Third man found guilty in Packwood bank robbery

FAIRFIELD – A Jefferson County jury found Ross Edward Thornton guilty of aiding and abetting the robbery of the Pilot Grove Savings Bank in Packwood in 2018.

The jury returned its verdict Friday after the conclusion of a trail that was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a news release from Jefferson County Attorney Chauncey Moulding, the evidence showed Thornton was the getaway-driver of the vehicle used in the robbery on June 1, 2018. The conviction carries a 25-year prison sentence, with a mandatory minimum of 17½ years.

Moulding said that initial evidence led authorities to believe that a different suspect was responsible for the robbery, someone who had been turned down for a loan, was in the area just before the robbery and who told state and federal agents he had considered robbing that bank.

However, investigators eventually ruled this man out as a suspect and pursued other evidence that led to Thornton's conviction.

'Not every case develops like a formulaic episode of ‘Law and Order,' where the initial suspect who seems obviously guilty in the minutes after the crime is later shown to have been a red herring, but that is how the evidence developed in this case,” Moulding said. 'This demonstrates how skilled and dedicated investigators act as a bulwark against charging an innocent person just because the evidence points to them at first glance.”

Two other men have either pleaded guilty or been convicted for their roles in the bank robbery. Jordan Crawford was convicted in 2019 of aiding in the robbery and helping cover it up after the fact. He is serving concurrent 25 year prison sentences in the Iowa Department of Corrections. He and Thornton were both convicted of robbing the same Packwood bank in 2007.

A third man, Ethan Spray, pleaded guilty to second-degree robbery and has yet to be sentenced for his role. He accepted a plea deal from the state to testify against his co-conspirators, which is why he was charged with second-degree robbery instead of first-degree.

Moulding said he believed the evidence showed these three men used this robbery as seed money to bankroll an interstate drug trafficking conspiracy and that Thornton was the leader of this criminal enterprise. He said that is why he chose to offer a plea deal to Spray, in order to convict the other two men, including the one he believed to be running the operation.

'I recognize this might have been a controversial decision, as Spray was the man who walked into that bank and placed those inside in fear of their lives, and that this deal means he will serve less time incarcerated than the others involved, despite his principal role in the crime,” Moulding said. 'However, without his cooperation, two members of the conspiracy would have likely never faced justice for their crimes.”

Moulding added that the fact Crawford and Thornton had already been convicted of robbing the same Packwood bank 11 years earlier made him feel they deserved a stricter sentence than the one imposed on Spray.