Having received a prison sentence of 57 months after unsuccessfully robbing a bank in 1996, Kenneth Lyle Spangle thought in August 2012 that he'd devised a fool-proof plan for a repeat attempt: Immediately after the robbery, he'd change his clothes to trick police.
Spangle's plan worked–for a couple of minutes.
He pulled panty hose over his head and entered a Bank of America in Placentia, where he displayed what appeared to be a gun (its was fake), yelled commands, took a box of cash, ran away with about $10,000, changed clothes and thought he'd succeeded.
But Spangle's one-step plan needed an important second step.
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He'd forgotten to think about what to do with the clothes he wore during the robbery and left them in a bag near the bank.
Worse, he left his picture identification in the bag too.
D'oh!
Perhaps realizing his own stupidity, he asked the Placentia police officer in pursuit to shoot him.
But Spangle couldn't even convince the cop to pull the trigger.
The career criminal asked that he receive a punishment of no more than 62 months in prison.
Considering Spangle's long rap sheet, including a 72-month prison trip for threatening to kill a federal judge, prosecutors suggested the more suitable punishment should be more than 20 years.
This week inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse, U.S. District Court Judge Josephine L. Staton agreed with prosecutors and sentenced him to a term of 262 months.
Given that Spangle is now 62 years old and suffers numerous physical ailments, the punishment could be a life sentence.
Jail records show he hasn't yet been transferred to his new U.S. Bureau of Prison's home.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.