An Empire Bank Heist

Was a 69-year-old so desperate to make a film about global warming that he robbed a bank?

By Patrick Sullivan | Feb. 4, 2017

William Minore launched a Gofundme campaign to raise $20,000 to make a film calling for an environmental revolution. On the page, he made a desperate plea for money, though he said he was really more interested in getting his message out.

The earth is in crisis, Minore wrote. He added, “We are on a suicidal course to turn our miracle planet into a poisoned, airless, dead rock whirling through empty space because of our mindless greed.”

He also described his troubled finances: “My financial health isn’t so good. I need some material things.”

Was the 69-year-old so desperate for cash in order to make his film and shore up his life that he robbed a bank? Police and prosecutors in Leelanau County say he was. Today, Minore is in jail awaiting trial for armed robbery for a Sept. 7 bank heist, one that bears a striking resemblance to two 2015 bank robberies in Benzie County.

A CIRCUMSTANTIAL CASE
The case against Minore for the Huntington National Bank robbery in Empire is circumstantial but compelling.

At Minore’s preliminary hearing in January, Prosecutor Joseph Hubbell walked the lead investigator, Detective Robert Bailey, through surveillance footage from the day of the robbery. The footage shows Minore getting into a car that wasn’t his in Glen Arbor.

Prior to this, the footage shows Minore pacing up and down Western Avenue in front of Art’s Tavern, apparently checking out cars. Early on, Minore wore flip-flops; in later frames, he appeared in shoes and gloves just before jumping into a silver Kia Soul and driving off.

The Kia would be discovered in Glen Arbor several hours later and a couple of blocks away, near the Cherry Republic. In the meantime, an ATM surveillance camera on the northern edge of Empire captured a car that looked like the Kia driving into the village just before the bank robbery and heading back on M-22 toward Glen Arbor just after.

In the moments between 1:10pm when Minore took the Kia and 1:33pm when a masked robber entered the Huntington branch in Empire, someone made two hysterical calls to 911, reporting a gunman at Lake Ann Elementary School and an “active shooter” at the Leelanau School, calls investigators say were made by the robber to divert police from Empire.

Brian Tripp, the bank’s customer service manager, was in his office this warm and overcast late summer day when a thief dressed in black rain coveralls and a ski mask and carrying a black umbrella burst into the branch.

Footage from eight surveillance cameras running inside the bank showed the robbery unfold. The robber waived what appeared to be a silver .38 revolver around as a bank teller scooped up bricks of cash and shoved them into the crook’s black bag.

“He told us that if we hit any alarms, he was going to f---ing kill us…I wasn’t afraid, but I did what he said,” Tripp said. “I mean, there was no point in arguing with him.”

The robber got in and out of the building in two minutes and 28 seconds before vanishing out the back door into an alley.

CONNECTED BY A KIA
No witnesses saw Minore at the bank that afternoon. Bailey acknowledged that the surveillance images of the Kia in Empire do not reveal a face or license plate.

In an extensive search of Minore’s home in Benzonia, two sheriff’s departments, the state police and the FBI found no weapon, none of the cash (including none of the $150 in $2 bills taken from the bank) and none of the clothing the robber is wearing in the surveillance footage. Investigators found nothing at the house to link Minore to the crime, though they did find some marijuana.

What connects Minore to Empire at the time of the robbery is the Kia, a detail that might have gone unnoticed if the car had been returned to the same spot its owner had left it.

Minore admits he took the Kia, but in a jailhouse interview with the Northern Express, he emphatically denied robbing the bank.

“No. Definitely no. Somebody asked me to move a vehicle,” he said. “I was set up.”

The Kia’s owner, Thomas Taylor, was working at Art’s Tavern when he realized his car was gone. He said he always left it unlocked with the keys inside. He noticed some commotion outside and soon learned the road to Empire had been blocked by police. That’s when he happened to glance over and see his car missing. He called police, who immediately connected the stolen car to the bank robbery.

AN ALIBI FOR THE DEFENSE
Minore grew up in Flint and moved to northern Michigan in 1980. He lived in a camper “in the woods” for the first 13 years, moving around from place to place.

When he met his now ex-girlfriend, the woman who became the mother of his two daughters, the couple bought a house in Benzie County and lived there until they split up. Later, Minore sometimes stayed in a travel trailer on the property, which he eventually sold. He was in the process of moving off that property at the beginning of September just as the Empire bank was robbed.

Minore said he was in Glen Arbor that day because he’d camped nearby. He’d spent the day hanging out, he said. He’d gone for a swim. He’d made several calls to his former workplace, the Shop-N-Save in Benzonia, because he was waiting for his last check to come in. He was wandering around killing time when he saw a sick-looking man sitting by the tennis courts.

“There was a guy there sitting on the ground with a surgical mask on. He seemed to be in distress, and I asked him, ‘Are you all right?’” Minore said.

Minore said the man told him he was preparing to have a liver transplant and needed to go to Munson Medical Center with his brother but was supposed to meet his wife in Glen Arbor. Minore said the man asked him to move his Kia Soul parked a couple of blocks away to where it could be seen from the tennis courts so his wife could find it.

“He didn’t want me to touch him because he said he was taking something to suppress his autoimmune system for his liver transplant,” Minore said. He said the man gave him sterile gloves and shoes to wear in the car.

Minore said he agreed, but something felt wrong about the circumstances as he approached the car. He said he circled around and decided not to move the car before changing his mind and moving it after all.

After that, he says he hung around Glen Arbor for a while. He interacted with a woman who worked with a lawn maintenance company who his lawyer is trying to track down as an alibi witness. He chatted with a couple from Chicago at Cherry Republic, but he doubted whether he’d be able to track them down. He said detectives never tried to find the witnesses who saw him in Glen Arbor.

Hubbell laughed when asked what he thought of Minore’s version of events. “Obviously, if we didn’t believe we could be successful at trial, we wouldn’t have charged the case,” he said.

ANOTHER LINK TO THE CRIME
It turns out the Glen Arbor surveillance footage isn’t the only circumstantial evidence investigators have linking Minore to the robbery.

Minore’s ex-girlfriend, whom he dated for seven years until 2000, testified at the preliminary hearing that she called police when she heard those diversionary 911 calls broadcast on the news the day of the robbery.

“That’s Bill Minore,” the 49-year-old woman testified after one of the tapes played in court. “I mean, I lived with him. I know his voice.”

She said one of her daughters first noticed her dad’s voice in the tapes. They called police that day.

Minore’s attorney, William Burdette, suggested in cross examination there might be bad blood between Minore and the girlfriend, implying that she might have reason to want to see him in trouble, but the woman denied she was out to get her ex. “It was a pretty horrible day for me,” she testified. “I feel sorry for him. I don’t have any animosity towards him.”

Minore acknowledged that it’s hard to explain his innocence in light of his ex-girlfriend’s testimony on top of his strange story of having been asked to move the car by a stranger, but he said it would all be explained in his trial.

Hubbell said he believes the person who made the 911 call before the Empire robbery was the same person who made the calls before each of the Benzie County bank robberies in 2015. He said each call was made by Minore.

Hubbell plans to file a motion to introduce all the 911 calls at trial so he can show a pattern of behavior.

Minore has not been charged in connection with the Benzie robberies, but they involve a nearly identical bank heist approach.

The culprit in the April, 2015, robbery of the Honor State Savings Bank in Lake Ann is believed to have made three 911 calls just before the robbery. In each, the same male voice speaks excitedly about a crime he is reporting until he starts to yell and scream as the line goes dead.

The December robbery of the same bank was also preceded by what investigators consider a phantom call to 911 about a shooting in Homestead Township that was meant to lure police away from the actual crime.

In each of the Honor robberies, a masked man walked in with a silver revolver, demanded money and vanished on foot.

SUPERCHARGED HUMAN BEING
Minore’s Gofundme appeal is titled “ONE PLANET, NO SECOND CHANCES: AN URGENT APPEAL TO ALL REASONING HUMAN BEINGS.” The plea consists of 3,667 words. He’s collected no money so far.

He planned on making a film that would convince the masses that humanity is destroying the earth and promised a “film that will be like a rollercoaster ride, pinning the audience in their seats as they experience the cold terror an unchanged future will bring.”

Watching the film would move the audience to action, Minore promised. Viewers would be left “on fire with a new-found unshakable determination to change the suicidal course.”

Minore believes a worldwide tree planting campaign should begin immediately and that human development should move underground in order to preserve more open space.

In his treatise, Minore also touts his own good health and credits cold water swimming.

Around Benzonia, Minore was known for routinely jumping into Crystal Lake until the lake froze over.

He wrote, “Start in the summer, keep swimming year round every day [until] you can condition your body to the extreme temperatures. If it takes you more than an hour to warm back up, cut down on your time in the water. Watch the ice, do not brush up against it, it is razor sharp. For you that are able to – stick with it, it’s guaranteed to 100% max out every cell in your body, you will become a new supercharged human being.”

“WOULDN’T IT BE FUNNY?”
When he wasn’t camping in the woods, Minore lived on Higgins Road, about a 10-minute drive west of Benzonia. It’s a dirt road through pretty fields and forest and dotted with spread-out homes, some of them nicely maintained, some of them not.

Neighbor Missy Goold said that at one time, years ago, Minore lived in a nicer house next door to hers. Then his life fell apart and he moved into a squalid trailer across the road. “I’d heard from the people who lived in the trailer before that it was not very ‘well kept,’ I think is the nice way to put it,” she said.

Two days before the Empire robbery, Minore lost his job at the Shop-N-Save.

Night manager Joe Bishop said Minore, who worked as a cashier, was fired because he caused a lot of complaints from customers. “We told him on Sunday that he wasn’t coming back, and I think it was Tuesday that the bank got robbed,” Bishop said.

Bishop said Minore was a regular customer who bought Brussel spouts and oranges before he became an employee and was known to swim in Crystal Lake whenever he could. Bishop said Minore would use his 15-minute breaks to go for swims in the lake.

Bishop said Minore came off as eccentric and arrogant. “He used to tell us about his plan to hire Leonardo DiCaprio to narrate a movie for him on climate change,” he said.

Bishop said he wasn’t surprised when he heard Minore was arrested for the robbery.

“They told me something was happening and that Bill was involved, and I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny?’” he said. “As eccentric as he was, he did seem intelligent.”

STRAINED FINANCES
Investigators didn’t find evidence in their search of Minore’s home to connect him to the bank robbery, but they did find marijuana. He was charged in Benzie County with delivery of marijuana, a four-year felony, and maintaining a drug house.

Prosecutor Sarah Swanson said she decided to drop those charges in September because Minore was in jail in Leelanau County on more serious charges and it seemed like a waste of resources to drive him back and forth.

Minore said he found the marijuana growing in a field and harvested it for personal use.

In the Benzie County case, Minore asked for a court-appointed attorney and claimed a Social Security income of $300 per month. Under assets, he listed a $1,000 van. He described himself as homeless and claimed $10,000 in credit card debt.

Minore’s ex-girlfriend won child support from Minore in a 2001 non-contested court case, but by 2009, before their children had become adults, the woman petitioned the court to halt the support due to the “financial/health hardships” Minore was experiencing.

Minore said he doesn’t mind being in jail. He said he’s glad to have a platform to get his environmental message out. “The odd thing about it is this is a really nice facility and it’s like a vacation,” Minore said. “I don’t have the daily hassles that I normally do.”

THE DAY OF THE ROBBERY
12:43pm – William Minore first appears on surveillance footage on the sidewalks of Glen Arbor.

1:10pm – Minore gets into a silver Kia Soul and drives away.

1:26pm – The first of two 911 calls are placed by a frantic male voice reporting crimes around Leelanau County that turn out to be diversions. In the first, the caller reports a man in a ski mask at Lake Ann Elementary School.

1:30pm – In the second 911 call, the same frantic voice reports an “active shooter” at the Leelanau School just north of Glen Arbor.

1:30pm – A surveillance camera at the State Savings Bank branch on M-22 in Empire captures an image of what looks like a silver Kia Soul headed into Empire. The driver and the license plate are not visible in the image.

1:33pm – A black-clad man enters Huntington National Bank in Empire and demands cash.

1:36pm – The masked man heads out the back door of the bank and disappears into an alley with $40,000.

1:45pm – The State Savings Bank ATM surveillance camera captures an image of what looks like a silver Kia Soul on M-22 headed north out of Empire toward Glen Arbor.

2:46pm – The Kia is reported stolen by its owner.

3pm – The Kia is found by police parked two blocks from where it was taken.