Wisconsin man sentenced for wild spree that ended with a Chattanooga bank robbery
MADISON, Wisconsin (WDEF) – A man was sentenced in Wisconsin today for a series of bank robberies that included a detour in Chattanooga.
52 year old Todd Templeton got a ten year prison term for the three robberies.
The spree marked a strange two week period a year ago.
It started with a bank robbery on February 24th in Stoughton, Wisconsin.
Templeton walked up to a teller, showed a handgun in his waistband and demanded money.
Two days later, police found him in the town of Dunn, warming his hands on someone’s gas grill.
He admitted that he was drinking and using cocaine when he crashed a stolen snowmobile.
Three days after that, he left the hospital (against medical advice) and stole a relative’s truck.
By March 3rd, he was in another bank in nearby Madison, robbing another teller.
Then he headed south.
On March 11, Templetown robbed the SunTrust Bank on East Third Street in Chattanooga.
He approached a banker, pulled a gun and told him “I want you to empty the vault, this is a robbery.”
He would later say it was just a BB gun that he got rid of after the robbery.
Templeton was arrested the next day in Chattanooga.
And as it turned out, he was still on probation for another bank robbery spree in 2007.
He eventually pleaded guilty to all of this.
On Friday, back in Wisconsin, the judge was not impressed by his history.
He gave Templeton the ten years for the latest spree and then imposed another three years from parole on the earlier conviction.
The Judge noted that community supervision didn’t work for Templeton, because he kept violating the terms, mainly over drugs.
He also noted that most criminals become less likely to re-offend as they age.
But Templeton actually seemed to be escalating by returning to bank robberies a month after getting out of prison, and ending with the kidnapping and threats to the Chattanooga bank manager.
He will be 65 the next time he is scheduled to be released from prison.
