Workers in the TCF Bank branches tucked inside all those grocery stores are expected to troll the aisles for new customers. But few did it like Terry Twist.
Twist was “one hell of a salesman,” a former colleague said, one who easily persuaded shoppers to open bank accounts.
“He had a genuine smile. He wasn’t pushy or overwhelming,” said Tracy Thorne, 28, a TCF supervisor. “People would walk up to him and see his smile, and they would do anything he said.”
To hear authorities tell it, that quality also helped make Twist the ringleader of a crew of teenagers who were more than willing to cash in on an apparent sure thing.
Together with the 26-year-old Twist, authorities say, they made off with $90,000 from a TCF branch in a Naperville Jewel on Feb. 15. Though seven teenagers and Twist have been arrested in connection with the crime, about $33,000 of the money has not been recovered, investigators said.
Federal prosecutors and the teenagers’ attorneys portray Twist as a modern-day Fagin, the Charles Dickens character who built his criminal enterprise by recruiting innocent adolescents.
Yet investigative reports obtained by the Tribune, as well as dozens of interviews, show the teenagers were more than eager to participate in the crime, and that one, a 16-year-old teller, helped Twist recruit the other teens.
Three juveniles and two older teenagers charged as adults in the case have pleaded guilty and received probation; a fourth juvenile was convicted of theft and sentenced Sept. 22 to probation. A seventh teenager has pleaded guilty in federal court and will be sentenced soon.
Twist is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday, though his attorney expects the case to be continued. He faces federal charges of bank larceny and conspiracy for allegedly leading a gang that seemingly could do nothing right, beginning with a stickup man who nearly knocked himself out as he got out of the getaway car.
Twist’s attorney, James Tunick, insists that at least one other person was involved in the crime, and investigators indicated late last week that more charges are possible.
“So much has been made about Terry being a mastermind influencing young kids,” Tunick said. “But what will come out is that’s not exactly what happened in this case.”
Prosecutors say the plot took root a little more than a year ago. That’s when the bank hired Twist, who, according to court records, had financial woes, a drinking problem, a gambling habit and a conviction for domestic violence.
Twist got his job as a sales representative before a criminal background check was completed. If the bank had known Twist’s full history, “We may have looked at (his hiring) differently,” said David Creel, a senior vice president at TCF. “In fact, we would have.”
Investigators say Twist needed money to pay off gambling debts at local riverboats. And he had been ordered to pay a $5,500 bill to doctors who had sutured him after a car crash.
For the teenagers involved, the motivation appears to have been even simpler: the lure of easy money, according to investigators.
“When you have a guy Twist’s age dangling $80,000 or $90,000 in the faces of these kids, even though they were going to split it up, that’s a lot of money to them,” said Naperville Police Detective Mike Cross.
Most of the teenagers attended Neuqua Valley High School.
Four of the six boys involved were 16 years old and juniors at Neuqua Valley. Two others, Dominick Pasqurella, then a Neuqua Valley junior, and John Falls, a junior at the time at an alternative high school in Aurora, were 17.
The lone female involved, Leanne Janowski, a Naperville 18-year-old who pleaded guilty earlier this year in federal court, is a senior at nearby Waubonsie Valley High School, Aurora.
While growing up in Clarendon Hills, Twist had regular brushes with police. In 1991 he hit his older sister, Mary, while drinking beer with underage friends in the family’s back yard, according to court records.
A judge sentenced the 18-year-old Twist to 80 hours of community service, which he completed by picking up trash from beaches in Boynton Beach, Fla.
After returning to Clarendon Hills, Twist worked at a bagel shop before taking a job that he told his family could become a vocation: banking.
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After a few months at a TCF branch in Westmont, Twist was transferred to the branch at 95th Street and Illinois Highway 59 on Naperville’s south side. Not long after, bank officials promoted their eager salesman to supervisor.
Working alongside Twist was a 16-year-old teller who attended Neuqua Valley.
Late last January, Twist began joking about robbing the bank, the teenager later told police.
A week later the joking became more serious. Twist asked the teller if he knew anyone who could help them pull off a stickup, according to investigative reports.
The teller later told police that he then began recruiting friends and classmates.
In a recent conversation outside his family’s Naperville home, the former teller demanded money for an interview. But he later said the police version was “as accurate as it needs to be.”
At 8:10 on the night of the crime, Falls and another teen began driving around the Jewel parking lot, waiting for the 16-year-old teller to come outside, according to police. At that point, Falls, who was posing as the stickup man, was to approach the bank.
But the 16-year-old never came out. Falls had to go inside the bank and ask the teller how to proceed.
After receiving his instructions, according to police reports, Falls went back outside and walked up to Janowski, a bank employee who had agreed only hours earlier to pose as his victim. She was taking a cigarette break with other teenagers. The pair re-entered the store and went to the vault, where Twist and the 16-year-old teller were closing for the evening.
Falls took the money and a bank security videotape. He then left, later switching cars and throwing away the tape.
Investigators say they doubted the bank employees’ version of the crime from the beginning. The purported victim, Janowski, “didn’t have time to think of a good story,” Detective Cross said.
Police found the getaway car, a black Cadillac, in the parking lot of Neuqua Valley High after one of the 16-year-old accomplices drove it to school.
At one point, police asked Twist to come in the next day and take a polygraph test. Twist agreed but failed to show.
His brother Dan later gave authorities a note he had found in which Twist stated he was “going somewhere were (sic) I’ll never be seen again by anyone I’ve ever known!”
A week later, he called another sister. She helped FBI agents and U.S. marshals arrest him at a suburban San Diego bar.
Back in Naperville, police said, some of the teenagers had begun to turn on one another.
Pasqurella, for example, tricked a co-conspirator into giving him nearly double his expected $3,000 share, police said. Pasqurella in turn was duped by a friend who agreed to bury the cash in his back yard–and then said the $5,900 had been stolen.
In the days after the crime, FBI agents and police interviewed Janowski and the 16-year-old teller. Both ultimately confessed, providing the names of their accomplices and explaining how the plot had unfolded.
The authorities then rounded up the teenagers at Neuqua Valley, in traffic stops and at their homes. The youngsters were released, allowed to make preparations to turn themselves in and sent home with their parents.
In Naperville, the crime and its aftermath have split families between those who say any teenager could have been lured into such a scheme and others who think those involved got off easy.
Twist remains in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in the Loop; he and most family members have declined requests for interviews. One sibling acknowledges his problems, though she insists he wasn’t the mastermind behind what happened.
“The kid’s done a lot of stupid things, but being a ringleader of a bank robbery isn’t one of them,” said his 33-year-old sister, Mary, as she stood on the front porch of the house where she and her little brother grew up.
“Why he was involved in it, I have no idea,” she said. “When I ask him, he just says, `I don’t know.’ “