Drunken stock trader who held up banks in ‘70s apologises to victims
Stock trader and bank robber Ross McCarty has told a court he has turned his life around, overcoming the booze and gambling addictions that fuelled his crimes in the 1970s, as he faces sentencing for bank hold-ups. READ HIS APOLOGY LETTER
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An alcoholic floor trader, who robbed Sydney banks after getting sloshed on his lunch breaks, has apologised to his victims saying he thought “being polite” and saying “please and “thank you” while demanding cash would show he meant no harm.
Now, four decades later, 71-year-old Ross Oliver McCarty says he only really fears prison because of the impact it will have on his wife.
McCarty faced Sydney Downing Centre court on Thursday after pleading guilty to four robbery charges related to a string of bank stick-ups across Sydney in the late 1970s.
He owed, at the time, thousands of dollars in debts racked up after staggering drunk into illegal gambling dens around the city at night, he told the court.
“The enforcement was a visit to my place of work and threats that if I didn’t pay up horrible things might happen to me,” he said.
“They said on one occasion they knew where my wife lived.”
McCarty was working as a stockbroker in the city and drinking heavily on the long lunches.
Afterwards, wearing a fake moustache or a hat, he would march into a branch of the ANZ, National Bank, Rural Bank, Bank of NSW or the Commercial Bank while wearing a disguise, court documents state.
McCarty would hand menacing notes to the tellers.
But McCarty’s messages were ultimately his undoing — they carried his fingerprints into evidence lockers where they sat for decades.
Detectives reopened the case and tracked McCarty down in 2018 and the ageing thief came clean to multiple robberies but also told police he had committed a more serious armed robbery they had not yet pinned him for.
“It was to make a full and honest disclosure to all offences,” he told District Court Judge Sarah Huggett, saying he wanted to “rid the demons”.
“I was perfectly prepared to front what was the process.”
In a letter beginning “Dear victim,” he set about apologising on Thursday.
“The intent of this letter is to unreservedly apologise for threatening you to accede to my demand for cash,” he told the court.
“My circumstances at the time made it easy for me to delude myself into believing that my appalling actions were justified.”
“Ridiculously, I thought that being polite and using words like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ would send signals that I really don’t mean any harm.”
McCarty described how he had overcome over the alcoholism and gambling addiction swhich fuelled his wild and dangerous past.
He stopped drinking in 1989 and threw himself into community work to help others get sober, he told the court.
He remained a volunteer until COVID-19 halted the programs he worked with, he said.
“After many years of observing the collateral damage my actions have wrought on my family, friends and colleagues, I can only imagine what terrors I caused you as you bore the full impact of my wanton egotism,” his letter says.
McCarty told the court he hoped his victims would get a sense of closure knowing he was facing justice.
But the hardest part, he said, was revealing his crimes to his wife who he described as another of his victims.
“We’ve been married 50 years and we do love each other,” he said.
“She’s the most important thing and I owe her some good times, and I owe her the care she deserves.”
McCarty had handed himself in to face fraud offences in 2010 but told the court he did not come clean about the robberies at that time because he had tried his best to “disassociate” himself from the “shameful period” in his life many years earlier.
“I couldn‘t really comprehend or face the fact I’d done (the bank robberies)” he said.
“That was another life, another time.”
He will be sentenced next Friday.
ROBBER’S APOLOGY LETTER
Dear Victim,
The intent of this letter is to unreservedly apologise for threatening you to accede to my demand for cash.
My circumstances at the time made it easy for me to delude myself into believing that my appalling actions were justified.
Ridiculously, I thought that being polite and using words like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ would send signals that I really don’t mean any harm.
None of these are relevant to your situation and I take responsibility for what I did.
After many years of observing the collateral damage my actions have wrought on my family, friends and colleagues, I can only imagine what terrors I caused you as you bore the full impact of my wanton egotism.
I truly hope you have been able to recover from the trauma that I inflicted upon you all those years ago.
I hope you have the strength, resilience and found the support you needed.
I have been blessed by having an opportunity to reflect on the past and follow a better path.
It has taken me many years and is continuing.
We have met only once in our lifetimes almost certainly we will never meet again.
If by chance or design we do, I would willingly express in person to you the sentiments I have written in this letter.
Sincerely,
Ross McCarty.