The `Gentleman Bandit' Remembered His Manners And Gave Himself Up

HOUSTON - The thing about the "Gentleman Bandit" was his courtliness, his Cary Grant manners as he stole and stole and stole some more.

Why, he would apologize as he tied people up, make them as comfortable as possible, return pictures of the grandchildren that he found in wallets, call the front desk of hotels to tell them the guest in Room 319 could use some help getting untied.

Once a man started having a heart attack in the midst of a robbery, so the Gentleman Bandit called the hospital and ordered an ambulance. Sometimes he would call victims at home later to inquire if they had recovered from their ordeal.

Posh hotels in Louisiana and Texas were his venue. He struck 100 times over two years, surprising guests with his efficiency, his unfailing graciousness, and, of course, his pistol. Frustrated police and hotel operators posted composite pictures of him to no avail.

Then there was a breakthrough. A Texas salesman was arrested June 27 and charged with the crimes. But it was the wrong man.

For a time, the Gentleman Bandit watched as the salesman took the rap. But yesterday, he turned himself in to the Houston police, saying he couldn't let someone else suffer for what he had done.

The man who says he's the Gentleman Bandit is Houston resident Lon Perry, 49, a church-going father of two who says he turned to crime in 1989 when he lost his job and his money ran out.

Not even his wife of 26 years had a clue as to what Perry was up to. She thought he had a job working at night. Police were hard-pressed to even find a traffic ticket on Perry's past.

A computer programmer, Perry had spent 22 years in the oil business but on Jan. 1, 1989, the energy bust caught up with him. He was laid off at Texas Eastern Corp.

"The layoff . . . left me an emotional cripple," Perry said in a statement provided by his lawyers. "Here I was nearly 50 years of age, back taxes owed to the IRS, a son in his second year at a college that I really couldn't afford."

He said that he entertained thoughts of suicide, the sense that he was more valuable dead than alive. By the spring of 1989, Perry's severence pay was almost exhausted and the bills were mounting, putting him in a "financial pressure cooker, the depression deepening and seemingly no way out."

The thoughts of suicide began turning to thoughts of robbery. In May 1989, Perry pulled off his first robbery at a motel in suburban Houston.

His grandson was born in June 1989, bringing joy to his life and briefly banishing thoughts of death.

But then, in July, Perry's mother died, causing the "worst pain in my lifetime."

"I wrestled with the robberies and my suicide thoughts over the next four months and decided that I couldn't . . . inflict the pain on my family that my mother's death inflicted on me," he said.

In his statement, he described the result of his decision. "Walking around the motel, I saw a room with the drapes open and one man and two ladies inside. I knocked on the door.

"When the man answered, I walked in pretending to know him and closed the door. I pulled the small .22 caliber antique revolver from my pocket and, inconceivable as it seemed, I actually performed the first of what would be numerous motel-hotel robberies during 18 of the next 25 months."

He would approach hotel guests in a variety of ways, his friendly manner putting them off guard. After being admitted to a room, he pulled out his pistol (which Perry said wouldn't fire because the hammer was frozen), and apologized for the inconvenience.

For some guests who seemed resistant, Perry would say that he had a friend waiting outside the door in case there was trouble. But on occasion, "a potential victim would say something to me that would touch my heart and I would not be able to rob him," Perry said in his statement. "I simply would leave and most everyone would assure me that they would give me sufficient time to get away."

Perry said he stopped for six months before the IRS put a lien on his house to cover owed back taxes. In July 1990, he began robbing again.

In June, Perry decided to rob just enough to make up the three months of house payments that were in arrears and end his life of crime. His last two robberies were on June 27, both of them in Dallas.

That might have ended the story had not Michael David Harvey, a food broker living near San Antonio, been arrested the day after Perry's last robbery and charged with the Gentleman Bandit's crimes. According to Perry's lawyer, Allen Isbell, the Gentleman Bandit could not stand the thought of another man doing time for his crimes.

He called the police and told them they had the wrong man. Lt. D.J. McWilliams of the robbery squad said yesterday that Perry sounded at the time like a man who would eventually give himself up "because it was evident he was having a real battle with his conscience."

Perry consulted his minister and other members of his church before calling Isbell, whose law firm began negotiations with the police and district attorney. Perry decided to plead guilty to the two robberies with a recommended sentence of 35 years.

Then, over the weekend came the painful duty of telling his wife how he had spent the last two years, a revelation that was met, according to Isbell, with "absolute total shock."

Amid a throng of reporters and flanked by his two lawyers, Perry gave himself up. A magistrate set bail at $20,000 on the two robbery charges. Another Perry attorney, Rick Brass, said his client was unlikely to post bond because he couldn't afford it.

Perry's gray hair was neatly combed, and he wore a blue and red plaid shirt, gray slacks and black tasseled shoes. The Gentleman Bandit looked sharp to the end.

-- Material from Associated Press was added to this report.