Lawyer bank-rob bust
West Sider nabbed in Connecticut stickup
A criminal-defense lawyer who devoted her career to keeping her clients out of prison may herself serve a long stretch behind bars in a pair of bank robberies.
Meighan Marie McSherry once had a promising career — she was on the prestigious Hofstra Law School trial team and was quoted in a national newspaper as an expert on the law.
But that ended Thursday when the 46-year-old whipsmart Upper West Side resident was busted on charges that she robbed a Connecticut bank branch.
She’s also a suspect in an attempted heist at a Chase branch on Broadway at West 79th Street, in the historic Apthorp apartment building, the NYPD said.
A neighbor of McSherry, who lives in the posh Bancroft building on West 72nd Street near Central Park, said financial woes may have forced her to live a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” existence.
“Some people can’t take it,” said the neighbor. “She put herself in that situation. But it’s sad. She’s a nice lady,” the neighbor said.
McSherry was being held on $250,000 bond for allegedly robbing a Wells Fargo Bank in Greenwich Thursday afternoon.
She allegedly handed a teller a note demanding money and warning she was armed.
The heist netted an undisclosed pile of cash, but cops quickly arrested McSherry driving from the scene.
It may have been McSherry’s second heist in less than a week. Surveillance pictures taken Tuesday show a woman with a strikingly similar appearance inside the Chase branch on the Upper West Side.
Like in the Greenwich job, the suspect passed a note to a teller demanding money. The Chase teller didn’t comply, though, and the female bandit ran off.
McSherry has no memory of the Connecticut stickup, her lawyer, Jennifer DeCastro Tunnard, told The Post Friday.
McSherry’s neighbor didn’t know if she was abusing drugs or alcohol, “but that she had issues. She always looked nervous to me.”
Among McSherry’s financial woes are lawsuits brought by her landlords seeking a total of $21,700.
McSherry allegedly claimed to the neighbor that she was taking care of her dementia-stricken mom. The resident did not know McSherry’s marital status.
McSherry is a former Bronx public defender. In 1999, she was quoted in a USA Today report on O.J. Simpson’s work as a TV pitchman for a lawyer-referral service.
“Law firms may be turned off because, by being part of the service, they run the risk of being known in their market as the ‘O.J. Simpson law firm,’ ” she told the newspaper.