A New Jersey man who spent 18 years in jail for bludgeoning his girlfriend to death, stuffing her body in a suitcase and tossing it in the Passaic River 21 years ago was arrested yesterday and charged with being the elusive “Mad Hatter” bank robber.
Cops said they tracked down the capped convict after he stole money Sunday from a bank in Union, N.J. – the 17th bank robbery attributed to the pesky bandit known for the wide range of chapeaux he wore while calmly sticking up tellers.
James Madison, 50, was arrested outside a Maplewood apartment he shared with his girlfriend.
Police tracked him there after a bank teller got a license plate number off his getaway car, a black Nissan Altima that was registered to his girlfriend.
Officials said Madison was arrested without incident.
For months, Garden State authorities scratched their heads as a lone assailant slipped notes to tellers in Chatham, Woodbridge, Union and Metuchen, each time with a different hat atop his round bald head.
In Chatham, he wore a red baseball cap with an Air Force insignia on it. In Metuchen, he wore a hat with a Texas Longhorns logo.
And Thursday, Madison asked neighbor Martin Grainger if he had a hat he could borrow, but the convict disappeared before the neighbor could dig one out.
“Hopefully, his hat will be hanging up in jail for a long time,” said Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow.
It would be a familiar place. Madison pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in 1987 in the 1986 death of Terry Lee Wells, 25, a nurse who graduated from Chatham HS.
The sentence carried a maximum term of 40 years, and a mandatory minimum term of 15 years. Madison was released in May 2005. He also served concurrent shorter sentences for forgery and theft by deception.
Cops said the bank-heist spree began in September and netted more than $60,000 from banks in four counties. His girlfriend’s Nissan was already on a list of 14,000 black Altimas that fit the description of the getaway car, but detectives hadn’t gotten to it yet. A dye pack slipped in with stolen cash exploded in his face during one robbery as he ran from the bank.
Madison, a machinist, so far has been charged only in Sunday’s heist, an occasion for which he wore a yellow cap, according to police.
Cops said he approached a Bank of America teller and gave her a note that said: “Give me on top of counter 100s, 50s and 20s. Don’t press silent alarm. No dye pack.”
After he walked off with nearly $5,000, a bank teller got the license plate number.
Cops said the girlfriend later saw him counting currency in the denominations described in the note.