Jury Convicts Mask-Wearing Bank Robbers Who Hit Shoreline Wells Fargo

Two senior citizens with a 25-year history of robbing banks were convicted in federal court Wednesday for a string of heists in 2011, including one at a Shoreline Wells Fargo branch.

Jack P. Sexton, 66, and Ronald C. Kettells, 65, were convicted by a jury that deliberated for a day after a seven-day trial in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

They were linked to the robberies after an alert citizen spotted the license number of their getaway car, as well as DNA evidence found on masks they wore -- including a Richard Nixon mask and a Hillary Clinton mask.

The pair, who had just been released from prison when they began their spree, were convicted of conspiracy to commit bank robbery, three armed bank robberies and using a firearm during a crime of violence. Both are likely to spend the rest of their days in prison, since they face a mandatory minimum sentence of 57 years. They will be sentenced on June 21.

The first robbery was in August of 2011 at a Key Bank branch on Holman Road in north Seattle, the two robbers wearing a bandanna and tee-shirt to hide their faces and using a gun to threaten tellers.

The Shoreline Wells Fargo on Greenwood Avenue was hit next, in September of 2011. Both men wore masks, one of Nixon, and were armed with a pistol-grip shotgun and a pistol. In October of 2011, they robbed a Washington Federal Bank branch in West Seattle, one wearing a Hillary Clinton mask, the other the same “elderly man” mask as in the Shoreline robbery.

In one of the robberies, the getaway car license number was spotted by a neighbor, which led to a man who had sold the car to Sexton and knew where both of the men were living.

During a search, police found four of the weapons used and the masks, which contained the men’s DNA.

Emily Langlie, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for Western Washington, said the two were living in Lynnwood at the time of their arrest. They are originally from the Seattle area, but have spent much of their lives incarcerated.

For two previous Shoreline-LFP stories on the robberies:

• Two Armed Men Rob Shoreline Bank

• Bank Robbers Unmasked