches. And I listened, didn’t hear anything. So my partner Scott Ninsky and I, we made our entry quietly. We had no idea what we might meet as we went through. It was—it was a little frightening.”
“I went to the back of the residence and I found the husband gagged and bound to his back. Lyall is still alive.”
“He had chains wrapped around his ankles. He had almost no way of breathing.”
“I immediately uh released some of the tape around his face.”
“What happened?”
“Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. I got a problem.”
“Agent Crumb has explosives training. But can he diffuse the bomb in time? The slightest mistake means all three men are dead. Clear.”
“For the last 12 hours, a terrified Lyall Stevens has been strapped to a ticking time bomb, believing he’s going to die.”
“Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. I got a problem with me.”
“To save him, his sadistic tormentors forced his wife to rob a bank before disappearing with the loot, forcing FBI agent Phil to put his own life on the line to save him. I’ve had explosive ordinance disposal training in bomb matters. Still, disarming an explosive device is delicate work. The slightest miscalculation will kill them all.”
“And I recognize that these were safety flares. They weren’t real actual explosive materials.”
“Lyall Stevens’ harrowing ordeal is over and reassured that his wife and daughter are also safe. Agents start questioning the victim.”
“And I’ll never forget what he said to me. He said, ‘I have to have a cigarette.'”
“Lyall recounts his family’s horrific night with the two masked intruders as Agent Crumb presses him for details.”
“Me outside, threatened to kill me. Stuff like that several times.”
“He described their physical stature, not real big men but demanding. There was only one conversation and that was with the main perpetrator and he said that the individual had a northeastern accent. He said, ‘Well, normally when people say the word partner, they influenced the R, but he called them pot,’ which was a northeastern accent to him.”
“Ly also reveals the man never stopped talking, especially about fishing.”
“You a fisherman there?”
“And he—he asked about uh was he a fisherman? Explained he was and what type of fish he caught. The perpetrator started to brag that he was a great fisherman. That he had really a lot of extensive experience fishing for an elusive fish called the snook. And the snook fish are only found in the coastal waters off Florida.”
“You ever catch a snook?”
“The perpetrator probably had some familiarization with Florida, indicating that he’d gone down there. And I thought, well, perhaps this is where he’s based and maybe that’s where we need to start looking for him.”
“Encouraged, Agent Crumb continues coaxing more details from Lyall.”
“He was nervous. He apparently had some um stomach ulcer problems. He kept drinking milk. I recognized that right away.”
“Ly explains he was never taken further than his own yard where they held him at gunpoint until Heather left for the bank. Across town, Agent Ralph Periggo interviews Heather at the bank. Shut your mouth.”
“Her tale matches her husband’s every sickening detail.”
“While Agent Perigo interviews bank employees, an FBI crime scene team combs the Stevens home for clues.”
“Hey, John. You get anything down here?”
“No, nothing. Nothing worth lifting.”
“We thought for sure we’d find fingerprints. There were no fingerprints of value, so it’s obvious that they either wiped them clean or had worn gloves. In fact, there was no actual physical evidence. Weapons, stocking masks. There was nothing there to give us an indication of what we were faced with.”
“We didn’t have a clue who this could be.”
“It really kind of scared me knowing that we had a very professional uh operation at hand here. This was unlike any bank robbery case I’d ever worked. Most bank robberies net less than $5,000. These guys got away clean with nearly 300,000. They are very, very good.”
“With no leads and no clues, the FBI frantically scans its files for similar extortion cases.”
“I want you to watch.”
“I was somewhat surprised that there were only a few cases throughout the United States that had used that method. In the eyes of the FBI, the real danger lies in knowing that a crew this well organized isn’t about to stop after one heist. This was going to happen again.”
“A prophecy that comes true 6 months later and 115 miles away in Chattanooga. Like a plot out of the movie, the armed robbers held the family until this morning when they took Mrs. Bailey and her son to get into the bank. FBI and Catoosa County Sheriff’s investigators searched the Bailey home looking for clues. News of the abduction has horrified family members and neighbors.”
“Puppies, huh?”
“He went actually up to the residence and inquired about the sale of the dog and got some information. He said he’d be back in touch with them.”
“Yeah.”
“When the prospective buyer calls, he says he’ll be by the next night to pick up his dog. They came up just normal. They just crashed in and told Miss Bailey, ‘This is not about a puppy. This is about a bank robbery. GET OVER HERE. GET ON YOUR KNEES. Close those blinds. How much money’s in the bank, YOU MANAGE? I DON’T KNOW. I don’t know.'”
“Tied up and terrified, Teresa fears what will happen the moment her husband and son return home.”
“Welcome.”
“They tied up all three of the Baileys: the husband, wife, and the son. Knoxville all over again. Sadistic criminals terrorizing a family in their home.”
“The number one suspect kept talking to her, kept going over and over everything. Miss Bailey was told that if she didn’t comply that her family would be killed.”
“With that said, the man begins assaulting her. I never again.”
“Hearing her son’s cries from another room stops him.”
“The assault may be over, but like Heather Stevens before her, Teresa is left to spend the rest of the night agonizing over her family’s fate. Before Teresa leaves with her son for the bank, the ringleader clips a microphone on and reminds her that they’ll kill her husband if she fails. In her car, there was going to be a two-way radio and that way he could communicate to her and tell her what to do.”
“Not the damn gun.”
“And the plan was that she was going to have to go into the bank. She was going to have to tell everyone there what was going on and tell them not to call the police. She went to the main branch first, cleaned it up, and then she had to go to a second location to the drive-thru, which was not attached to the bank.”
“I need you to help me now.”
“No. No. Are you crazy? They’re watching me.”
“In all, she collects nearly $350,000. They told her uh to park in a quarter car wash and instructed her to get out of the car on foot. Teresa and her son start the frantic 8 mile trek home to disarm the bomb and save her husband.”
“She’s pretty much in a panic to get back to her house. Somebody that she knew saw her and picked up and give her a ride back to her house.”
“I need your car. Please, I have to get home.”
“Here, get it, honey. Get that wire on me. He can hear everything I’m saying.”
“Every second counts because Teresa doesn’t know which will be her husband’s last. Hearing a bomb strapped to her husband is about to explode.”
“Teresa Bailey is beyond scared.”
“Please, I have to get home.”
“She was totally terrified. Her husband was in mortal danger.”
“Bill, the key is the key. Bill, but she arrives home to find out he’s freed himself.”
“Oh my god, I’m so…”
“Oh my god, I’m so glad he didn’t hurt you.”
“And that’s—and that’s when I got involved. Detective Paul Lee of the Chattanooga Police Force is working with the FBI as part of a new Safe Streets Task Force. We were actually operating with four active crime scenes. We had the bank that was robbed. We had the drive-through teller that was robbed. We had the Bailey’s residence in another state that was home invaded where they were held captive. And then we had the drop off point of her vehicle.”
“Three of those crime scenes turned up nothing. The FBI evidence team can only hope they’ll find something at the Bailey house.”
“There was a lot of material left behind. Except we had no fingerprints, no DNA, nothing. We had tape and and all the stuff they used to tie up the husband, but it was really meaningless.”
“The invaders were extremely meticulous, but this time the ringleader strangely didn’t bother to hide his face, a sign he’s becoming audacious.”
“We did ask Teresa Bailey to give us uh a description. Miss Bailey described the suspect as being relatively short and he had an accent, but she really wasn’t sure what type.”
“You like him that.”
“She also describes him as talkative and he ate peppermints the entire time. The smell of them disgusted her as he was fondling her in the bedroom. He was so evil that he hid peppermints all through the house and they would find them days and weeks later just to remind them of the fact that he had been there.”
“He’s made another astronomical score. But this evil mastermind made his first slip up before he even entered the house.”
“Miss Bailey told us that there had been several phone calls back and forth between the suspect and her at her residence. We found that those calls came from Knoxville, Tennessee.”
“Tracing the calls to a pay phone in South Knoxville, Detective Lee and agents from the Knoxville FBI office hit the case hard. We brought in agents both retired and active that had one solved cases like this before and two had open cases that were similar to it. And it really became obvious that there was at least three that this guy that was described as short with a with a northern accent had committed. Knoxville, Chattanooga, and an earlier case in Birmingham, Alabama back in 1993. All been a similar MMO.”
“When Agent Periggo and Detective Lee get together, something about this particular suspect strikes a cord.”
“Agent Periggo, he starts going, ‘you know, ah, what are the odds?'”
“You’re just not yourself there. What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know.”
“I said, ‘Ralph, what—what is it?’ And he said, ‘well, I—I worked a parental kidnapping a few months ago. And he said, ‘I’ve never met the guy and the girl that—that did the kidnapping. He just talked to people that knew the suspect.'”
“The description that we’re hearing right here sounds just like these guys.”
“And the way the—the suspect is described and the way the suspect is described speaking is the exact same way that all of these other people that I interviewed on the parental kidnapping said that the number one suspect in that was New England accident.”
“Because the child was recovered and the charges were dropped, the kidnapper was released.”
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“Agent remembers his name was Brian Bigalow and he lives in South Knoxville.”
“We started doing background investigation on Bigalow and it determined that the person living in that house was a gentleman by the name of Douglas Dagel.”
“When Agent Periggo learns Brian Bigalow is one of Douglas Dagel’s aliases, he asks for the sketch of the man who terrorized the Bailey family. Ralph Periggo took that sketch and he was looking at the pictures there and they were extremely similar.”
“Digging deeper, they discovered Dagel has been throwing a lot of cash around.”
“Doug Dagel had spent a lot of money the last few months building his home, buying cars and such. And so we felt comfortable that Doug Dagel was the main guy in these bank extortions.”
“As the investigation starts dialing in on Dagel, a phone call comes in from the last person the team expects to hear from.”
“He said, ‘Uh, Mr. Periggo, my name is Doug Dagel. You know me by Brian Bigalow. I want to talk to you.'”
“Their suspect demands to know why the FBI is looking into his finances. Shocked by the brash move, agents need to think fast.”
“We devised up a plan to tell him that I was working a drug case and that he looked like a drug dealer. You know, just to keep the heat off of him that we were looking at a bank robbery.”
“The ruse works, earning Periggo and Crumb an invitation to Dagel’s home.”
“He was paying for things for cash. Couldn’t really explain his money.”
“Still, Dagel’s proud to show off his nicely furnished house, especially the fish pond in the yard.”
“See my duck.”
“And…”
“I said, ‘Well, you fish.’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. I—I’ve fished a lot.’ And I said, ‘Where—where you fish at?’ He said, ‘Well, mostly in Florida.’ And he said, ‘Well, I fish for snook mostly.’ And I said, ‘Oh, snook? I never heard of it.'”
“They only run in Florida. It’s a nice one here.”
“He said, ‘Oh, Mr. Periggo, you would love catching snook. They are very elusive fish.’ Now, at that point, I think both Phil and I felt like we should arrest him right there.”
“But the bank heist had been so well planned, there’s nothing but circumstantial evidence against him.”
“We know that we had the right guy. We were just not able to prove it yet.”
“So, the agents followed the money trail.”
“When we looked into Dagel’s finances, we found out that he paid cash for a car for his son. He paid cash for his trailer. And then later on he goes to Vegas where he spends nothing but cash.”
“And all this cash is going out without him having a declared source of income.”
“You could almost see a trail from one bank robbery and his spending to the next bank robbery. You could almost tell when he was about to run out of money and he would go rob another bank. The threats of death seemed to be stronger each time as these—these robberies occurred. And we could tell that the violent part was starting to escalate. If we didn’t stop it, sooner or later somebody would get canned.”
“Thank you, Manny.”
“Despite FBI suspicion he’s the criminal mastermind behind two brazen bank heists, Douglas Roy Dagel is free and roaming the streets of Tennessee. And until they can prove he’s their man, he’s likely to keep striking with greater violence.”
“After Phil and Ralph had gone to Dagel’s residence, he called me in my office.”
“Once again, Dagel is fishing all of us just to see what we know.”
“Where you getting this money from?”
“Clean pulled. Repair them.”
“That kind of…”
“He’s careful not to mention any bank robberies.”
“Were able to buy a brand new car for your son. Must be the hero dad. Wasn’t that expensive?”
“He went on to talk about how he got his money cleaning pools and we just let him talk and the whole time he was violently chewing on nicotine gum and was extremely nervous.”
“As Dagel squirms in the box, agents stake out spots across downtown to ensure they’ll have eyes on their target when he leaves.”
“As he left, he drove all over downtown, obviously looking for a tail because he would stop, back up, turn around, and I mean, left behind there watching him.”
“After several fits and starts and backtracks, he returns to Knoxville. He’s nothing if not cautious, and it shows in his meticulous planning.”
“The Knoxville and the—and the Chattanooga bank robberies were unique. It takes a lot of planning, takes a lot of effort, and that was something that Dagel was willing to do was put in the leg work to do these robberies.”
“Look at that. Look at that.”
“Dagel always surveiled residences of his target victims for maybe weeks ahead of time.”
“They know for a fact that he spied on his first victims in Knoxville.”
“The residents backed up to some woods. We did a thorough search of the woods and we found that that’s where the perpetrator had been watching that residence. He knew that if his victim manager loved her husband and family that they would certainly cooperate.”
“And now that agents suspect his wild spending hasn’t almost tapped out, they’re left to wonder who and where does have his sights on next.”
“We knew if we didn’t make a case soon that he would strike again.”
“However, our US attorney didn’t feel we had enough information at that point.”
“Coincidentally, we were sitting in the office pleading our case to give us a warrant on Doug Dagel and a phone call came into Ralph. We just had another bank extortion in Clarksville, Tennessee.”
“Just like the others, the target is bank manager Alice Gruber, who returns home from a Christmas dinner to find a terrifying surprise. When she walked into her residence, she was grabbed and she just really didn’t know what to make of it at the point because it was so surreal and she was whispered to, ‘You remember extortions in Chattanooga? Extortions in Knoxville? Well, you’re in one of those situations.'”
“Calm down. Calm down.”
“Her parents and son are huddled frightened on the couch, but oddly they’re not bound. Is this precision crew getting sloppy or just cocky?”
“Hey, is this actually necessary?”
“Shut up, old man.”
“Otherwise, it’s the same game as in Knoxville and Chattanooga. The ringleader tells Alice that she’s going to rob her bank in the morning or else her husband is a dead man. What happens?”
“Kill my family.”
“He played mind games all night with her, which also led to sexual threats to make sure she complied. He used everything he possibly could to make sure that by the time morning arrived and the extortion was about to occur that she would do exactly what he wanted.”
“So, you’re going to do it, right? Why want them to die? No. Please.”
“That morning, the captors take Alice’s husband away in an SUV. They say he has a bomb strapped to him that will go off if the robbery doesn’t. Her son and parents are left alone at the house, but warned not to leave nor call anyone or else.”
“She was extremely concerned about getting the money out of the bank. Almost a million dollars in cash is quite heavy. She had the money in a duffel bag. She had recruited uh one of the employees to help her take it out of the bank and put it in the back of her truck.”
“Okay, go.”
“They had her wired up where she could hear the subjects tell her where to go with the money. Uh the money had been dropped just behind a bank actually uh near city square. Like in Knoxville, the kidnappers tell her to return to the bank and wait for a call. But after more than an hour, it never comes. Fearing the worst, the bank president calls the FBI.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“When I got into the president’s office, there was the victim. She was sitting in the bank and she was very emotional.”
“How much money was taken? I asked him, ‘How much money is delivered?’ He said, ‘I don’t know exactly, but it was close to a million dollars.’ And he said, ‘The problem we have is they were supposed to have called us an hour and a half ago to let us know where her husband was located.’ Your husband is dead.”
“Alice is at an emotional breaking point.”
“As special agent Murray begins to scramble agents to find him, they get a piece of good news. Her husband’s been in the back of his SUV.”
“He was basically hog-tied. He sat there kicking and trying to make as much noise as he could for for a very long time. Some individuals looked in the back and saw him and notified the police.”
“After finding Alice’s parents and son unharmed at the house, the traumatized family is reunited at the police station. Has Dagel gotten away yet again? As it turns out, this time the cautious criminal made a costly mistake.”
“She was positive that she could identify the individual that was with her the entire night.”
“A photo lineup ID is the best chance to score Dagel’s arrest warrant.”
“I showed four of the witnesses the spread.”
“That’s him.”
“They positively identified Douglas Roy Dagel as the individual that was in their house.”
“Once I had the eyewitness identifications, I took out a warrant. Realizing this time the heat is on, Dagel decides it’s time to run, but not before making one final brazen move.”
“Doug Dagel called me and told me that he was leaving town and says ‘Sayonara.'”
“At that point, he becomes a fugitive. Now, we don’t have a clue where he’s at, but we do have his cell phone tapped.”
“A criminal mastermind is on the run, and the FBI doesn’t know where he’s heading. But if agents don’t find him, they’re sure he can play his sick games someplace else.”
“On the hunt for more than a year, the FBI finally has the evidence it needs to arrest Doug D. There is no doubt he’s responsible for three truly sinister home invasion bank robberies across Tennessee. Now they have to find him. He finds out that there is a warrant for his arrest. At that point he takes off uh from Knoxville and does a multi-state journey.”
“As ever leaves a blatant trail and keeps on moving.”
“There was a lot of activity on his credit cards. He’d be in in and out of a place. He was always using aliases wherever he went.”
“And his defiance is escalating. For months, he regularly calls the FBI to taunt them.”
“I recall he said one time, ‘Do you have a warrant for me?’ Agent Crom did tell him that we had a warrant for him and that he should give himself up. And he he said, ‘Oh, I’ll be in Monday morning.'”
“He was not coming in and giving himself up.”
“If he keeps it up, they can trace his calls and pinpoint his location. As the hunt for Deagle drags on, an informant finally provides the names of his accomplices: Carlton Smith, Albert Nichols, and John Crisp.”
“John Crisp match the description or size of what our victims had described.”
“Unfortunately, investigators don’t have the evidence to arrest them. It takes months, but one of Dingle’s calls finally hits. A call from his cell phone pings off a tower not far from the Knoxville home he shares with his wife.”
“I drove down…”
“Really lit into her.”
“I’m going to arrest you for…”
“Threatening to arrest her for harboring a fugitive.”
“Dego’s wife breaks down and spills everything she knows from a description of Deagle’s rental car to his driving route.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
“And she gave us a real good description and that’s when I issued the BOLO. Be on the lookout.”
“The FBI in Knoxville is asking law enforcement to be on the lookout for a suspect wanted in connection with a series of home invasions and bank robberies across the state of Tennessee.”
“There’s a large swath as far as the location uh east of Nashville between Nashville and Knoxville. Tennessee Highway Patrol was notified. A few minutes later, they looked up and said, ‘By golly, look here. Here comes that vehicle.'”
“So they pulled the vehicle over.”
“And they interviewed the driver.”
“Sir.”
“Opposite…”
“And he told him his phony name. They called and said, ‘Hey, FBI, we have a man matching your description.'”
“Got the suspect.”
“I said, ‘Look, the man we’re looking for has a tattoo, a very prominent tattoo on his left forearm of a mushroom and butterfly. If you roll up his sleeve and see that, then you probably got something.'”
“You got me.”
“So they came back a few minutes later and said, ‘We got him.'”
“Doug Dagel’s days of tormenting victims are over. But audacious to the end, he wants to cut a deal and offers to tell the FBI everything.”
“He really didn’t want to see a long prison sentence for what he had done. After time, he decided to tell me that it was his uh plan to do the Clarksville Extortion. He was involved in Chattanooga. He was involved in Knoxville. And he wanted to do a finale. He wanted to get a million dollars and basically retire.”
“Eventually, he told me by name who the other individuals were that were involved in the extortion. He told me that principal B was Carlton Victor Smith and that Albert Nichols was principal C. He also names John Crisp as his third accomplice.”
“Clear there’s no deal getting put on the table. Dagel decides to stop cooperating and shows his true colors behind bars.”
“Douglas Dagel was not a person to be put in jail. He couldn’t take it.”
“He decides to run from justice one final time.”
“Yes, it’s Deagle.”
“The suicide was was very elaborate.”
“He had taken a wire from uh like a spiral notebook and he’d taken the wire and put it down through the bed on both sides and attached it to a tub. He had taken a trash sack, filled it up with water, and punctured a hole in the sack with a hollowed out pen so that the water would drain slowly into this Tupperware tub, causing it to move down on the wire, basically shrinking it.”
“The mastermind of an intricate robbery plan, Dagel devises a bizarre, agonizing way to die.”
“He just laid there knowing that tub, little tub was going to fill up with water and it was going to tighten up on his neck. And he laid there until it cut off his ability to breathe.”
“The FBI arrests Dagel’s three accomplices on a laundry list of charges, including bank robbery, conspiracy, and use of a firearm in commission of a crime. A jury wastes no time convicting them. Each receives a sentence between 15 and 52 years.”
“All three robberies combined, the crew netted $1.5 million.”
“That money is never recovered.”
“Dagel and his accomplices uh by doing what they did damaged these victims’ psyche uh that will probably last forever.”
“The one thing you always want to remember as an FBI agent too, why you’re doing what you’re doing. And that was to be an advocate for the victims.”
“Of all the cases that I’ve investigated in close to 25 years as being an agent uh with the FBI, this case was one of the more uh complex, frustrating uh cases that I I have worked. This rates up there as one of the top.”
