The green Cadillac allegedly used as a getaway vehicle in a Seymour bank robbery last February was registered and insured in Wardell Eaddy’s name, but he had an explanation for that.
Eaddy told jurors at Superior Court in Milford that he registered the car as a favor for his friend Thomas Steele, whose trial on robbery charges began Tuesday, because Steele owed back taxes and couldn’t register the vehicle himself.
Steele’s lawyer offered an alternate explanation during a blistering cross-examination Tuesday: Eaddy really does own the car, and used it to do the heist himself.
Background
Steele, 54, is on trial for the Feb. 16, 2013 noontime robbery of the Webster Bank branch at 15 New Haven Road.
He faces charges of first-degree robbery, conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery, and conspiracy to commit third-degree larceny.
He was charged about four months after the robbery occurred after Seymour police traced a green Cadillac they believe was used in the heist first to Eaddy, then to Steele.
Police said they also found evidence linking Steele to the heist at a motel he had stayed at in the days after the robbery.
Authorities believe others were involved in the robbery, but only Steele has been charged.
Click here for more background about the investigation.
A jury of six jurors and three alternates is hearing the case before Judge Denise Markle.
Assistant State’s Attorney Amy Bepko began building her case against Steele Tuesday by calling a total of eight witnesses to the stand, ranging from employees working at the bank at the time of the robbery to Seymour cops who rushed there to investigate it.
But Eaddy’s cross-examination by Steele’s lawyer, Daniel Ford, was the day’s dramatic high point. Ford tried to pin the crime on Eaddy, even though Steele’s the one on trial.
‘That Wasn’t Me, Man’
Ford began his questioning by suggesting that at the time of the robbery, Steele was living with an ex-girlfriend of Eaddy.
The 39-year-old Bridgeport resident replied that that wasn’t the case.
“We’re friends,” he said.
Ford then suggested Eaddy and Steele had been bar-hopping into the early morning hours of the day of the heist.
Again, Eaddy said that wasn’t the case — he said his son got sick and he had to take him to the hospital the night before the robbery.
He got up early the next morning to buy his son a new coat, he said, but went back to the hospital Saturday when the boy fell ill again.
“You sure you weren’t in the Webster Bank, robbing it?” Ford asked.
Eaddy chuckled. “I was at the hospital,” he told Ford, saying later that he had his son’s discharge papers from the night of Feb. 16 to prove it.
“Enough time for you to go up to Seymour and rob a bank, right?” Ford shot back.
“That wasn’t me, man,” Eaddy answered.
The lawyer also brought up Eaddy’s criminal history. When being questioned earlier by Bepko, he had admitted to being convicted of robbery and gun charges in the mid-90s.
“So you’re a thief?” Ford said.
“If you say so,” Eaddy said.
“A thief who uses force, right? You’re the worst kind of thief,” Ford said.
“If you say so,” Eaddy repeated.
Later, Ford had surveillance footage from the robbery played on a TV in the courtroom.
“Mr. Eaddy, you mean to tell this jury that that’s not you, scaring the heck out of those folks in Seymour Feb. 16, 2013? Hopping over the counter?” Ford asked.
“That’s not me,” Eaddy repeated several times.
During the cross-examination Ford also tried to cast doubt on Eaddy’s story about registering the Cadillac for Steele, pointing out the title, registration, and insurance were in Eaddy’s name.
Later, a state trooper who searched the car after the heist said that in addition to the registration documents in Eaddy’s name, he found medical documents addressed to Steele in the car’s glove compartment.
‘I Have To Be Somewhere’
The trial’s first witness was Sue Patel, who was working as a manager of a motel in Naugatuck the day of the stickup.
About a half-hour before the robbery, she testified that Steele wanted to check out of a room — in a hurry.
She said that Steele had put a $100 cash deposit down the night before so his son could stay there for the night.
But Steele got impatient when she told him he had to wait to get his deposit back while a maid checked to make sure nobody had smoked in the room.
“He was saying ‘I have to be somewhere,’” Patel testified.
He finally calmed down when she threatened to call the cops, she said.
After the room had been checked, she said he grabbed the $100 deposit off the desk and left the motel so quickly she couldn’t even print a receipt for him.
‘I Gave Him The Dye Pack’
The bank’s assistant manager, Tara Weiss, took the stand after Patel.
Weiss told the jury she was sitting in her cubicle just inside the bank’s front entrance talking to two customers when a man in a ski mask burst through the doors.
“He said ‘Everyone get to the fucking floor,’” she testified.
She turned and saw the man pointing a gun at her.
She obeyed the man’s order.
He emptied a cash drawer behind the bank’s teller counter, then told her to count to 100 as he passed her again while leaving.
Danielle George, a teller at the bank, testified next, saying the robber scaled the bank’s teller counter and ordered her at gunpoint to empty her cash drawer.
“Did you give him the money?” Bepko asked.
“Yes,” George replied.
“Did you give him anything else?” the prosecutor asked.
“I gave him the dye pack as well,” George said, referring to a small explosive device banks hide in cash that sprays paint on stolen money.
Police investigating the case found evidence of an exploded dye pack at a motel Steele stayed at after the robbery, according to a affidavit for Steele’s arrest.
That didn’t come up Tuesday during testimony from a handful of Seymour officers who responded to the bank robbery, but presumably will when the trial resumes Tuesday, June 17.
Steele has been held on $200,000 bond since his arrest in the case last June.
