lieutenant larry bellamy, and my initial reaction was, they ve made a bad mistake. there s no possible way that they ve got the right person or that they should even be looking at this particular person. larry vehemently denied any involvement in the robberies. alvin came home a short time later in the truck identified as the lookout vehicle. the fbi found $116 in brand-new bills in alvin s wallet. fresh, crisp 5s and 1s. i started writing down the serial numbers to the $1 and $5 bills. there was basically one of those ploys that you use. i told him that i was going to take them back to the bank and compare it with the stolen money from the bank. he got very agitated, got very upset, demanding he d never seen that money before. the next morning, investigators went to the third brother s home nearby.
that individual followed both of those vehicles along a route that in one of the previous bank robberies another witness had followed the getaway vehicle, and they both took exactly the same route. the bank customer eventually lost the robbers, but the license plate number turned out to be an enormous break. the truck belonged to alvin bellamy, a landscaper who lived in rural south carolina. the fbi went to the bellamys home. neither alvin nor the truck were there, but alvin s wife was. she proceeded to tell us where he was, that he was with his brothers, claude bellamy and larry bellamy. so, that is the first time we come up with three names. around 1:00 a.m., a car approached the bellamy home, but it wasn t alvin. it was alvin s brother, larry, who was a lieutenant with the myrtle beach police department. they gave me the name of
they pleaded not guilty. but the forensic garment analysis was more than enough to satisfy the jury. most of the evidence they had was circumstantial. and this was the only forensic evidence that was basically a fingerprint that was very unique, that pointed to one of the bank robbers. all three were convicted. larry and claude were each sentenced to 50 years in the federal penitentiary. they were the men who had taken an oath to protect these people from violent criminal activity, and they re the very people preying upon them. and so we felt that there was a certain amount of culpability that went to those two that didn t go to alvin. alvin was sentenced to 15 years. and i think it was the shirt that an fbi investigator at the lab was able to identify that this is the exact shirt that was