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Police join forces against bank robber By Sean Wolfe Ashland Daily Tidings Acting in collaboration, police in six cities feel they are getting closer to solving a series of bank robberies that began in Ashland, but has since crossed state lines twice since last November. Police are still looking for help from the public, and to that end have released an artist's rendition of the unarmed bank robber police have connected to at least half a dozen bank heists. In the ongoing search for the serial bank robber that robbed two banks in Ashland and Medford, plus four more in Oregon and California, eyewitness accounts and detective work are adding to the growing bank of information police have about the suspect. The collaboration is being spearheaded by Ashland Police Det. Brent Jensen. According Det. Dan Flowerdew of the Red Bluff, Calif. police department, Jensen was instrumental in getting information shared between Ashland police and his department, plus those in four other cities. "With cases like these, the hardest thing to do is trying to put together all the information, particularly between departments in other states without having everyone stepping on each other's feet," Flowerdew said. "The key people in the beginning were in Ashland and Bend, then Medford and the others jumped right in, and there's been tremendous cooperation. Jensen started the coordination, then with Medford and Bend, and now Depoe Bay and Stockton." Police believe that Stockton, Calif. was the most recent city to receive a visit from the unarmed and unidentified bank robber. Like Ashland on Nov. 19, Stockton had two bank robberies within hours - which divided police forces - and brought in Stockton homicide detective Eduardo Rodriguez as an investigator into the case. According to Rodriguez, eyewitness accounts at the Stockton robbery gave police a tip on the suspect's vehicle, a squarish late-model Jeep driven by a 20-something woman with long, blonde hair. Flowerdew said witnesses in Bend and Red Bluff partially corroborated the findings in Stockton, and added an important detail: an Oregon license plate. "I have a witness who saw him run by, run to that vehicle, and he mainly paid attention to and noticed a license plate with a tree in the middle of it. If it had been a California plate, he wouldn't have noticed the plate. So we pulled photos off the Internet, and showed him different styles of license plates, and he pulled that out, and said that's the one," Flowerdew said. In a similar kind of line-up, Flowerdew also had his witness look at different models of Jeep vehicles, and the witness identified a 1970s-style Jeep Wagoneer. The color of the vehicle is debatable. The Red Bluff reports say the vehicle is two-tone, white over tan, or off-white. Other accounts say it is blue, or dark-colored. One detail that is corroborated is the presence of the woman driver and her description. "One of the breaks to the case came in Stockton � He stood out so much, and a witness there said the plate on the car also stood out. He got in on the passenger side in Stockton, and another report we got in Bend also has him getting into the car on the passenger side. So he has a getaway vehicle, and that leads us to suspect he has a driver working with him," Flowerdew said. In the meantime police say they are getting a sense of his movements, and now are hoping that if the suspect's picture is circulated widely enough, they can catch another break, before the robber stages another heist. "Anybody who asks me for his pictures or information, I'm e-mailing it. We use the TRAK system (to distribute information to other police departments), but not every police force has it. We also use teletype, but that doesn't get the picture out. So our best weapon is in sharing information, and circulating it as widely as possible. Someone out there knows him, and we can't solve this without their help," Flowerdew said. LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -