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| Christopher Berry asked for a tattoo price quote shortly before robbing a nearby bank. | Google; Will County Sheriff |
It’s the romantic tragedy of the year: A Chicago man held-up a Boystown bank last week shortly after asking a nearby tattoo artist how much it’d cost to have his girlfriend’s name inked on his body. But as the budding Romeo ran from the bank to get the work done, he discovered a GPS device hidden in the cash and he had to ditch the satellite-tracked money behind the tattoo parlor and slip back home.
Christopher V. Berry, 26, of the Albany Park neighborhood is now charged with one federal count of bank robbery in connection with the hold-up at TCF Bank, 3531 North Broadway on Jan. 23rd.
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| Bank images of the robber | FBI |
Berry donned a surgical mask, walked to a teller at the bank inside the Jewel-Osco store, held his right hand inside his pocket and handed over a note that said, “I have a gun, Give me all the money in the register,” according to an FBI agent’s federal complaint
The teller handed Berry some cash. Looking in her drawer, Berry said, “Give me those 50s,” an FBI agent wrote. She complied.
Berry left the note behind and ran from the bank into a nearby alley and headed toward the Pink Rhino tattoo studio with $1,351, according to the complaint and previous information from police.
Investigators later found the bank’s GPS device, stacks of cash, a surgical mask and Berry’s personal TCF Bank checkbook in a yard about two blocks from the bank, directly behind the Pink Rhino.
Cops conducting a routine post-robbery sweep of the area went into the tattoo parlor looking for the robber minutes after the hold-up and learned that a man matching the robber’s description had come in earlier that afternoon and asked how much it would cost to have a specific woman’s name tattooed on him, according to the FBI. The man said his name was “Chris” and that he would come back.
After finding Berry’s checkbook, investigators returned to Pink Rhino with Christopher Berry’s driver’s license photo from police records. It was a match.
About six hours after the robbery, investigators went to Berry’s apartment in the 3000 block of West Gunnison. A woman, whose name matched the one Berry wanted to have tattooed on his body, answered the door, according to the FBI. While she spoke with police at the front door, other officers arrested Berry on the back porch as he took out the trash.
According to the suburban Herald-News, Joliet police arrested Berry at the Gunnison address in December after he was charged with forgery, identity theft, and continuing a financial crime enterprise. His bond at the time was set at $250,000, the report said.
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