Her role in this twisted crime inspired us to nominate Einspahr as a Schmuck of the Week last year; our previous coverage has been incorporated into this post. Her conviction only underscores the douchebaggery detailed in Einspahr's arrest affidavit (on view below), beginning with her explanation for why she committed the crime: to pay off a restitution deal in a previous theft.
Just after 4 p.m. on May 13, 2016, according to the affidavit, Weld County Sheriff's Office deputies were dispatched to Colorado East Bank and Trust, located at 399 West 4th Avenue in Severance.
Upon their arrival, a bank employee told them that the facility had just been robbed by someone using the drive-through.
A woman in a white Nissan SUV had delivered a note by way of the drive-through's tube system. It read: "Do not sound alarm. The man in the very back wants $100's and $50's no dye packs or trackers he has a gun on my kids."
The teller responded by putting $500 in twenties into the tube and sending it the woman's way — and even though his approach didn't fit her demands, the WCSO report says she took the cash and split without further incident.
A foolproof scheme, right? Maybe if the crime had taken place a few decades ago. But these days, banks tend to have security cameras pointed just about everywhere. And although the one in the vicinity of the drive-through lanes didn't capture images of license plates on the Nissan — they'd been removed — it recorded images of the driver, a Caucasian female wearing a dark hoodie and sunglasses.
One more thing: There appeared to be no man in the back seat.
Shortly thereafter, a deputy spotted a white Nissan Pathfinder matching the SUV's description parked in front of a house at 86 Summit View Road in Severance — the address to which it was registered. As a bonus, a sweatshirt and sunglasses were inside.
Einspahr subsequently emerged from the home and was, in law enforcement parlance, "contacted." So, too, was a woman who told investigators that Einspahr had been babysitting her kids that day — and one of the tots said the siblings were in the back seat when their minder went through a bank drive-through.
That was more than enough for the deputies to take Einspahr to the sheriff's office for questioning, and the affidavit maintains that she agreed to speak to them after first announcing, "I can't go back to jail."
In the beginning, Einspahr stuck to the story about a man in the back seat who'd demanded that she give him money or else he'd harm the two kids. But the report says she later conceded that she'd planned the bank robbery herself "after meeting her defense attorney at the Public Defender's Office in Greeley."
Whaaa —?
Yep: Einspahr said that she owed $15,000 as part of a restitution/plea deal in a Weld County theft case — and she figured that the quickest way to come up with the dough would be to steal it from a bank.
So she grabbed the kids, bought them some suckers at a gas station to occupy them, then took off the Nissan's plates and wrote the note before heading into the bank's drive-through lane. After getting the cash, she ferried the kids to a nearby school and let them play while she put the license plates back on. She also dumped the hoodie she'd worn; the one the deputies saw in the SUV actually belonged to someone else.
One more thing: Einspahr said she didn't know how much money she'd been given at the bank, having simply stuffed it into her purse without bothering to count it.
It's unclear why Einspahr was so broke. In its release about the guilty plea, the 19th Judicial District DA's office notes that in 2015, she had stolen more than $32,000 from a previous employer while working as an office manager.
Both cases were resolved when Einspahr fessed up to charges of theft, forgery and attempted robbery. She's been ordered to repay the nearly $33,000 total that she swiped in addition to a sentence of six years in the Colorado Department of Corrections.
So much for not being able to go back to jail. Here's a larger look at Einspahr's booking photo, followed by the arrest affidavit.
Rachel Einspahr Arrest Affidavit
