Will Tony Vera’s “success” in robbing the Montego Bay and eluding capture for more than a month spur copy cats looking for the big score at a plump Wendover Casino?
Montego Bay Bandit Anthony Matthew Vera was captured near Tucson, Arizona late last Thursday afternoon.
“The West Wendover Police Department, in a collaborated effort, with the United States Marshals’ Office, Northern Utah J.C.A.T Team, State of Utah Department of Public Safety, State Bureau of Investigation Division, and the Tucson Arizona Police Department, located, and took Anthony Matthew Vera, into custody without incident in the Tucson Arizona area late in the afternoon of March 13th, 2014. ” wrote West Wendover Police Chief Burdel Welsh in a press release.
Vera along with Elbert Woodson pulled off a brazen robbery of the Montego Bay Casino five weeks ago.
According to West Wendover Police reports Anthony Vera wearing either face paint or a mask approached the Montego Bay’s cashier’s cage two weeks ago Wednesday, jumped the counter, grabbed a cash box and fled the casino with an undetermined amount of cash. It is unknown whether Vera was armed at the time.
It is unknown just how much money Vera made away with although the sum is probably larger perhaps much larger than the “greater than $650” amount originally released by law enforcement. The $650 mark permits the theft to be charged as a felony.
According to sources close to the investigation the robbery may have been an inside job. The photo used by police in their wanted poster comes from the files of casino workers and that Vera’s identity was provided from an unnamed source who was either involved in the crime or who had knowledge of it. That source was later identified as a woman who for unknown reasons was traveling in the get away vehicle and was allowed to leave shortly after the chase began around the Grantsville exit by the UHP.
Elbert Woodson the wheel man in the Montego Bay caper is now in the Elko County Jail on a $45,000 bail bond.
Woodson had been held at the Tooele county Jail in Utah until he was extradited back to Nevada last Friday which incidentally was also his birthday.
Woodson was captured within hours of the crime after a high speed chase on I-80 and subsequent crash in rural Herriman, Utah.
“The suspect vehicle continued toward the Salt Lake Valley and one person exited the vehicle near Bangerter Highway, south of Salt Lake City International Airport. The person exiting was later identified as an adult female.” Welsh wrote in press release last week. “She was later interviewed by, investigators from the West Wendover Police Department, and the State of Utah Department of Public Safety and the State Bureau of Investigation Division. The female’s identity is being withheld, pending prosecutor’s review of the case. The female is currently listed a as witness. Ongoing investigation may determine if she was a party to the criminal activity.”
The fact that the woman has not yet been charged coupled with the information that federal law enforcement has been called in on the case could indicate that in addition to the robbery charges facing Vera and Woodson there may be an additional charge of kidnapping.
Kidnapping across state lines is a federal crime with a possible penalty of life in prison. While it is still unclear of the woman’s role in the robbery the threat of a life term could be used to elicit information from Woodson.
Until Vera ran off with a cash box full of money no one in over 75 years had successfully robbed a Wendover Casino and spent more than a couple of hours as a free man.
Of course the robbery did not go off completely without a hitch. Vera’s wheel man in the heist, Elbert Woodson, was nabbed after he crashed the get away car about two hours after the robbery on the outskirts of Slat Lake City.
Still Woodson might qualify for the silver medal if robbing Wendover Casinos was an Olympic sport since the no one before him ever made it that far in the over 75 years since the first slot machine was installed in Wendover.
Wendover’s heretofore astonishing success in thwarting bandits has less to do with its law enforcement, albeit the agencies which serve the town are professional as can be, than the Utah/Nevada border town’s extreme isolation.
There are just three roads out of Wendover and it is 120 miles in any direction before another city.
“There is no place to run,” said the late local lawman Earl Lacey in a 1990 feature story in the High Desert Advocate about Wendover invulnerability to would be robbers. “Sure people have tried but even back in my day we had radios. If we couldn’t run ‘em down, we would call ahead and either the NHP or the UHP or Elko, White Pine or Tooele Sheriffs would set up a road block. Even the smartest crook couldn’t get around that.”
If Vera wasn’t smart he certainly was lucky.
Vera had his first piece of lucky by not being accosted either during or after the robbery.
He waltzed out of the casino jumped into the waiting car driven by Woodson. The bandits second stroke of luck cam when for unknown reasons neither the UHP trooper nor the Tooele County Sheriff’s Deputy normally on duty in Wendover gave chase to the fleeing robbers. The robbery was called into the West Wendover Police dispatch almost immediately after Vera fled the scene said West Wendover Police chief Burdel Welsh, and as matter of course was immediately relayed to Tooele Dispatch for the Utah agencies.
Instead it would be another hour and more than 80 miles east of Wendover that the two men came under pursuit from a UHP trooper near Grantsville.
In addition to the bragging rights the fact that Vera did kind of get away if only for five weeks might give other would be criminals ideas that Wendover casinos might not be as robbery proof as was once imagined. And it would not be beyond the realm of possibility that one or two would be robbers in the near future will try to emulate Vera and try to go him one better.
