Spain's Willy Sutton caught

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It's probably unfair to America's legendary, master bank robber Willy Sutton to compare him to Spain's Jaime Jimenez Arbe, known until yesterday only as "El Solitario". Willy never harmed a hair on anybody's head and "The Loner" is a diagnosed paranoiac and an ice cold killer. You could only make the comparison because of the length of time he has been operating and the elaborate care Jimenez Arbe has taken in disguising himself. He made partial latex masks to disguise his eyebrows and cheeks, wore Scotch tape on his finger tips, carried a metal crutch to fool the metal detectors and wore a bullet proof vest to work. He pulled over thirty robberies since 1993 and once machine gunned two Guardia Civil traffic cops, who pulled him over... probably only because they saw him without a disguise.

He lives in nice house in an affluent suburb of Madrid and has a large collection of Eric Clapton records. Police think that he planned that the job in Portugal, where he was caught, to be his "farewell performance"... He was about to retire to Brazil where a Brazilian girlfriend is waiting for him. Spanish law is not very punitive, he'll probably be out in 12 years. DS

Spain's most wanted robber, "The Loner", arrested - Reuters
LISBON (Reuters) - Spain's most wanted robber, accused of killing three policemen and holding up more than 30 banks disguised in a false beard and a wig, was arrested on Monday in Portugal, Spanish and Portuguese police said. The man known until now only by his nickname "The Loner" was in disguise and armed with a submachinegun in preparation for another bank robbery when he was arrested in Figueira da Foz, a coastal city 200 km north of Lisbon, police said. "We're very pleased. He's the most wanted criminal in Spain, a very cruel criminal," Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Rubalcaba told reporters in Lisbon. Police named The Loner as 51-year-old Jaime Jimenez Arbe. Rubalcaba said police had trailed him for weeks and Spain would request his extradition. The Loner, whose heavily disguised face has graced Spanish news bulletins for years thanks to footage from security cameras, would enter banks with a metal crutch and a submachinegun hidden under a bulky jacket. Despite a varying wardrobe of long, dark wigs, police had suspected that the man probably in his 40s, was bald and really lightly built underneath layers of clothing and a flak jacket.