12-Year Term for 'Cell Phone Bandit'

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 4, 2006

The bank teller stood nervously at the courtroom podium in Alexandria yesterday and shot a quick glance at the woman sitting six feet to her right:

The woman who had handed her a note in October saying, "Give me money from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd drawers or we will shoot you or a person close to you."

The woman who never stopped talking on her cell phone while she was robbing the bank.

Seated at the defense table in U.S. District Court, Candice R. Martinez, now 20, stared straight ahead as the teller described her trauma. "I will never forget her face when I gave her that money," said Jessica Dickerson, 20, sobbing. "Never." Dickerson said she needed counseling to continue working at the bank, adding, "I have trouble going to sleep at night, having flashbacks of that day," Oct. 21, when her Manassas bank branch was robbed by the "cell phone bandit."

Martinez apologized to Dickerson and all the tellers she victimized during the four holdups she committed last fall in Northern Virginia while chatting with her boyfriend, who was waiting outside.

"I wasn't thinking of you," Martinez said, also crying. "I wasn't thinking. I wish I could change it. I'm sorry you're traumatized by this. I'm sorry."

U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee sentenced Martinez to 12 years in prison for conspiracy to rob banks and using a gun in a felony. It was the same term he imposed last week on Martinez's boyfriend and co-conspirator, Dave C. Williams, 19. Both pleaded guilty in December.

"You said he was your knight in shining armor," Lee said to Martinez, referring to her description of Williams in an interview with The Washington Post. "In this case, Dave and Candice go to prison. It's not a fairy tale."

Lee said he was amazed to learn from a court report that before the robberies began in October, Martinez had phoned an aunt who worked at a bank in New Mexico and asked her, "hypothetically," about the ease of robbing banks.

The judge quoted the aunt as telling Martinez, "Robbing a bank is all fun and games, until you get caught after about a month."

It was a prescient comment by the aunt. The holdups began Oct. 12 at a Wachovia branch in Vienna where Williams formerly worked. Lee said the pair had studied Williams's employee manual to determine the best way to commit the robbery.

A month later, on Nov. 12, authorities searched the couple's apartment in Chantilly, finding new electronics, designer clothes and $3,500 in cash, still wrapped in Wachovia paper bands. Williams and Martinez were arrested days later.

In each robbery, Martinez would show a note demanding cash while talking on the phone. In the fourth robbery, she flashed a handgun in her purse, which led to the federal gun charge with a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years. Surveillance photos of the fourth robbery, Nov. 4 in Ashburn, earned her the cell phone bandit nickname.

As part of Martinez's attempt to win a lighter sentence, her mother, Michelle Medina, testified and spoke publicly about her daughter for the first time. Medina confirmed her daughter's turbulent upbringing in Santa Fe, N.M., which included drug use and two suicide attempts before Martinez turned 11.

Medina said Martinez's life grew difficult after her father severely beat Medina and Martinez's older sister and "threw [Candice] through a wall" when Martinez was 6. Medina said she became addicted to prescription drugs after that, and both parents lost custody of their children due to the abusive situation.

Medina explained that when Martinez was 12, her daughter took the initiative to contact Boys and Girls Town in Omaha and moved there from Santa Fe. Once there, Martinez excelled and won a full four-year scholarship to the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

But Martinez fell into another abusive relationship during her freshman year, dropped out and moved back to Santa Fe, Medina said. She attempted suicide for a third time, Medina said, nearly dying twice at the hospital.

Last April, she moved in with a cousin in Burke and tried to start a new life, studying radiology at Northern Virginia Community College. That's where she met Williams, also a student there, in September.

The judge asked Martinez, "What did Mr. Williams say to you to make you rob a bank?"

Martinez responded that she and Williams just wanted things "fast": She wanted to move out of her cousin's home in Burke; she needed a roommate; and Williams wanted to move in with her but didn't have the money. When Williams had the idea to rob a bank, "I was afraid he was going to do it alone," Martinez said. "I was afraid something bad was going to happen to him."

The judge reviewed some of the details of the case, saying that Martinez and Williams had decided to use a gun in the fourth robbery "to obtain more money -- so this was not about money for the rent."

The judge said he had reviewed Martinez's life story, including her seeming rise to success at Boys and Girls Town and her enrollment in college. "Reading your life story, one would have thought you'd be graduating from college," Lee said. "But now, you're graduating to prison."