The mastermind of a group that kidnapped a bank manager and forced her to rob her bank while they held her children hostage was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
Thirty-seven-old Joseph Franklin Brown Jr., of Great Mills, Md., was sentenced in federal court Tuesday in Greenbelt by U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow.
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Brown admitted that he and co-defendant William Cordell Johnson planned the kidnapping and bank heist because Brown’s income from selling drugs was drying up.
In the summer of 2008, Brown and his crew began following the bank manager, watching her daily routine, where she dropped off her children, a 5-year-old girl and an 18-month-old boy, prosecutors said. They also observed how bank employees opened the PNC bank each morning. They studied traffic patterns and figured out an escape route.
Brown was a convicted felon and couldn’t buy a gun, so he had his girlfriend, Quinita Ennis, to buy a 9mm rifle, federal prosecutors said.
On Sept. 24, 2008, Ennis drove Brown and Johnson to the bank manager’s home. Wearing camouflage and ski masks, and brandishing the rifle, Brown and Johnson snatched the woman and her two children from the Calvert County home.
With the rifle trained on the family, they drove the manager’s sport utility vehicle to the bank branch in St. Mary’s County.
They forced the mother and the daughter to go inside while they held the toddler hostage, according to court documents. The mother took $169,900 from the bank, then they drove her to an elementary school, where she and her son were released.
The crew traveled to New Jersey that night, where they gambled tens of thousands of dollars at the casinos.
Brown and Johnson returned to the area and buried the 9mm rifle behind a shed in Brown’s back yard. They also hid $84,000 in safes and buried those in the back yard. They attempted to burn clothing and evidence.
Brown and Johnson were arrested in Raleigh, N.C.
Johnson was sentenced to 18 years in prison, Ennis to 10 years.
