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MADRID - Known as "El Solitario", Spain's most wanted man, suspected of robbing 31 banks and killing three men over 14 years, has finally been caught by police in the Portuguese coastal town of Figuera da Foz.
The serial bankrobber nicknamed "The Loner" for his habit of operating without accomplices owed his long criminal career to a succession of crude but effective disguises, which enabled him to foil the scrutiny of security cameras.
Identified for the first time yesterday as Jaime Gimenez Arce, 56, he was armed and carrying items of disguise when detained in Portugal, where he apparently planned to carry out his next attack.
That marked a departure for the man who has robbed banks in towns throughout Spain.
El Solitario's modus operandi was always the same: he would acquaint himself thoroughly with his chosen bank's security procedures and weak points.
Then, disguised with a dark wig and false beard, armed with a pistol, a revolver or a machine gun, and with his fingertips covered with sticky tape to avoid leaving prints, he approached the counter just before lunchtime on Thursday or Friday when the tills were stuffed with cash.
He targeted bank branches in small towns, calculated to the second how long his operation could take before police would respond, and treated cashiers politely.
Recently he walked with a limp, and carried a metal crutch that diverted attention when metal detectors registered the arms hidden beneath his clothes.
He took only what was in the till, which kept him going till his next bank visit.
His biggest haul was 108,000 euros ($185,000), his smallest 835 euros ($1400).
His last suspected attack was in May, at a savings bank in Toro near the north-western town of Zamora, when he got away with around 6,000 euros and wounded an employee with a pistol shot.
That brought his total haul from multiple robberies to 600,000 euros.
Police in May issued images of El Solitario caught on security cameras in several recent attacks.
They warned the public that he was "extremely dangerous", and urged anyone who had any information to call a special hotline.
Never identified throughout his criminal career, police described El Solitario as bald, of medium height and thin.
But his victims behind the counter always described a bulky man, hairy of head and face.
He is suspected of murdering at least three people, two paramilitary civil guardsmen in Castejon in Navarra in June 2004 who spotted him without his disguise and could have identified him, and a local policeman in May2000 after he pulled off a bank raid in Vall D'Uixo, near the south-eastern coastal town of Castellon.
Police held a grudging admiration for their elusive fugitive since he carried out what is believed to be his first attack in 1993, in Ademuz, near Valencia.
He was a highly skilled marksman, which suggested he had received military training.
Police suspected he was a former member of the army or security services, but trawled expelled "bad apples" without success.
- INDEPENDENT
