A Missouri woman who made national news for robbing banks twice in her 70s and who earlier this week missed a court date for her most recent robbery may have had good reason for her no-show: She appears to be dead.
Bonnie Gooch, 78, missed her arraignment Monday for a bank robbery she was accused of having committed this past April in Pleasant Hill, a city of about 8,000 people south of Kansas City.
According to Pleasant Hill Police Chief Tommy Wright, officers went to Gooch's home yesterday afternoon to serve an arrest warrant that had been issued for failing to appear in court.
Police knocked on the front door, causing it to partially open. When officers entered the home they found a deceased female in the back bedroom. Though formal identification has not been made, an individual with the Cass County medical examiner's office confirmed to the RFT that the body matches the description of a 78-year-old female.
A neighbor of Gooch's tells the RFT that the 78-year-old was by all appearances a "very sweet lady, from what we could tell from our daily small talks with her dog, checking the mail and so forth."
Yet Gooch was arrested not far from the Goppert Financial Bank this past spring when police pulled over her would-be getaway car. Gooch allegedly committed the robbery by passing the teller a note saying, “Is is a robbery I need 13,000 small bills no! dye pack!" She added, "thank you sorry I didn’t mean to scare you,” according to KMBC.
The April robbery was the third time Gooch had been accused of robbing a bank. She pleaded guilty to robbing a Lee’s Summit bank in 2020, when she was 75. According to court records, Gooch also robbed a bank in California in 1977, when she was in her early 30s.
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