Anthony Vera, the Montego Bay Bandit, may be on the run from the law for over a week but no matter how tired, cold or hungry he is he also made a bit of history last Wednesday.
This Wednesday warrants for the two men were issued by Elko County.
Until he ran off with a cash box full of money no one in over 75 years had successfully robbed a Wendover Casino ever.
Of course Wednesday robbery did not go off completely without a hitch. Vera’s wheelman 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.
According to West Wendover Police reports Vera wearing either face paint or a mask approached the Montego Bay’s cashier’s cage, 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. Nor is it known how much money he got away with. Being it was a Wednesday night one of the slowest days of the week it may not have been much. On the other hand with Valentine’s Day approaching there may have been more than the normal amount of cash on hand. And Vera may have known.
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.
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.
