Kenneth Hart/The Independent
Charleston — Convicted bank robber and notorious escape artist Anthony “Tony” Artrip has been indicted in connection with a pair of holdups in West Virginia.
A U.S. District Court grand jury on Wednesday returned a true bill charging Artrip with robbing a bank in Mercer County in 2007 and one in Kanawha County in April of last year.
The latter holdup occurred after Artrip and two other federal inmates broke out of a North Carolina jail.
The 2007 robbery occurred on June 30 of that year at First Century Bank in Princeton. Artrip allegedly stole $1,665 in that incident, according to the indictment.
That holdup was one of a number in which Artrip was either charged or suspected after he escaped from the Grant County Detention Center in northern Kentucky.
Artrip, of Ashland, also was charged in the April 17 robbery of the City National Bank branch in Marmet. He allegedly made off with $52,960 in that heist, the indictment states.
The City National robbery occurred hours after Artrip, David Lee Cox, 29, of Fayetteville, N.C., and James Butler, 38, of Raleigh, N.C., escaped from the Edgecomb County, N.C., Detention Center. The three were able to break open a fire door that led directly to the outside of the facility and stole a pickup truck from a nearby residence.
A short time later, Charleston police apprehended the three escapees after spotting a vehicle on Kanawha Boulevard that matched the description of one seen near the scene of the robbery.
The three were apprehended after a high-speed chase that ended near the entrance to the state capitol, and a brief foot pursuit.
Artrip’s multistate crime spree in the summer of 2007 landed him on the U.S. Marshal Service’s list of the nation’s 15 most wanted fugitives.
Artrip was sentenced in 2008 to seven years in the U.S. Penitentiary in Florence, Colo., a high-security facility known as the “Supermax.”
It wasn’t clear why he was being held in North Carolina when he escaped last year.
KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.
