Real Name: Steven Riley Hadley
Aliases: Robert J. Johnson
Wanted For: Embezzlement, Fraud, Larceny, Theft
Missing Since: July 22, 1983
Case[]
Details: Thirty-six-year-old Steve Hadley had worked at the John Deere Credit Union in Waterloo, Iowa, for ten years. On the morning of Friday, July 22, 1983, he called his wife, Kathy, who was at home. She thought he was away on a business trip. During the call, he told her she would never see him again but that she would find a letter from him under his t-shirts in the dresser.
The letter read: Kathy, This is a very difficult letter to write. But I couldn't let you find out from someone else first. If I call you to read this letter, it means I have successfully left the state with around $1 million from the credit union. I started to fantasize about how easy it would be to get so much money. It has become a game to come up with ideas about how to do it and cover my trail. I don't expect you to understand what is compelling me to do something this drastic.
Steve's brazen crime and sudden disappearance surprised Kathy and shocked his co-workers and friends. No one suspected he would even think of pulling off one of the largest employee larcenies in the history of the United States. Yet on Thursday, July 21, 1983, he coolly walked out of the credit union where he worked with a fortune in untraceable bills.
Steve grew up on a farm in New Providence, Iowa, and attended the University of Northern Iowa. He was the father of three young children, an usher at a local Catholic church, and an avid jogger and biker. He was a regular, hardworking family man and a reliable, trustworthy employee – or so it seemed.
According to FBI Special Agent William Dion, the credit union theft was not a spur-of-the-moment action. Steve normally worked as the manager of the northeast branch of the credit union, which was located on East Donald Street in Waterloo. For the week of the crime, he managed to position himself (as part of a company training scheme) as head teller at the main office on Ansborough Avenue in Waterloo while the regular head teller went on vacation.
On the morning of Thursday, July 21, 1983, Kathy drove Steve to work. He told her he would take a cab to the airport and then go on his business trip. As the head teller, Steve had access to the credit union's main vaults. One of his tasks at his new job was to order the cash reserve for the upcoming payday (Friday). After arriving at work, he ordered $911,000 in cash, much more than normal.
According to safe deposit clerk Alice Waterman, Steve was antsy and concerned about the cash being delivered on time that day. According to teller Carolyn Clausman, Steve seemed to be in a hurry. He wanted the tellers to hurry along and get things done quickly. To Carolyn, it seemed like he wanted to get out of the credit union quickly.
Just before lunch, Steve made several secretive phone calls. Using the name "Robert J. Johnson", he made a reservation for an evening flight to Los Angeles, California. He also contacted a local rent-a-car agency and made arrangements to rent a vehicle.
Steve had a rather busy lunch break. First, he picked up the rental car. Then, he drove to a local department store and bought two large, wheeled suitcases and a chestnut brown wig. According to Investigator Steven Nemmers of the Waterloo Police Department, when Steve returned from lunch at 2:15pm, he asked if the cash had been delivered to the credit union. At that point, it had not.
At around 4pm, the cash, in denominations of $20, $50, and $100, was delivered by couriers. Steve received the cash in the vault and then prepared it. He removed it from the bags and stacked it on a counter. But instead of putting the cash in the safe, he began to pack it into large paper supply boxes (which he had placed in the vault earlier that day).
Despite his well-laid plans, Steve did not get away without a few close calls. At about 4:20pm, teller Vickie Ehlers experienced a problem with the pneumatic tube at her drive-up window. She went to Steve for help. When she entered the vault, she noticed that the cash was stacked on the counter. She thought that was unusual. However, she figured it was his way of counting the vault's money. She decided it was not important enough to alert anyone else about it.
Between 4:30 and 5:15pm, the vault camera recorded a clear picture of Steve moving the piles of cash. By that point, he had filled two cardboard boxes and was packing a third. After he finished, he began to concoct a fake balance sheet. Again, he was interrupted, this time by Alice. She asked him if he was having trouble balancing, but he said no.
When Alice went behind Steve, she looked over his shoulder. She noticed he had many numbers written down. She then went into the top vault. Had she gone into the next set of vaults, she would have seen that the cash was gone. However, she did not go into them.
It is believed that earlier, Steve tampered with one of the computerized balance sheets, throwing off the cash accounting system for the day. According to Alice, when they closed at 5:30pm, a teller was off by about $6,200. While they tried to correct the issue, Steve took the cash out the back door.
It was not unusual for Steve to be observed carrying boxes of supplies to his car, which he would then take to his branch's office. At 5:35pm, Carolyn opened the door for him as he took out one of the boxes. He loaded the three boxes into his rental car, parked behind the credit union. Before leaving, he waved at the vault camera.
According to Agent Dion, Steve drove directly to a motel, where he checked in under a false name. Once inside his room, he put on his wig and loaded the cash into his suitcases. He then drove to Waterloo Municipal Airport, where he checked in. He checked both suitcases (weighing about 75 pounds each) through to Los Angeles. He then took a 7:30pm Midstate Airlines flight to Chicago.
The next morning, office manager Layton Stump entered the credit union vault and found over $1.1 million missing. He immediately contacted the police. After reviewing the surveillance footage from the vault, they realized that Steve was responsible.
Steve's rental car was later found in the airport's short-term parking lot. Inside, the police found a wig, two $10,000 currency wrappers, four of his identification cards, eighteen keys on a ring, and a suitcase with his initials on it.
On the day of the crime, Steve signed a commemorative autograph book for Layton, who was retiring. He wrote: Layton, going from the known to the unknown will be an uneasy but exciting feeling after so many years. Leaving is hard, giving up so much. But like the poets said, leave not with a whimper, but with a BANG! - Steve
Layton believes Steve was carefully describing what he was going to do. He thinks Steve is nothing more than a common or "uncommon" thief.
Steve's friends are mystified as to why he committed such an audacious crime. Did he simply want to become an instant millionaire? Or were there other, more subtle, psychological motives? Alice thinks the major thing that motivated Steve was to prove to the world that he was intelligent. To him, intelligence meant perfection. She thinks he wanted to prove to the world that he could commit the theft and get away with it. In retrospect, Layton does not think Steve was after the money. He thinks Steve was after the recognition.
Steve's parting letter to his wife, Kathy, might also give some insight into his state of mind. In it, he claimed that he could no longer cope with home and work pressures. He also indicated he was upset about being "dominated" by her.
Steve wrote: Kathy, I've been a failure about being a man, a husband, and a father at home. Plus, the rumor is each of the managers will take a part of the position I wanted. That leaves me dead-ended after ten years of hard work. At least I got even. I'm really sorry about the publicity you and the kids will have to endure, but I'm afraid I'm losing my sanity. I'm sorry I took this way out, but I haven't had any experience at being a man lately. Steve.
Steve sporadically called Kathy and his parents in the months following the theft. He also sometimes sent presents through the mail to his children. Kathy and his parents reported the calls to the police, but they were unable to trace his location. Eventually, he stopped contacting them. Four months after he disappeared, Kathy divorced him and was granted custody of their children.
Extra Notes:
- This case originally aired on the May 6, 1988 Special #6 episode of Unsolved Mysteries. It was updated on the October 12, 1988 episode.
- The case was also featured on Masterminds.
- It was excluded from the FilmRise release of the Robert Stack episodes.
- It was submitted to the show by a Midwest newspaper editor.
- Steve's family declined to participate in the broadcast.
- Some sources state: Steve worked at John Deere Employee's (or Community) Credit Union; another employee got the promotion that Steve wanted; and the theft occurred on Wednesday, July 20.
Results: Captured - In preparation for the broadcast, the FBI distributed thousands of wanted posters of Steve to police departments nationwide. On April 25, 1988, the police in Friendswood, Texas, near Houston, received Steve's poster and recognized him as a local resident, "Richard Glenn Finley". Lt. Gary Edwards said that he recognized Steve immediately when he saw the poster. When he showed it to other officers, they recognized Steve as well.
Later that day, the police asked Steve and his new wife, Roxy Alden, to come to the police station to follow up on a report she had filed the previous day. Once the couple arrived, the police addressed Steve as "Mr. Hadley" and showed him the wanted poster. He admitted his true identity and was arrested. He also said that Roxy knew nothing about his past.
Steve told the police that he had planned the theft for several months. He was angry with the credit union because they had not promoted him. He was also having problems at home. At one point, he attended a fraud seminar and learned how to obtain a new identity by using the name of a deceased infant. He later convinced the credit union to let him cross-train with the head teller at the main office. When the head teller went on vacation, he put his plan into action.
After the theft, Steve, using the name "Mark Stone", flew to Dallas, Texas. One week later, he moved to Houston, rented an apartment, and purchased a car under the name "Steve Hatley". Wanting to obtain a new identity, he searched through archives and discovered Richard Glenn Finley, who was born in Houston in February 1948 (close to Steve's own birthdate) and died two days later. He obtained a copy of Richard's birth certificate, then received a social security number and a Texas driver's license under that name.
Steve initially stashed half of the money in a storage locker and the other half in his apartment. He then deposited it into several bank accounts under different names, never depositing more than $5,000 at a time. After that, he funneled the money through a dummy corporation in Panama.
At one point, Steve told two psychologists he had run off with a million dollars, but they apparently did not believe him. They advised him to return the money, but he did not want to because of the "humiliation" that would come with turning himself in.
A few months after the theft, Steve and Roxy met when she gave him a flying lesson. In April 1984, they married. They moved into a house in Friendswood and adopted two cats. They traveled often. He told neighbors and friends in Friendswood that he was from Minnesota, had injured his back, and had made his fortune in investment banking.
The police soon became suspicious of Steve. One day, an officer noticed a Ferrari parked in Steve's driveway. He looked up the car and found that Steve had paid $61,000 in cash for it. Steve had also bought another expensive car in cash, paying $34,000. The officer told his superior, Lt. Gary Edwards, who decided to look up the sale of Steve's house. Once again, he had paid in cash ($70,000). And yet, he had no job or apparent source of income.
Lt. Edwards discovered that Steve had listed three different birthplaces on various documents. He checked the name "Richard Glenn Finley" with the Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics. He learned that Richard had been born in February 1948 but died two days later.
Lt. Edwards believed that Steve had stolen Richard's identity. But for years, he could not figure out why. He speculated that Steve was involved in drug trafficking. He and other officers disguised themselves as trash collectors and looked through Steve's garbage. One time, Roxy and Steve caught the officers looking through their trash, but the officers convinced the couple that it was part of an investigation into a former neighbor.
The Department of Safety later became involved in the investigation into Steve/Richard. However, no one could find anything about his true identity until the Friendswood police received the wanted poster from the FBI in April 1988.
After his arrest, Steve's parents and church raised $50,000 for his bail. However, the judge denied him bail, believing he was a flight risk. On May 9, he was extradited to Iowa to stand trial. His friends and parents came to court to show their support.
Steve's mother, Thelma, said they were happy to have him back and wanted to "shoulder the pain" for him. Pastor Gene Maynard said the best chance Steve had for a future was to know that there was a group of people who were willing to stand behind him.
Prosecutor Bob Teig was unaffected by the outpouring of emotion. He noted that the police had looked for Steve for five years and did not quit. He said Steve was not going to walk away from the crime scot-free.
On June 10, 1988, Steve pleaded guilty to three felony counts: two counts of interstate transportation of stolen goods and one count of making a false statement on a passport application.
On August 11, Steve was sentenced to thirteen years in federal prison, followed by five years of probation. He was also ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and make restitution to the credit union. After his sentencing, he asked to serve his time in a federal prison near Fort Worth, Texas, so that he could be close to Roxy. The request was approved, and he was transferred to Texas. However, within several days, Roxy filed to annul their marriage.
Steve eventually returned $875,000 of the $1,136,000 he stole. He also had to pay taxes on the stolen money. In 1990, he was moved to a federal prison camp in El Paso, Texas. In February 1992, he was moved to a halfway house. In August, he was released on parole. He has since married a third time and lives in Texas.
Links:
- Deere credit union shortage turns good day to bad one - July 24, 1983
- Man accused of embezzling more than $1 million - July 26, 1983
- Hadley's wife gets divorce; he still eludes authorities (Page 1)
(Page 2) - December 1, 1983 - After two years, Hadley case is a mystery - July 21, 1985
- IRS files $1 million claim against Hadley (Page 1)
(Page 2) - February 27, 1987 - "Unsolved Mysteries" plans episode on disappearance of Steven Hadley (Page 1)
(Page 2) - February 22, 1988 - Hadley puzzle falls together in Texas (Page 1)
(Page 2) - April 26, 1988 - Hadley assets may be frozen (Page 1)
(Page 2) - May 1, 1988 - TV producer says lifestyle did in Hadley - May 9, 1988
- Flashy Cars, Cash Alert Police: Town's Mystery Man Unmasked as Fugitive - May 28, 1988
- Hadley case cracked, business as usual for Texas police (Page 1)
(Page 2) - May 29, 1988 - Hadley pleads guilty in embezzlement - June 10, 1988
- Hadley prison time: 4 years (Page 1)
(Page 2) - August 12, 1988 - Hadley case plagued by near misses (Page 1)
(Page 2) - September 11, 1988 - Hadley moved in anticipation of parole (Page 1)
(Page 2) - March 4, 1992 - Waterloo thief is subject of TV 'heist' documentary - June 5, 2004
- Landmark CU Heist As TVDrama - June 7, 2004
- Waterloo credit union heist featured on CourtTV - December 21, 2004