Judge hints prison time likely for Santa Rosa bank robber

<p>A mild-mannered former cardroom gambler who robbed a Montgomery Village bank last summer, left behind a security-camera photo suitable for framing and then used the stolen cash for a road trip went to court Friday hoping to avoid prison time.</p><p>The judge told Christopher Wenmoth, in essence, not to bet on it.</p><p>Superior Court Judge Arthur Wick did not sentence Wenmoth but told the Piner High graduate and one-time candidate for the Santa Rosa school board that “for a variety of factors” he intends to send him to state prison.</p><p>Wick’s declaration was somewhat unusual because it revealed that the judge anticipates imposing a more severe sentence than the one recommended by the county Probation Department. Probation officials have proposed a county jail stay of up to a year and then probation for Wenmoth.</p><p>Judge Wick granted Wenmoth’s lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Jim Loughborough, until March 20 to prepare an argument for why Wenmoth should not be sent to prison.</p><p>County prosecutor Stephan Passalacqua said later Friday that his office still is considering what punishment it will seek for Wenmoth. But Passalacqua made it clear that he considers Wenmoth’s crime a serious one.</p><p>“Any time there’s a robbery it causes a great deal of emotional distress,” the district attorney said. “It certainly did to the teller in this case.”</p><p>Wenmoth told the judge in a letter that he is sorry for robbing the US Bank branch last July 23 and sorry for frightening the teller to whom he handed a note demanding money.</p><p>Wenmoth wrote that though he was not carrying any weapon, the teller “did not know if I had a weapon or not, and that was scary for her.”</p><p>“At the time I committed this crime, I was having a nervous breakdown,” Wenmoth wrote. “I was very depressed and felt hopeless about my life. The reason I felt this way is because I have a serious gambling problem. I have come to believe that I robbed the bank because I subconsciously knew that it would force me to get help.”</p><p>He continued: “I am now committed to abstaining from gambling, and am attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings to help me recover from my gambling addiction.”</p><p>Wenmoth was unemployed at the time of the July 23 holdup. He has said his most recent job was the clerical work he did early last year at a drug-and-alcohol treatment facility in San Rafael.</p><p>He was polite when he robbed the bank but perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the heist was the perfectly clear and recognizable photograph from a bank camera.</p><p>Security photos of bank robbery suspects often are grainy and show individuals with their faces partially hidden by dark glasses, caps or even masks. The shot from the US Bank camera showed the full face of a bespectacled man.</p><p>As soon as the photo appeared in the news media, Sonoma County people began phoning the Santa Rosa Police and saying the man in the picture was obviously Chris Wenmoth.</p><p>The man-wanted bulletin that police released bore the photo and described the Mazda that Wenmoth drove. On July 31, a Minnesota state trooper pulled the car over in the town of Blue Earth, near the Iowa state line.</p><p>Wenmoth phoned a Press Democrat reporter from the Faribault County jail and said he’d taken an Iowa woman on a summer trip to Mount Rushmore and was driving her home when the trooper pulled them over and arrested him. The woman “is not too happy with me right now,” he said from the Minnesota lockup.</p><p>At first Wenmoth would not say if he did or didn’t rob the Santa Rosa bank. But in a Sonoma County courtroom in late December, he pleaded no-contest to the charge.</p><p>Free on bail, he is due back in court March 20 to see if his lawyer can change Judge Wick’s mind about prison.</p><p>“It was wrong of me to rob a bank,” Wenmoth wrote in his letter to the judge, “and I deserve whatever punishment is deemed appropriate.”</p><p>Staff Writer Chris Smith can be reached at 521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.</p>