DEADLY HEIST
The True Story of the Mile High Bank Massacre
Todd Wilson and Scott McCarthy had their entire lives ahead of them, the 21-year-olds virtually inseparable. Aware his buddy hoped to become a police officer, Wilson convinced his employer, the United Bank of Denver, to offer him a position as a weekend security guard. The pair reported for duty at 6:00 a.m. on Father’s Day 1991, Wilson in the neatly pressed uniform he'd been issued two weeks earlier and McCarthy—his first day on the job—in street clothes. They joined two more experienced guards in the monitor room and began making their rounds. By 9:30 a.m., all four were dead, seventeen .38-caliber bullets having pierced nearly every vital organ in their bodies. The heavily disguised killer next descended upon the cash vault, where he held six petrified bank tellers at gunpoint before absconding with nearly $200,000 in loot.
Eighteen days later, following a sprawling investigation aided by eyewitness accounts from the tellers, the Denver Police Department arrested one of its own.
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Not only had James W. King served on the police force for 25 years before retiring as a sergeant, he’d been a weekend guard at United Bank until the prior August. His former coworkers informed detectives King would often complain about the bank’s abysmal security and how incensed he was over its decision to disarm the guards. But would he slaughter four of his unarmed successors just to prove his point? And risk a date with the death chamber?
DEADLY HEIST is the captivating story of one of Colorado’s most notorious crimes and of a courtroom slugfest that would take a jury nine grueling days to resolve. Its verdict—delivered a year and a day after the bloody massacre—continues to reverberate across the Rocky Mountains to this day.
People
Investigation
Courtroom
Why I wrote this book
Truth be told, I commenced this project after an aborted attempt to write a crime novel. I persevered for nearly a year---and some 150 pages---only to realize I'm not cut out to be a novelist. Apart from my lack of talent in writing fiction, I realized I didn't particularly enjoy telling a made-up story about pretend people. What I relish about writing is telling REAL stories about flesh-and-blood human beings. And I especially enjoy getting to know the people involved in these true stories and taking them with me on my writing journey. It was only after I had that epiphany that I knew I was heading back to true crime.
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I find that serendipity creeps into my path as an author at virtually every turn, and how DEADLY HEIST came to be is no exception. In early November 2023, my wife was visiting with her family in South Africa and I was home alone "working" on my novel, knowing deep in my gut I was about ready to abandon ship. One Sunday morning, I had volunteered to be a judge for a mock trial competition being held at a nearby courthouse, where college students were trying a fictional case. It turned out that the case was about an art heist. For some reason, the story of that fictional art heist led me to the internet later that day to explore real-life heists that might be good subjects for a book. Somehow, I stumbled onto the Father's Day bank massacre at United Bank in downtown Denver. I had never heard of this crime before that day, but the more I learned about it, the more I wanted to discover.
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I began reaching out to the lawyers, investigators, victims' family members, and others (those who were still alive 33 years later) and acquired the Court TV footage of the entire trial. By the time my wife returned from her trip, I was off to the races, immersing myself in every aspect of the crime, investigation, and trial. I was fortunate to have the ear not only of the lead prosecutor and second-chair defense lawyer, but of James King's sister and the jury foreperson as well. Though no one knew how this book would turn out, they all trusted me to tell the story well. Hopefully, as you turn the last page, you will be of the opinion that I did.