Suspect in bank heist had just left prison

When Mary Beth Stapleton came home to Fort Lauderdale last week after yet another stint in prison for bank robbery, her family again hoped that she could get her life on track.

But after 48 hours of freedom, the woman once dubbed the “Ma Barker Bandit” apparently found that old habits die hard.

Mary Stapleton, 52, was arrested Sunday and charged with robbing the SunTrust Bank, 1409 E. Atlantic Blvd. in Pompano Beach the day before.

The take was $100 in cash. The getaway was made on a bus.

“She has no interest in the money,” said Lighthouse Point resident Kathy

Tight, Stapleton’s sister. “She prefers prison.”

When spotted by a Broward Sheriff’s deputy at a Pompano Beach bus stop early Sunday, Stapleton was wearing the same white T-shirt and dark pants surveillance video showed she had on during the robbery Saturday morning.

In a statement, Stapleton readily admitted her crime and even provided investigators with a handwritten duplication of the note demanding money they said she had handed to the bank teller. “This is a holdup, put $2,000 in envelope, no dye pack,” she wrote, according to a federal complaint.

When the teller told Stapleton that the bank had just opened and she had little money to give her, the bandit replied, “Give me what you have!” investigators said.

Stapleton’s picture, taken from the SunTrust Bank surveillance video, was widely circulated, according to the FBI. A family member saw the picture on a South Florida television station and called Crime Stoppers, authorities said.

Stapleton’s troubles began at age 22 when she had a seizure and suffered brain damage while a student at the University of Florida, according to Tight. Since then Stapleton’s 10 brothers and sisters have tried repeatedly to get her the psychiatric help she needs, Tight said.

Tight said she met her younger sister at the Fort Lauderdale bus station when she arrived Wednesday from the prison in North Florida and helped her settle into a halfway house.

“I asked her, ‘Are you going to do this again?’ ” said Tight. “She said she wanted to get her life back together.”

Tight said Stapleton left the halfway house sometime Friday, the day before the bank robbery.

Detectives began comparing Stapleton to Ma Barker, the bankrobbing Depression-era fugitive and folk hero, after her arrest in February 2010 for sticking up three Broward County banks in less than a week. As in the latest holdup, Stapleton apparently made no effort to conceal her face, and by the time she walked into her third targeted bank, employees recognized her.

Bank employees also watched her get into her 2010 getaway vehicle, a white Mitsubishi Mirage, and jotted down the tag number.

That crime spree was also ended by a Broward Sheriff’s deputy, who stopped her car.

Convicted of those bank robberies, Stapleton was sentenced to nearly four years in prison and three years of supervised release.

After her release from a federal prison in Connecticut in 2013, Stapleton was headed to Florida but got off the bus in New York City and robbed another bank, Tight said.

In July 2013 Stapleton was discovered in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Queens, N.Y., and arrested on a fugitive warrant from Florida and returned to prison, according to federal records in New York.

Stapleton was also convicted of robbery without a weapon in Broward in 2007. She served a year and a half in state prison before being released in June 2008, records show.

Stapleton’s criminal history also includes numerous convictions for fraud and cocaine possession from the late 1990s to recent years, according to state records.

“We have spend a lifetime trying to address the problems,” said Tight. “We have all tried to help. We would do anything to get her into psychiatric hospital rather than prison. But there seems there is no facility for her.”

Stapleton