Santa Rosa bank robber spared prison time

<p>The unlikely robber who held up a Montgomery Village bank with a note and then spent the ill-gotten $2,250 on a summer road trip began a more confining adventure on Wednesday.</p><p>A bailiff handcuffed Christopher Wenmoth and led him to jail after a Sonoma County judge ordered him to spend at least the spring in a cell.</p><p>Though Judge Arthur Wick imposed a 10-month sentence, the credits Wenmoth likely will receive for good conduct and for the nearly four months he was jailed following his arrest make it probable that he’ll be released in about 64 days.</p><p>The sentence also requires three years of supervised probation, 200 hours of community work, mandatory counseling and the payment of about $6,000 in restitution, fees and fines.</p><p>Judge Wick had earlier announced an intention to send Wenmoth, 40, to state prison for pulling off what may be the region’s oddest and most polite bank robbery. But Wick was persuaded by defense attorney Jim Loughborough that Wenmoth’s life had bottomed out because of a gambling addiction, that he is genuinely sorry and nothing would be served by putting him in prison.</p><p>“I’m rather impressed by his remorse,” the judge said before imposing his sentence on the bespectacled and soft-natured Wenmoth, who appeared in court accompanied by his mother and a friend.</p><p>Prosecutor James Casey seized one last opportunity to appeal to the judge to send Wenmoth to prison or impose a three-year prison sentence and then suspend it. As he had before, Casey characterized as fiction Wenmoth’s allegation that the holdup resulted from his addiction to cardroom gambling.</p><p>“He is addicted to something, and that something is his own narcissism,” Casey declared.</p><p>He said the robbery still traumatizes the US Bank teller who had feared what he might do as he stood before her. Casey said he invited the teller to attend the sentencing hearing.</p><p>“Quite frankly, she was afraid of the defendant and didn’t want to come to court,” the prosecutor said.</p><p>The teller said at the bank said later Wednesday that she did not care to comment on Wenmoth or the sentence he drew.</p><p>Judge Wick could have sentenced Wenmoth at a hearing two weeks ago, but delayed it because Wenmoth had declared that he regretted robbing the teller and frightening her. The delay gave Wenmoth the opportunity to write a letter to the teller, assuring her that he was sorry and would pose no threat to her. The teller will receive the letter in a few days.</p><p>Wenmoth’s attorney, Loughborough, a deputy public defender, used his final statement to describe his client as “a one-hit wonder” whom he expects will never commit a crime again.</p><p>As Judge Wick prepared to impose punishment, he said he does not take Wenmoth’s crime lightly. Still, he noted, it was “perhaps the most unsophisticated robbery I’ve ever seen.”</p><p>Wenmoth made no attempt to disguise his appearance when he walked into the branch on July 23. Photos snapped by security cameras were so clear that Santa Rosa police were quickly able to identify Wenmoth as the robber and put out a bulletin that carried the near studio-quality portrait.</p><p>Wenmoth offered no resistance when, eight days after the robbery, a Minnesota trooper pulled him over as he was driving home the Iowa woman he’d taken on a driving vacation to Mount Rushmore. At the time of his arrest, Wenmoth had 56 cents in his pocket.</p><p>Judge Wick said that when Wenmoth robbed the bank his behavior suggested he knew he’d soon be arrested for it. Wenmoth wrote in a letter of apology to the judge, “I have come to believe that I robbed the bank because I subconsciously knew that it would force me to get help.”</p><p>Wick also observed that a psychologist who examined Wenmoth concluded that is in fact a pathological gambler.</p><p>The jail sentence requires Wenmoth to stay out of gambling houses and off Internet gambling sites, and to receive treatment for his problem. Wenmoth faces prison time if he violates any conditions of his three-year probation.</p><p>His mother, Carol Wenmoth, waved to him as a deputy cuffed his wrists and took him off to jail.</p><p>“I think it was fair,” she said outside the courtroom. “I think Mr. Loughborough did a very good job.”</p>