Embezzler, Killer Comes to Violent End in Laurel
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Thursday, February 2, 2006
Three decades after he stole nearly $1 million from the federal government, and eight years after he beat his mother to death, William Sibert stood on a train track in Laurel last week, facing the CSX freight train head-on as it barreled toward him.
Sibert was 58 years old. He had been let out of jail 20 days earlier.
It was a dramatic end to the life of a splashy and sometimes violent career criminal, a man who spent lavishly, tipping a babysitter $1,000 and handing out embezzled money to his friends for luxury cars, earning the nickname Robin Hood.
"He was an attention-getter," said his former wife, Eva DaSilva, who was married to him when he embezzled the money. "He always wanted to be in the spotlight."
Sibert beat to death his 76-year-old mother, Leone Frame Sibert, in 1998 in the basement of her Fort Washington home. He later told DaSilva that when he was hitting his mother, he saw demons. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was freed last month on early release.
In earlier years, Sibert was known for wearing double-knit leisure suits and shoes that were always shined. He was a GS-5 financial assistant at the U.S. Department of Transportation, being paid $10,000 a year, when he began embezzling money in 1977.
He was in a position to release grant funds for subway systems and began making out vouchers to himself. An inattentive supervisor signed off on them.
Authorities said Sibert stole and spent $900,000 in two months during a spectacular spree. He also grew a moustache and got tinted eyeglasses and a new hairstyle.
If friends could not decide what type of car they wanted as a gift, he said at the time, he would just choose for them.
"He was always the type of person who felt like he had to buy friends," DaSilva said.
He was trailed by federal agents and caught in August 1977 as he got off an airplane in Las Vegas with seven friends and $59,000 in a brown paper bag.
Shortly after his arrest, he told The Washington Post, "If you're going to go on something like that, there's only one way -- all out."
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