More detail on this person: A convicted bank robber infamous for using a helicopter to quickly escape heists in the 1980s died Tuesday in the Palo Pinto County Jail. Jim Little, 73, was locked up last week on suspicion of stabbing a motel clerk after trashing his room in Mineral Wells, according to the local newspaper. Little died Tuesday night after eating dinner, the victim of a "major medical episode," Sheriff Brett McGuire told WFAA-TV (Channel 8). "We have the Texas Rangers investigating," the sheriff told the station. "We tried to do CPR. He was unresponsive." A highly decorated helicopter gunship pilot during the Vietnam War, Little made headlines in the mid-1980s as a bank robber with a unique means of escape. His exploits - he also served as an Alaska State Trooper and earned the state's medal of honor _were the subject of a book by longtime Dallas Morning News reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Howard Swindle. "Throughout the Southwest, morning newspapers on Feb. 16, 1984, reported what officials termed the first bank robbery in history that used a helicopter," Swindle wrote in September 1987. "More than $160,000 had been taken from the Merchants and Farmers Bank and Trust Co. in Leesville, La. Little was sentenced to 25 years in prison for two such heists and served time in Leavenworth after an ill-fated attempt by his girlfriend to hijack a helicopter and break him out of a federal prison in Oklahoma. He was back behind bars last Thursday after a bizarre attack at a Mineral Wells motel. A clerk was briefly hospitalized in Fort Worth but was back on the job this week, according to the Mineral Wells Index. "He threatened to kill us and cut our heads off," the victim told the paper. "I have never had anything like this happen to me before. We don't know what he was mad about."
This information was last updated 08/09/2019
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Date posted on this site: 03/10/2024
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