A confessed killer from Culpeper — who has already admitted his guilt in a strangling death of a mental patient and the attempted murder of a police officer — pleaded guilty to an abduction and a string of armed robberies in Northern Virginia on Wednesday, federal officials said.
Thirty-three-year-old George Golder Phillips II pleaded guilty in federal court to bank robbery, kidnapping, and two counts of using a firearm during a crime of violence.
Phillips pleaded guilty in 2010 to the attempted murder of a Fauquier County sheriff’s deputy in 2009. He also admitted his guilt in the 2010 strangling death of a fellow patient at Central State Hospital, a facility for patients with mental illnesses, and is serving 40 years in prison on a second-degree murder charge for that slaying.
Between 2008 and 2009, federal officials said, Phillips stole more than $87,000 from six banks and three businesses in Virginia. He was often armed during the robberies, officials said. In one incident, he robbed a Safeway while brandishing a sawed-off shotgun, making off with $4,000 in cash, according to court documents. In another, he walked into a Fauquier County bank with a rifle and left with more than $24,000 in cash — although he dropped $8,486 while fleeing the scene, according to court documents.
In court, Phillips admitted to the robberies as well as a 2009 abduction in Prince William County. On Sept. 17, 2009, he pulled a gun on a woman in Prince William County, forced her into her car and blindfolded her, officials said. He then drove across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into Maryland, hit another car and fled on foot, officials said.
While awaiting a hearing in Fauquier County Court in 2009, police say, he shot a sheriff’s deputy in the leg and stabbed another in the face while in a holding cell. Phillips allegedly managed to grab a deputy’s gun and stabbed the other deputy with an unknown object, police said at the time.
He could face life in prison as a result of the federal charges, officials said. Phillips will be sentenced Sept. 14.
