Wig-wearing 'Joe Dirt' bank robber pleads guilty

BEDFORD — A North Carolina man implicated in a series of bank robberies that ended last winter in Forest pleaded guilty Tuesday morning in Bedford Circuit Court.

William Smitherman, 20, of Clemmons, N.C., was unaffectionately dubbed “Joe Dirt” by Bedford Deputy Common-wealth’s Attorney Wes Nance, who said the bad wigs Smitherman wore as a disguise reminded him of the comedy movie in which the lead character goes through life with a mullet wig fused to his scalp.

Bedford Commonwealth’s Attorney Randy Krantz, who prosecuted Smitherman Tuesday, said after the hearing that Smitherman told investigators he robbed the banks in Galax, Roanoke and Forest to gain notoriety.

“And I guess he got that,” Krantz said.

Smitherman pleaded guilty here to robbery and use of a firearm in commission of a felony in the Feb. 3, 2009 robbery of the SunTrust branch at the corner of U.S. 221 and Old Graves Mill Road.

After investigators compared surveillance images of the robber to those of the other two banks, they began to believe they were the same person.

Smitherman was arrested near Winston-Salem on Feb. 6 after investigators were tipped off by a TV viewer who recog-nized him as a local UPS employee, Krantz said.

When he was arrested, the prosecutor said, Smitherman told investigators where they could find the disguises and cloth-ing he wore in the robberies, handwritten notes he had shown to tellers he robbed and cash from the one in Forest.

“He gave a full confession,” Krantz told Bedford Circuit Judge James Updike.

Investigators found an air gun, too, he said. He said Smitherman told investigators he did not show the teller the gun in the Forest robbery, but he told the teller he was armed and that if she had hesitated, he would have pulled it.

Krantz said armed robbery was one of the worst violent crimes because although Smitherman didn’t have an actual fire-arm, a security guard or law enforcement officer wouldn’t have known the difference.

Someone could have been shot, Krantz said, and there have been incidents where robbery victims died from heart at-tacks, all of which could have led to a murder charge.

Smitherman pleaded guilty to robbery in Roanoke Circuit Court in October and was sentenced to five years in prison with all but two years, 11 months suspended.

Court records in Carroll County, where he is charged with robbery and entering a bank armed with the intent to commit larceny, show his case has not been decided there, but he is scheduled for a hearing on the 25th. The banks there were robbed in January, according to court records.

Krantz said Smitherman’s sentences in the different jurisdictions will run one after another. He said he hopes Smither-man is last sentenced in Bedford, where he will likely get a longer sentence if he comes before Updike as a three-time con-victed bank robber.

Nonetheless, the prosecutor said, Smitherman is lucky he wasn’t prosecuted federally. Bank robbery is also a federal crime, he said, as is fleeing across state lines to avoid prosecution. He said Smitherman would have been looking at an “astronomical sentence” in U.S. District Court.

Michael Lonchar, Smitherman’s lawyer, said the robberies were out of character and that his client has no previous criminal record.

Smitherman’s sentencing was not scheduled Tuesday. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Krantz said after the hearing that he believed the wig-wearing Smitherman looked more like country singer Billy Ray Cyrus than Joe Dirt.