In the early 1990s, a stoic man pulled off a string of bank robberies in the Dallas suburbs. He was dubbed “Cowboy Bob” by the FBI agents who were left scratching their heads trying to find him. When they finally found him, Cowboy Bob turned out to be quite the surprise. Our main source for this episode was an amazing article in Texas Monthly called “The Last Ride of Cowboy Bob” which we highly suggest everyone go read.
The first bank robbery occurred in May 1991 at the American Federal Bank in Irving Texas. Cowboy Bob walked into the bank and up to a young female teller. He was about 5’10” tall, a large imposing man with a bit of a paunch. He was white with greying hair, looked to be in his mid-forties, and had a big bushy mustache and beard. He wore a brown leather jacket, leather gloves, oversized aviator sunglasses, and a large white 10-gallon cowboy hat, backwards.
The teller said: “Hello, sir. How may I help you?”
But Cowboy Bob remained silent. He simply handed her a note that read: “This is a bank robbery. Give me your money. No marked bills or dye packs.”
The teller was stunned but did what the note said and handed over a large stack of money from her drawer. Bob nodded and shoved the money into a bag and calmly walked out of the bank. He got into an orange 1975 Pontiac Grand Prix and drove away.
Over the next year Cowboy Bob struck again and again, always robbing banks calmly and making a clean getaway. In December 1991, Cowboy Bob hit the Savings of America bank in Irving and stole $1,258. During this robbery an eyewitness managed to write down the license plate number of the Pontiac. But when the FBI tracked down the car’s owner, they found a red Chevy in a woman’s driveway with one of the license plates missing. Cowboy Bob had clearly stolen the woman’s plate and switched them out with his own.
The FBI were brought in to investigate the robberies. FBI agent Steve Powell was impressed with the robber’s skills. In fact, Powell believed that Cowboy Bob (Powell came up with the name) was undoubtedly a professional and experienced bank robber. There were a handful of clues that led him to that conclusion. Bob wore his large hat backwards and low over his face to avoid the security cameras, he said nothing, at all, during the robberies, and walked calmly out of the bank to avoid arousing suspicion. He also didn’t race off in his getaway car. He barely drew any attention to himself at all. Powell suspected that Cowboy Bob’s beard was probably fake, but other than that, had no clue who this mastermind was.
In January 1992, Cowboy Bob stole roughly $3,000 from the Texas Heritage Bank in Garland. Then in May he robbed the Nations Bank in Mesquite. He got away with $5,317 and made a very smart move. Bob checked through the cash before leaving the bank and handed a stack of bills back to the teller. That stack contained a dye pack that would have been electronically triggered the second Bob walked out the door. Instead of getting caught thanks to the dye pack’s permanent ink, Cowboy Bob walked away clean.
As Cowboy Bob kept getting away with it, Steve Powell was getting frustrated. Powell and his colleagues at the FBI were baffled that this guy kept sneaking by them. He told Skip Hollandsworth at Texas Monthly: “How could this thin, little dried-up cowboy be whipping us this bad, time after time?”
Cowboy Bob struck again in September 1992. He stole $1,772 from First Gibraltar Bank in Mesquite. Once again police and FBI quickly arrived on scene and tracked the license plate number to another nearby resident who was surprised to find his license plate missing. Cowboy Bob had slipped the net again, but then he made a mistake.
While they were finishing up at First Gibraltar Bank, investigators received a call. Mesquite’s First Interstate Bank had just been robbed, and it was only a mile away. The bank had been robbed by a man with a beard wearing a cowboy hat, a leather coat, and gloves. And he had managed to steal a whopping $13,706. The FBI raced over to First Interstate Bank, hot on Cowboy Bob’s trail.
Again, a witness had managed to spot the license plate number on Cowboy Bob’s Pontiac Grand Prix. The plate traced back to a man named Pete Tallas. The FBI found Tallas at work at an auto parts factory in the nearby town of Carrollton. When asked about the car, Pete told the agents that he had given the car to his mother, Helen, and his sister Peggy Jo, because they couldn’t afford a car. When agents told Pete that the car had just been used in a bank robbery he replied: “Bullshit, that car can’t go fast enough.”
He gave the FBI Helen and Peggy Jo’s address and upon arrival, agents spotted the car in the parking lot. While trying to decide how to approach the situation, Agents saw a woman leave the apartment and get into the car. Powell assumed that this must have been Cowboy Bob’s girlfriend, and he decided to let her drive away and confront her away from the apartment so their robber wouldn’t notice the interaction.
They pulled over the Pontiac around the corner and Powell introduced himself to the woman inside. The woman was Peggy Jo Tallas, Pete’s sister. She told him that yes, that car was hers, and that she had driven it earlier in the morning to get fertilizer at a nursery. Powell asked to look in the trunk where, indeed, he found fertilizer. And then he asked if he could look around Peggy Jo’s apartment.
Peggy Jo hesitated. She said the only person in the house was her sick mother, but ultimately agreed.
They made their way to the apartment and rang the doorbell. Peggy Jo’s mother, Helen slowly got out of bed and slowly made her way to the front door. She was startled when she opened it and several FBI agents rushed past her with guns out. They made their way through the apartment into Peggy Jo’s bedroom. The room was neat and tidy with seemingly nothing out of place. But then one agent looked at the top shelf inside her closet where he saw a styrofoam mannequin head with a beard pinned to it. And on top of this fake head was Cowboy Bob’s big cowboy hat. When he checked under the bed, the agent found a bag full of money.
Powell tried to make a run at Peggy Jo. He told her to give up the man she was hiding. But she held firm, she said: “There isn’t any man. I promise you that.” And that’s when Powell noticed something. He saw that Peggy Jo had some bits of grey dye in her hair and spots of glue on her upper lip. It was then that he knew. He pulled out his handcuffs and read Peggy Jo her rights. Cowboy Bob had been caught, and he was actually Cowgirl Peggy.
Let’s go back for a minute and talk about our disguised bank robber, Peggy Jo Tallas. She was born on June 6th, 1944 in the suburb of Grand Prairie as the youngest of three children. When she was four-years-old her father, Pete, died of cancer and her mother, Helen, got a job as a nurse’s aide to support the family. By all accounts Peggy Jo was a free-spirited teenager with an enthusiasm for life. Her sister Nancy and brother Pete participated in your standard high school activities like majorettes/dance team and basketball. But Peggy Jo dropped out of high school after her sophomore/tenth grade year. She had the tendency to follow flights of fancy. One time she drove all the way to San Francisco just because she wanted to see what life was like there. When she returned she brought back a book of poetry for her best friend Karen. Karen recalled getting the book and thinking: “Of all people, Peggy Jo’s been off reading poetry in San Francisco. But that was just who she was, always ready for an adventure.”
Peggy Jo moved to North Dallas and started working as a receptionist at a Marriott hotel. She and her coworker, Cherry Young became friends at work and spent their nights out on the town hitting all the Dallas nightclubs, racing other cars between stop lights, seeing famous 60s mainstays like the Doors, the Doobie Brothers and the Rolling Stones, and going to the movies. Peggy Jo’s favourite film was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And she went to see it over and over again.
She never got married, didn’t plan to settle down, and only worried about having enough money to pay the bills and have a bit left over for fun nights out. Her biggest dream was to save up enough money to move to Mexico and live on the beach. Peggy Jo often told her friend Cherry that she felt wild at heart.
And that wild side did come out every so often. She once got a speeding ticket and just laughed and ripped it up in front of the officer who had pulled her over. One night she and Cherry had an argument in a restaurant in Fort Worth. Cherry left and walked to another bar to cool off. Peggy Jo followed soon after but happened upon an unlocked pickup truck outside. The keys were still in the ignition. So she got in and drove away. The police eventually caught up to her and she pled guilty to a felony charge of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. She received a five-year probated sentence.
But that was really the only trouble Peggy Jo got herself into. Her nieces and nephews have fond memories of her babysitting them. Her niece, Michelle, told Texas Monthly, “She made up funny games for us to play, she cooked us popcorn, and then at the end of the night, she told us ghost stories, where the ghosts were always creaking up the stairs and doors were squeaking. She truly had a heart of gold.”
Her life wasn’t just wild nights out and being the fun aunt. She dealt with her fair share of struggle and heartache. Her friends remember her telling them in the mid-seventies that she had fallen in love with a man who lived near Dallas. But a few months later, the relationship was over. Her childhood friend, Karen, said that Peggy Jo had seen a woman getting into the driver’s seat of the man’s car when she was in town one day. So she walked over and asked what she was doing. To which the woman replied: “Well, ma’am, this is my husband’s car.” Peggy Jo had no idea she had been dating a married man and was completely devastated.
Soon after this relationship ended, Peggy Jo moved in with her mother in Irving. Helen was sick. She had been diagnosed with a degenerative bone disease, and Peggy Jo had to take care of her. While Peggy Jo worked various jobs to help pay her and her mother’s bills, her friends grew up, got married, and drifted away. Peggy Jo never really dated again, and her friends believed she never got over the betrayal from the married man. Before she knew it, it was 1984 and Peggy Jo was 40. She and her mother moved to an apartment in Garland to be closer to family. Her sister Nancy lived nearby, but Peggy Jo and Pete had had a falling out and didn’t speak often.
On top of caring for her mother, Peggy Jo started to experience her own medical problems. She hurt her back and then had to have an emergency mastectomy. She dealt with anxiety over paying the bills. Her income and her mother’s Social Security barely covered the rising medical bills. And there was something else too. Cherry would come to visit Peggy Jo from time to time and she noticed something was a little off with her friend. She said: “I think Peg was starting to feel, well, like her life was slipping away…You get to a place in your life and you start looking back and you say to yourself that it’s not working out the way you hoped. You think everything is slipping away and you feel–I don’t know–crazy…I think Peg missed being wild at heart.”
Maybe it was the pressure of the growing bills. Maybe it was the feeling that she had lost her way. One way or another, Peggy Jo decided that she was gonna start robbing banks, disguised as a man. And it turned out she was damn good at it. She made none of the mistakes first time bank robbers often make.
When she was finally caught, her family was baffled. They had no clue what Peggy Jo had been up to, and could hardly believe she had robbed one bank let alone several. Her mother, Helen, was especially surprised.
Steve Powell was fascinated. He wanted to know everything he could about how Peggy Jo learned to rob banks so well. He was particularly interested to know why she had decided to rob two banks in one day and why she hadn’t bothered to steal another license plate. He said; “If she had just followed her usual routine…we could still very well be wondering who Cowboy Bob really was.”
But despite Powell’s curiosity, Peggy Jo wouldn’t tell him anything. Only once her attorney hired a psychologist to interview her did she start giving up little bits of information. She admitted that she initially decided to rob a bank to help pay for her mother’s medical bills. But that was pretty much all she would say. When he asked her why she kept going after the first robbery, she never answered.
Because she never carried a weapon during her robberies, Peggy Jo was given a light sentence. She received 33 months in federal prison. When her niece Michelle visited her in prison, Peggy Jo was cheerful and chatty but wouldn’t talk about the robberies beyond saying that she’d never do it again. And when she was contacted by a true crime author who wanted to write her story, she turned him down. She wanted to put the whole thing behind her.
And that’s something she managed to do. She was out of jail by the mid 90s and moved with her mother to a new place in Garland. Helen’s condition had worsened since Peggy Jo was incarcerated, and now she could barely hold her own utensils while eating. Peggy Jo got a handful of jobs including telemarketer and cashier at a Marina. Her manager at the marina said that Peggy Jo had been one of her best employees. And Peggy Jo would often check in on customers who were down on their luck and would use her own money to help them out. Her sister, Nancy, died of breast cancer and then her mother, Helen, died in 2002 at age 83. At Helen’s funeral Peggy Jo and her brother, Pete, set aside their differences and she started joining them at family gatherings.
In the summer of 2004, Peggy Jo decided it was time to move on and she bought an RV from a man at the marina for around $6,000. She told her boss she was ready to finally live on the beach, “before life ran out on [her].” But she didn’t head to the beach right away. She spent some time in RV parks around various Texas lakes. And then for a while she disappeared.
Nobody was quite sure where she had gone off to, but some say they had seen her in Tyler, Texas in October 2004, which is around the same time that a bank robbery happened at Tyler’s Guaranty Bank. An older man with a big belly, mustache, floppy hat, and baggy clothes walked up to the counter and said: “All your money. No bait bills. No blow-up money.” After receiving the money he walked out of the bank and down the street. Nobody saw his getaway vehicle. One bank teller told the FBI that the robber had a soft, almost femimine voice and his mustache may have been glued on. But by that point nobody had Cowboy Bob on their minds anymore.
For the rest of 2004 and into early 2005, Peggy Jo called her family from pay phones to tell them she was doing fine. Michelle ran into her at a Wal-Mart in Garland buying cigarettes, paper towels and fajita meat. Michelle said her aunt seemed happy. On May 4th, Pete heard his sister was parked at an RV park in Kaufman County on a farm owned by a family member. So he drove out to see her and catch up. They talked and looked at old family photos that Peggy Jo kept in the RV. She told him that she was getting ready to pack up and hit the road for a new adventure. He double checked she was okay and she said she was happy. He said he’d see her later and left.
The next morning, Peggy Jo woke up, made her bed, and put on a long-sleeved black shirt and black trousers. She put on a large black straw hat and a pair of large sunglasses. She drove her RV to the parking lot of a Jack in the Box in Tyler. That Jack in the Box just happened to be right across the street from the Guaranty Bank that had been robbed a few months earlier.
Peggy Jo walked across the street with a black bag in her hand and walked into the bank. She walked up to the teller and said: “This is a robbery. I need all of your money. Don’t set any alarms.” The young teller gave Peggy Jo everything in her drawer which amounted to $11,241.
But this time Peggy Jo made a big mistake. She didn’t check the money for dye packs. And when she crossed the threshold one exploded and covered the money in red ink. Red smoke spilled out of the bag as Peggy Jo rushed back across the street to her RV. Chris and Courtney Smith were in their car with their kids and noticed the smoking bag. They assumed that the person rushing across traffic must have just robbed a bank. Courtney called 911 and Chris then followed Peggy Jo’s RV. And wouldn’t you know it, a group of FBI agents were cruising around Tyler looking for bank robbers. You see three banks had been robbed in the area and the FBI were looking for a few young black men in connection with the crimes. When they heard about the robbery at Guaranty over the police radio they raced over. And soon enough a swarm of law enforcement was hot on Peggy Jo’s trail.
She drove her RV down the highway, trying to get away. But RVs aren’t exactly the ideal getaway car. As she headed uphill the RV struggled and she couldn’t get it above the speed limit. Eventually she turned into a quiet neighbourhood. She turned down Irish Moss Drive but before she could get to the end of the road, two police cars sped past her and blocked her path. There was nowhere to go.
None of the assembled law enforcement knew exactly what they were dealing with. They had heard varying reports about who was in the RV and didn’t know if they were dealing with a single, older woman or a group of gun-toting bank robbers. The purple curtains in the RV were drawn so they couldn’t see what was going on inside.
Peggy Jo stayed inside the RV for a while and smoked a cigarette at the kitchen table. The stained money sat next to her. In the bedroom she kept a .357 Magnum loaded under her pillow. But instead of grabbing that, she grabbed a toy pistol that she probably bought for future robberies. With the fake gun in hand, she walked to the door and opened it, keeping her hands down by her sides.
The police were baffled, this wasn’t a gang of hardened bank robbers, this was a grandma. And as she stood there in her wide-brimmed hat, Peggy Jo said: “You’re going to have to kill me.”
An officer responded: “Ma’am, you don’t have to do this.”
She said: “You mean to tell me if I come out of here with a gun and point it at y’all, you’re not going to shoot me?”
Another officer responded: “Please don’t. Please don’t do that.”
But she did. Peggy Jo Tallas stepped out of the RV holding the toy gun. Four officers fired at her and she fell forward. After she hit the ground, she managed to take off her sunglasses and looked to the sky, then closed her eyes and died.
When the officers searched her RV and discovered they had been dealing with Cowboy Bob, one of the FBI agents called Steve Powell to tell him the news about Peggy Jo. Powell’s response: “Say it ain’t so.”
Nobody knows just how many banks Peggy Jo managed to rob. Some FBI agents believe she may have started in the 60s or 70s. And some wondered if she had started robbing banks again immediately after getting out of prison. FBI agents did conclude that she was behind the October 2004 robbery at Guaranty Bank. They don’t know why she went back to the same bank, why she hadn’t disguised herself, and why she hadn’t used a note.
Her family and friends didn’t really understand it either. And they had no clue she was back to her old tricks. But they were certain about one thing: Peggy Jo died doing what she loved.
FURTHER READING:
The Last Ride of Cowboy Bob – Texas Monthly
Bank robber shot dead in Texas
The Last Ride of Cowboy Bob Audiobook | Skip Hollandsworth
10 Unbelievable Facts About Cowboy Bob
Cowboy Bob: The Mysterious Middle-Aged Bank Robber Who Fooled the FBI
The Twisted Life Of Cowboy Bob, The Robber Who Fooled The FBI
Michael Showalter to Direct ‘The Last Ride of Cowboy Bob’ for Fox Searchlight (EXCLUSIVE)
Cowboy Bob The Texas Bank Robber (Peggy Jo Tallas)
Lily James to Star in Phillip Noyce’s True Crime Love Story ‘Peggy Jo’
Peggy Jo Tallas (1944-2005) – Find a Grave
Tom Brown’s Body – Skip Hollandsworth’s podcast
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