Bank Robber Sentenced

TACOMA - A Missouri man convicted in the biggest bank robbery in U.S. history was sentenced in a Pierce County courtroom yesterday to 24 years and seven months in prison.

Judge Franklin Burgess also ordered Ray Lewis Bowman, 54, of Parkville, Mo., to pay $5.2 million and to forfeit 112 guns.

Bowman was convicted in November of bank robbery, conspiracy to commit bank robbery, use of a firearm in the commission of a crime and transporting stolen property. He had faced a maximum 30 years in prison.

The trial centered on the Feb. 10, 1997, robbery of nearly $4.5 million - approximately 335 pounds of cash - from the Seafirst bank branch in Lakewood, south of Tacoma. The U.S. Attorney's Office said it was the biggest U.S. bank robbery.

The government alleged that from 1982 to 1997, Bowman and William Arthur Kirkpatrick of Hovland, Minn., pulled off 28 bank robberies that netted more than $8 million.

In most of the jobs, the robbers wore disguises, including trench coats, which gave rise to the name Trench Coat Robbers.

Charges against Kirkpatrick in the Lakewood robbery were dropped last year after a judge ruled a 1997 search of Kirkpatrick by a Nebraska state trooper was illegally conducted. Kirkpatrick still faces trial for the 1993 robbery of First Bank in Burnsville, Minn., and is charged with eight counts of money laundering.