He was one of the most wanted fugitives at the time.
“We have positive ID. Stand by.”
Each one of them had an AR-15 rifle, a 9 mm pistol. They were wearing body armor. They’re prepared for war.
“Someone is watching us. Let’s go. Come on.”
“That’s the baddest crew I was ever on. I guess. They knew something was up.”
“Let’s go. Suspect vehicle is on the move. Deploy. Deploy.”
Adrenaline-fueled manhunts. Tactical takedowns. High-stakes games of cat and mouse. Across America, elite teams of FBI agents are on a mission to hunt down the most wanted criminals in the country. Every day, they put their lives at risk to save yours.
This is law enforcement to the extreme. This is FBI Takedowns.
On an otherwise quiet Saturday, four masked men storm into a bank outside of Camden, New Jersey. Heavily armed, wearing bulletproof vests, masks, gloves, took over the bank lobby and threatened the tellers, the bank manager. This is no amateur heist.
The gang moves with military precision and razor sharp planning. They’re leaving nothing to chance.
“30 seconds. Come on.”
One’s guard at the door, counting down the time. One covers all the customers in the bank.
“Who’s the manager? Get up. Get up.”
One takes the manager to the vault.
“Get up. You want to die? Get up.”
One goes over the teller’s counter.
“Hands up. Hands up.”
When the teller hesitates, these guys prove they mean business. He wasn’t moving quite fast enough for the robbers till he was put down on the floor as the robber then emptied all the teller drawers.
“Come on, guys. Come on.”
They don’t try to fight back or to prevent the bank robbers from taking the money. So, it was unusual that they were that aggressive. They wanted not only the money from all the teller’s drawers. They also wanted to get in the vault and clean it out.
“Open it. Open the vault. GET UP.”
One of the robbers put a gun to the bank manager’s head and threatened to kill her if she didn’t open up the vault.
“GET UP. I CAN’T OPEN IT.”
But it’s a demand she’s powerless to grant.
“Tell me you can’t open it.”
Most every branch bank, that door cannot be opened during the business hours. They have a timer on it.
“I can’t.”
“Well, then you’re dead.”
“Hands up. Hands up. Come on. Come on. Come on. Stay down.”
She’s saved by the clock as the robbers make sure they’re in and gone in 60 seconds.
There is only one agency with the power to investigate a heist like this. The FBI.
“We are responsible for all bank robberies if the bank is insured by the FDIC. That makes it a federal crime.”
The Philadelphia division sends veteran special agents John Tam and Jim Walsh to investigate.
“The majority of bank robberies consist of what we call a note job, where a robber passes a note to the victim teller demanding money and threatening one way or another with a bomb or a gun. The teller hands over the money and the robber leaves the bank. Customer right next door at the next teller wouldn’t even know that the robbery took place.”
This blatant heist, however, is tagged as a takeover bank robbery. They’re a lot rarer and they are violent.
“Open the vault. Get up.”
The significant thing about this is that they were immediately aggressive and violent and physical in that they struck a teller.
Most shockingly, they leave behind a trace. Their getaway car. The car was recovered soon after on fire about three blocks from the bank location. Later on investigation determined it was a stolen car. Scouring the car for evidence comes up empty, not even fingerprints. The gang plotted their escape as carefully as they crafted their robbery.
But there’s still hope the bank surveillance footage holds some answers.
“The CoreStates Bank had a fairly good surveillance camera system. The photographs were very clear depicting at least three of the robbers. None of the robbers could be identified because of the masks, but we could clearly see the clothing, the hats, the masks, the gloves, and it looked obvious that they were wearing bulletproof vests under the jackets.”
The vests stand out, though not as much as the serious firepower.
“This was the first time in quite a while we had seen a military grade weapon used in a bank robbery. In this case, they had what appeared to be AR-15s, which is a semi-automatic rifle. Has a high velocity .223 caliber round, very dangerous weapon.”
“This is definitely a seasoned group of individuals. These perps know exactly what they’re doing.”
Leaving Agents Walsh and Tam little doubt who they’re dealing with.
“Prior to the robbery, we had developed some information from a confidential informant that a violent crew working in Camden, New Jersey had planned to rob this particular bank. With that information, we set up surveillance. Surveillance takes a lot of time. A lot of effort, a lot of manpower.”
After weeks of nothing to go on, Walsh pulls the surveillance. Four or five weeks later, they robbed the bank. Few criminals have the patience to outwait FBI surveillance and the guts to strike so brazenly. Only one name sticks out in the agents’ minds.
Crazy Charlie Rodriguez.
“With their violent nature and all, I had a pretty good idea that Charlie Rodriguez had robbed the bank along with other individuals.”
Walsh and Tam have been hunting Rodriguez for 5 months. His rap sheet includes armed robbery, assault, heroin possession, and illegally possessing firearms. This Philadelphia outlaw truly earned his street name, Crazy Charlie. Charlie got his nickname because of his violent nature, flying off the handle at the drop of a hat. His specialty is robbing drug dealers.
“You don’t get much crazier than that. He was crazy because he would go up on armed people. He was armed, they were armed, and he had no compunction about shooting it out with them.”
One shootout in particular put Charlie firmly in the crosshairs of the FBI. Charlie tried to rip off a drug dealer in Camden. Source information later told us that the drug dealer had gotten information they were coming. When they entered the house, drug dealer opened fire on them and there was a gun battle that ensued.
THE SHOOTOUT ROCKED THE neighborhood and drew the attention of a Camden County Park police officer, Steven Leone. Charlie took out the AR-15 and fired back at the police officer, wounding him. Thankfully, Leone survives, but Charlie, a prime suspect, evades questioning, earning him a top spot on Philadelphia’s fugitive list.
So, when finding him proves to be near impossible, agents train their sights on his brother, Joey, who shares Charlie’s lust for crime and violence.
“His criminal specialty also was robbing drug dealers and we tried to run a couple of surveillances on Joseph in the hopes that he would go to his brother. We knew his brother was most likely in northern section of Philadelphia because that was the information we had received from various investigative techniques we used.”
The FBI’s most promising lead, Charlie is holed up in a Philly neighborhood locals call the Badlands. The person who called it in was sure that they’d seen him. They provided a description that was consistent with his description, so we got together our fugitive task force.
“This was an area of high poverty and seemed to attract a rather large percentage of criminal element to either hide there or live there. So, it was a dangerous area of the city to work in as law enforcement officer.”
Chasing a tip on Charlie’s alleged hideout, FBI SWAT leads the Philadelphia Fugitive Task Force, a multi-agency tactical unit, into the Badlands. For Agent Chris Wilk, the neighborhood is practically impenetrable.
“These are um usually three-story brick row homes, narrow streets, sometimes very difficult to pass with a vehicle, dilapidated areas behind homes that were difficult, if not impossible, to reach.”
If Charlie’s here, the agents will be confronting one of the country’s most dangerous criminals on his own turf, knowing he’s armed to the teeth.
“We went out there relatively early in the morning.”
“POLICE, OPEN THE DOOR!”
“We announced our presence. We heard people scurrying around inside. We forced the door.”
For months, the FBI has been chasing false leads down blind alleys, but now they can feel their noose on violent bank robbery suspect Crazy Charlie Rodriguez tightening.
A solid tip has given them his possible Philadelphia hideout, so the Fugitive Task Force is moving in to trap him like a wild animal. The arrest team was members of the Philadelphia division SWAT team.
“Get out! Get out! GET OUT OF THE WINDOW! GET OUT! GET OUT!”
“I arrested a uh Hispanic male that met uh Charlie Rodriguez’s description. Right age, right stature, right complexion.”
“No, that’s not Charlie.”
However, it was not Rodriguez. Agents were handed a bum tip. Just one of many.
“We got uh several leads for people who thought that they’d seen him in the Badlands and ended up arresting people who were in fact war criminals and fugitives, but they weren’t Charlie Rodriguez.”
At every turn, Crazy Charlie stays one step ahead of the FBI’s manhunt. He was a pretty savvy individual, very streetwise, did not take unnecessary risks, and was very careful in his contacts. Rodriguez was so surveillance-conscious that absent some extraordinary circumstance, we weren’t just going to have him walk into a trap.
As weeks stretch into months, the case goes nowhere. Charlie’s vanished like a phantom, and the agents’ instincts tell them this isn’t going to end well. Charlie and his brother Joey are bound to amp up their violent crime spree until they’re taken down.
“At this point investigation, our worst fears they’re going to do another bank robbery that we won’t know about, and somebody’s going to get murdered. Either a bank employee, a customer, or a responding police officer.”
Walsh and Tam go on high alert for any bank job in South Jersey. During the next 10 months or so, we had uh several bank robberies. None of them fitting the uh the MO of uh Charlie Rodriguez or Joey Rodriguez. That all changes in the spring.
It’s like a sickening flashback to the CoreStates heist in Woodland almost a year earlier. Only messier.
“It was just at 8:00 in the morning. Door hadn’t been opened yet. There were three individuals, heavily armed, wearing bulletproof vests, masks, hats, gloves.”
“Robbers, get on the ground. Get on the ground.”
Bank employees seized and chooses not to open the door up so obviously. So, now they’re out with their AR-15 rifles and they can’t get in. So, they shot through the door, knocking out the glass, and went inside.
“OUT! OUT! EVERYBODY GET OUT! GET OUT! OUT! LET’S GO!”
“DOCTOR, YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE.”
It’s Woodland all over again, a violent takeover with serious firepower. And when the bank employees weren’t moving quite fast enough, they shot several rounds into the ceiling of the bank.
“Get on the ground!”
With the same precision as the CoreStates crime, they empty the drawers within a minute.
“Don’t look at me. KEEP YOUR FACE IN THE GROUND. TIME’S UP! TIME’S UP! COME ON, LET’S GO! LET’S GO!”
They got what money they could. They left the bank and got into the getaway car. However, the car wouldn’t start.
“Go put the key in and turn it.”
Without skipping a beat, the ringleader sees another way out. Another bank employee was pulling up a little late for work.
“Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.”
And so, they pulled her out of her car. They then used her car as the getaway car. The car at the bank that they had brought was stolen, and the reason it didn’t start was it didn’t have any gas in it. They had forgot to check the gas tank.
The robbers vanish, leaving behind only what’s recorded on the surveillance footage.
It paints a familiar and chilling picture for lead investigating agents Tam and Walsh.
“The style was the same as Woodland because of the immediate level of violence. They discharged the firearms. They used them to get into the bank. It’s fortunate that none of the employees were hit by the the bullets that were fired through the door. The robbers wore similar clothing. They carried similar weapons. They made their escape to another getaway car that they had placed three or four blocks away from the bank.”
There’s no doubt it’s Crazy Charlie’s crew, a little more reckless and no surprise more violent. And there’s no telling what they’ll do next. This gang was capable of just about anything. Their robberies were escalating and they had to be stopped.
Once again, Charlie and his gang leave the FBI nothing, driving agent Tam to prime all his connections for leads. Including Detective Roy Whitmore of the Merchantville Borough, New Jersey PD.
“I was aware that there was a extensive manhunt for Crazy Charlie. And I said to him, I have information from a guy who is related to Crazy Charlie and he’s come forward to me. Charlie meet his cousin.”
Detective Whitmore’s source, Fernando Flores, is more than just Crazy Charlie’s relative. He’s also Whitmore’s personal friend and a former cop. And he’s got word that Charlie and brother Joey are about to hit a drug ring.
“They were robbing drug sets. And when Joey went to case the drug set, Camden police had put a trailer or a substation on the corner of the drug set.”
Crazy Charlie is planning a major assault and this time he’s preparing to take his violence to a whole new level. Murder.
As the FBI’s hunt for Crazy Charlie Rodriguez enters its 18th month, the suspected ringleader behind a string of brazen New Jersey bank robberies remains dangerously on the loose. But a new lead from Merchantville Borough Detective Roy Whitmore is a tip agents Walsh and Tam are hoping to bank on.
“He was able to tell me about a relative of Charles Rodriguez who had worked for the Merchantville Borough Police Department as a part-time police officer and was routinely in contact with Joseph Rodriguez.”
And Charlie’s brother Joey let slip inside info to the cousin and former officer Fernando Flores.
“Charlie is planning to kill some cops during a drug hit. You know what Crazy Charlie said? We got these M-16s, we’ll hit the cops and the kid.”
So, Fernando came to me very upset as a former police officer and said,
“Uh, someone is going to get hurt. You know, I really feel bad, you know, we need to do something to stop this before some cops get killed.”
So, I asked Lieutenant Whitmore to introduce me to Fernando. Going into the meeting, everyone is on edge. Could Crazy Charlie be setting the agents up? Agent Tam gave him a series of trick questions to test the veracity of his information and quite frankly, I believe Agent Tam was very impressed.
“You might be able to help us out?”
“Yeah, anything goes, Agent.”
Assured of Fernando’s allegiance, Tam gets down to business.
“We talked about what might interest Charlie in such a way as to draw him out and I had available to me as a property of the FBI, a Browning semi-automatic pistol. He’s just crazy about exotic new weapons. Gangsters love guns. They love unique guns like that. And I suggested to Fernando that he asked them if they’d be interested in purchasing this firearm.”
This classic Browning pistol makes tempting bait, knowing Charlie’s love for guns, but he’s not likely to forget that it’s being dangled by a former cop.
“Charlie’s unstable. He’ll do anything. He’ll kill me.”
The agents figure out a way to work that. John Tam just told Flores that possibly he could contact Joey Rodriguez and letting them know that he was no longer a police officer and that he became bitter with the police department for letting him go unfairly. And Fernando had a very hard decision to make cuz it was his family. But he felt that the right thing to do was to save police officers’ lives.
Fernando goes through younger brother Joey to set up a meeting to sell the gun.
“We had to make sure that whenever the transaction occurred, Charles Rodriguez actually presented himself as opposed to having Joseph Rodriguez, who was not wanted, be the middleman in the transaction.”
But Charlie doesn’t show. Flores does gain the confidence of Joey Rodriguez. However, Joey again is very careful and will not let Flores meet with Charlie directly.
“We know Charlie’s there. I’ll let you know, man. I’ll see what he says.”
Again, Charlie slips through their fingers and Joey never reveals his brother’s whereabouts.
The agents realize that if they’re hunting big game, they need bigger bait. But truth is, a lure too rich for Charlie to resist doesn’t come without dangers. Joseph Rodriguez raised the possibility to Fernando Flores that they wanted to actually conduct a robbery.
“Here’s what we can tell Joey.”
“We had had some other armored car robberies that year, and those robberies normally netted much more money than your average bank robbery. So, I asked Fernando to suggest to them an armored car robbery in a controlled environment.”
“Joey, you got to make it clear to these boys that this is a great take. Mhm.”
Fernando Flores claimed to know an individual who had been to police academy with who had flunked out, who now obtained a job as an armored car guard who made deliveries to ATMs on the New Jersey Turnpike. The ATM machine at the Walt Whitman rest stop on the Turnpike would be reloaded with money every Tuesdays and Thursdays, and they were led to believe that there would be a million dollars in that machine brought to the machine via an armored car.
ATMs on Tuesdays Tam and Whitmore start prepping Fernando for his meeting with Joey.
“So, what’s the story?”
“I have a friend, he’s in big gambling debt. Tuesday and Thursday, he makes a ATM pick up off Walt Whitman New Jersey Turnpike. This individual was willing to give up the armored car in return for the money he needed to pay off his debt? You know, mess, no problems. Um no assistance, just got to tell Charlie that picking up people, boom, and out real quick.”
“The people that robbed the car would uh encounter no resistance from him, and they could keep the remainder of the money for themselves.”
“It’s not bad. All right, just talk to Charlie. Let me know.”
Almost as quickly as the line is cast, their target bites.
“That’s a million, that’s a lot of money, man.”
Charlie and Joey took the hook, and basically were very interested in it.
Now, to craft a bulletproof plan to reel him in. Tam and Walsh bring in Agent Mike Carbonell, the FBI’s Philly division SWAT coordinator.
“We went out to the site. I said, ‘Both you guys are insane. There’s no way we can do this here. This is Jersey Turnpike, the most heavily traveled road in the world.’ So, I said, ‘This is not going to go.'”
But knowing how critical the case is, Agent Carbonell gets obsessed with figuring out how to control a major rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.
“I went out to that site maybe half a dozen times. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I would just wake up and get in my car and go. We get aerial photos, we get maps.”
More planning sessions went on. We realized that yes, that we could actually clear that place of civilians, and then it was much more viable in my mind.
Though not ideal, at least the plaza isn’t a residential area. Embankments around it can absorb stray gunfire. And most importantly, agents can lock down the exits.
But for the plan to work, Fernando must be the driver so he can control the position of the getaway car in the rest stop’s back parking lot. He would then get out of the car and walk to the front of the plaza looking for the armored car to arrive. After he was out of the car, an agent driving a tow truck would enter the back of the plaza and box in the car the Rodriguez brothers were in. A second FBI vehicle, a pickup truck filled with sand, would be parked between Charlie and an electrical shed where three FBI SWAT agents would then spring out.
“We were to exit the shed, take positions behind the uh hood and front tire of that vehicle, and give commands and orders to Crazy Charlie from that position. That it would actually provide the FBI SWAT team with cover from the automatic weapons we knew that uh Charles Rodriguez and his uh confederates had. We also had snipers on the roof of the rest stop with bolt action rifles. We would have agents confronting them immediately with enough firepower to make them think twice and then other agents at the rest stop were going to come to the assistance of the guys that were behind the pickup truck with the sand. SWAT would then surround the car and take them into custody without a shot being fired. That was the scenario that we planned for.”
Scheduled for the last Thursday in August, the big day is approaching fast. But when dealing with one of the FBI’s top fugitives, there are no guarantees.
That morning, Flores is to arrive with Crazy Charlie and his crew at around 9:00 a.m. Shortly before Rodriguez believes the armored car is due.
“We were all set for them to come to the rest stop. We had the surveillance squad in place. We had the SWAT team in place. We rallied up. We’re ready to go.”
As 9:00 a.m. rolls around, there’s no sign of them. And the agents are getting that sick feeling Charlie’s foiled them once again.
“When they didn’t show up, many things went through our mind. Charlie’s sixth sense kicking in, suspecting something was up. Could Charlie have found an easier target and cut Fernando out or worse, discovered his cousin’s betrayal?”
Agents are flying blind and that spells trouble. A perfectly planned sting to catch one of the FBI’s top fugitives, Crazy Charlie Rodriguez, is going off the rails.
“When will we see him?”
With no sign of him and his gang, agents are struggling to grasp how this sure thing went wrong.
“We had the surveillance squad in place. We had the SWAT team in place. We had rehearsed this many times before and we were ready to go and they didn’t show up.”
Unable to contact their informant, Fernando Flores, agents fear the worst. But there’s nothing they can do until the phone finally rings. Flores called Agent Special Agent Tam and told him that Charlie Rodriguez and brother Joey did not show up at his apartment and he did not know why.
“But they weren’t there and it wasn’t going to happen. And this is a no-go, guys.”
It turns out Charlie’s brother Joey and their accomplice Jose Soto got spooked early that morning. Two men appeared at a landscaping company where Jose Soto and Joey Rodriguez worked. So they panicked up and thought it was the FBI and they went underground.
They’re only half wrong. The men were actually Camden County cops with a warrant to arrest Soto for failing to pay child support. This sends Agents Walsh and Tam scrambling to salvage their operation.
“I contacted the Camden County Sheriff’s Department and asked them if they could just contact Soto and tell them that the warrant had been dismissed if he would just agree to pay the child support.”
Soto knowing that he was about to come into a lot of money said,
“No problem. I’ll have some money soon and I’ll pay the child support.”
So with that problem solved, they recharged the plan.
That night, Charlie calls a meeting with Joey and Fernando. Could this be the unexpected break the agents need? So Fernando thought that he might be meeting with Charlie. Now, if we could have somehow controlled that, we would have arrested Crazy Charlie Rodriguez at the time.
Trouble is, Fernando has no idea where he’s being taken. They went to the Ben Franklin Bridge, which is the main bridge between Camden, New Jersey and Philadelphia. And they used a two-way radio with Charlie on the Philadelphia side of the river, and Joseph and Fernando on the New Jersey side in Camden, and they discussed the plans.
“It’s going to go down Tuesday of next week. Uh the guy’s going to make the ATM drops, we’re going to get him with the bag. For $100,000?”
Charlie’s eager to make the big score, so he orders them to be ready to hit the armored car on its next delivery, Tuesday, September 1st.
“This was the last shot for this location because of the uh school starting the following day. We did not want to attempt this operation at this location with school in session because of the close proximity of two schools. So, this was the day it had to go down.”
Two nights before the second heist attempt, Joey shows up at Fernando’s apartment with a bag full of serious hardware.
Inside that duffel bag is um three rifles and uh several pistols, along with body armor, masks, gloves.
“Give me a second, all Here we go. Nobody’s a battle. There was over 1,000 rounds. They’re prepared for war. They’re not going to be taken alive.”
“You going to hang on to this, all right? Do you? You ready for this, right? Come on, man. You better be.”
The question the agents must now ask is why wait? Why not pinch Crazy Charlie when he shows up at Fernando’s apartment? He lived in an apartment surrounded by other apartments and it was felt that the people in the apartments would be put at risk if a firefight erupted there because the weapons that they had would have easily gone through the sheetrock walls. So, it was decided to let the operation play through as we had planned.
That morning Joey Rodriguez and Jose Soto show up at Flores’ apartment. And for the first time since this all began, Fernando comes face-to-face with his cousin Crazy Charlie.
The big job is on. Turning back now would more than likely be the last decision he’d ever make. Flores volunteered that he would go out and uh get some donuts and coffee for them. This gave Flores the opportunity to call us and let us know that they were at the apartment and that things were going to go down as planned.
“Hey. They’re at my place right now. Everything. Everything.”
We immediately alert the surveillance units that the subjects are there and that we get the plane airborne and then try to get a look at the parking lot to see what vehicles they were going to use. Air surveillance spots the perps leaving Flores’ apartment. Ground surveillance is told not to follow, but to set up checkpoints and call out when they pass.
At that point, we all deployed to the rest stop. New Jersey State Police SWAT team was out there, FBI SWAT team. Snipers were on the roof of the rest stop.
“You still don’t really believe it because a lot of times it doesn’t happen, but now now it was going to happen. So, we were ready.”
The FBI knows that the Rodriguez gang will switch cars in a neighborhood not far from the service plaza. But then, the agents’ worst nightmare. Air surveillance loses sight of the gang.
“Please tell me you have eyes on these guys.”
One of the things that concerned us is that they at the last moment would decide just to rob a bank because they were good at that and we would not have a plan in place. We would know they were armed. We’d still have to respond. We would be in an area where we couldn’t control.
After several gut-wrenching moments, Agent Tam gets word. The perps’ van is spotted and it’s on the way to the plaza.
“I contact the plane by radio and tell them where the vehicles are and they come back and get back on top of them. And then they follow them into a neighborhood uh called Charleston Riding.”
This raises another flag. There was a number of retirees that lived in there and that if they saw shady-looking characters, they would call the police department. And if the police department sent out a call to have a car investigate that, might cause them to abort the operation.
One thing agents know about Charlie is he always monitors police calls with a scanner and has feared a concerned neighbor calls the cops. A situation the FBI is ready for.
“We had a detective there at Cherry Hill’s dispatch center and they prevented the call from being sent out.”
With Crazy Charlie’s gang 10 minutes away and closing, the FBI takedown team makes a final sweep of the plaza.
“The customers that were in the rest stop along with the employees, we herded them together and put them into a men’s room and ladies room there that was cinder block walled to keep them safe. And they locked down the entrance to the off-ramp to the rest area and the on-ramp. They had already replaced like all the customers with undercover state policemen, undercover FBI agents. So, we had everything to kind of make it look like it was still an operating rest area.”
On schedule, Charlie’s car turns into the rear service entrance.
“We have positive ID of vehicle entering the parking lot. Stand by. Here they come. Just right down the access road.”
Myself and two other agents were in the mechanical shed waiting. The mood was exciting and at the same time nerve-racking. I was number one at the door, my hand literally on the door handle.
“Subjects approaching.”
As I was listening to the radio, as Crazy Charlie approached, I could hear the vehicle park exactly where the vehicle was supposed to park. They pull into the spot, game on.
“Wow, this is actually going to go like we planned it.”
Now, it’s up to rookie agent Dave May to make the critical move with his tow truck.
“It’s like this is perfect. You can’t ask for a better plan. I was coming up there and about to just nose my tow truck in and nudge him in block him. I was literally 3 seconds away from bursting through that door.”
First, Fernando is supposed to get out and move safely away from the car. Except he doesn’t.
“Juarez, and we knew this from the surveillance, never left the vehicle. Although, that did not change our plan.”
“I’m calling the tactical instructions on the street and I said, ‘Okay, let’s go. Do it. Execute it. Execute the plan.'”
“Suspect vehicle is on the move.”
Then they take off. Then they pull around to the front. Just like that, Charlie’s car pulls away, blowing the FBI’s plan.
“Maintain eyes on at all times.”
If the agents are going to take down Charlie and his gang, armed to the teeth, they’d better think of something quick.
“We have positive ID of vehicle. We’re entering the parking lot. Stand by.”
After more than a year of chasing Crazy Charlie Rodriguez and his gang of bank robbers, the FBI’s careful plan is imploding. Just when the undercover tow truck moves in to trap him, Charlie’s uncanny sixth sense kicks in.
“Someone’s watching? Yeah, someone’s watching. Let’s go. Come on.”
Somebody looked out the window from the rest stop into the employees parking lot. Charlie saw them. Charlie got spooked.
“Fernando, take it around. You’re on the front, man.”
Charlie orders Fernando Flores, the FBI’s mole, to drive to the front of the plaza so he can scope out the situation. If he wants to live, Flores better comply.
“Suspect vehicle is on the move. Maintain eyes on.”
It falls on Agent Dave May to follow in the tow truck without Charlie catching on.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I had to wait and see what’s going to go on now.’ So, I pulled up the gas pump, and even though I had a diesel truck and they had no diesel there, I kind of act like I was pumping gas.”
They pull out in the front. There isn’t a soul there. Which is highly unusual. And they drive the whole parking lot. And then, at that point, they realized that there’s no civilians at all. The place is a ghost town.
“I know something’s wrong, man. What do you mean? I don’t know, man. Something don’t feel right.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and park, man? Right here? No, yeah, man. Back up.”
Charlie tells Flores to back into a spot at the end of the parking lot for a better view of the plaza traffic. Only there isn’t any. There were no customers walking from car to car. It was deserted, completely deserted. So, they knew something was up.
“You want to again pretend like I’m checking the oil or something?”
“Stay in the car, man. All right. Stay behind the wheel, all right?”
All right. It’s not long before Charlie spots a suburban SUV and the agents inside.
“Yo, you see that guy right there? Where? Right there in the suburban.”
The SWAT agent told me that they looked over and one of the agents is a He’s about 6’5″ and he’s in the suburban. And suburbans mean cops.
“Is he looking at us? Yo, something’s wrong, man. Let’s go. Yo, start the car. Start the car. Let’s go.”
They realized that they’d been had. Took off at a high rate of speed.
“Suspect vehicle is on the move. Deploy. Deploy. Deploy. Use the tow truck.”
SWAT coordinator Carbonell orders Agent May to ram Charlie’s car.
We heard the sounds of what turned out to be an escape attempt. From inside the nearby shed, Agent Chris Wilk and his unit engage.
“We exited the shed and began to run immediately towards the front of the rest area.”
As Agent May bears down on Charlie’s car, Carbonell and his SWAT team spring from their van.
“They come by us. I notice an M-16 being pointed at us, so I opened fire on the car. The other agents I was opened up fire on the car, also.”
That car was going like maybe 30 mph and then they had to slow down because they were getting fired at. I could see my SWAT guys to the left. They were firing at the car.
Just as Fernando’s about to turn out of the rest stop, May hits the gas.
“I just kept on accelerating when he slowed down. He just kind of ran up over his tailgate and crushed his trunk and broke his axle.”
Dave hits him about 40 miles an hour. He hits the rear of the car and just knocks the holy hell out of it. And that kind of took the wind out of their sails.
With SWAT teams swarming the car, Fernando escapes the vehicle. Joseph Rodriguez, who was in the front seat, jumped out and tried to run into the uh convenience store at the uh rest stop. He had a gun in his hand and he was shot. So, it caused him to fall.
Charlie Rodriguez and Soto are in the back seat of the car, but they can’t get out. The doors are pinned. And then they’re surrounded by our SWAT personnel with the shoulder weapons uh aimed at them in all. It was very obvious that these two were debating if they were going to die by suicide by police or give up.
Bracing for a firefight, SWAT agents hold their fire.
“I remember thinking a thousand thoughts in the span of that 15 or 20 seconds.”
Finally, Charlie Rodriguez gives up.
As we went up to the car, Charlie Rodriguez was laying there and he said to me,
“Good job, boys. Next time I bring grenades.”
And I said something I can’t repeat.
I’ve heard other criminals always brag about going down in a blaze of glory, and I would say 99 times out of a 100, they give it up at the end because they’re cowards. When confronted with appropriate force and not an a hapless teller at a bank, he clearly decided that he wasn’t as crazy as his nickname lived up to be.
Nobody really got hurt. We got him arrested, and we had a big bonus. The clothing that we found them wearing matched almost exactly to the clothing that was worn in the bank robberies at the CoreStates Bank and the bank in Morristown. And that became the main evidence that we were able to use against them.
The charges that we were able to bring federally against them were astronomical.
Charlie and Joey Rodriguez get life without parole for their part in two bank hold-ups and the planned armored car robbery. Jose Soto receives a sentence of 37 years and 3 months.
“They were the most dangerous crew I was ever up against in my 28-year career.”
“We all knew we were taking a great risk, but sometimes you have to do that for, you know, the greater good.”
As my car partner told me,
“Kid, you’ve been in car chases, rooftop chases, and now shootouts. He says your career’s going to downhill from now on.”
It’s still been good, but it hasn’t been that exciting as as that first year.
Fernando Flores, the former cop who risked his life to nab his own cousin, is recognized and revered for his crucial role in the takedown.
“It was always my opinion that Fernando Flores was a hero in this case because he persevered through very difficult circumstances and exhibited bravery at all times and without his participation we would not have had the successful resolution that we did have.”
