Serial bank robber to serve 19 years for credit union heists 

CEDAR RAPIDS - A 'serial bank robber” was sentenced Thursday to 19 years in federal prison for robbing two Cedar Rapids credit unions in 2009 and 2010.

Jeffrey Haydock, 58, of Watertown, Wisc., pleaded guilty to two counts of bank robbery in June. During that plea hearing, he admitted to robbing the First Federal Credit Union of $24,264 on July 20, 2009 and robbing $15,299 from the Linn Area Credit Union Feb. 17, 2010.

He disguised his face as he brandished a semi-automatic handgun and ordered everybody on the floor in both robberies, according to court documents. Haydock then told the tellers to give him all the money without any dye packs. He gave the tellers a plastic grocery bag for the money and then left the bank with the cash.

Haydock's public defender, Jill Johnston, argued that the sentences run concurrent with two Wisconsin bank robbery convictions but U.S. District Court Chief Judge Linda Reade said she was running the 19 years consecutively to two other convictions.

Reade said he was 'serial bank robber” who started at age 29. He always disguises himself and uses a real firearm or what looks like a real gun to incite 'terror” in his victims. Haydock started out as a 16-year-old with a bomb scare at a high school.

'He had a defiance for authority figures and that seems to have continued (over the years),” Reade said. 'His other convictions didn't deter him.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Morfitt called Haydock a 'dangerous” man, going over his some of his offenses. He said at one point in 2008, while Haydock was on parole he had a job in Wisconsin, making $40,000 a year and then went on a 'bank robbery spree” in Iowa and Wisconsin.

Haydock was convicted in 2010 for a robbery or a credit union May 7, 2010 and a month later at a bank in La Crosse, Wisc., according to a LaCrosse Tribune article. Haydock spent 22 years in prison for a robbery spree and was only out three years before he started the spree Morfitt referred to in the hearing. He also had a federal probation violation.

According to the 2010 Tribune article, Haydock was convicted of five robberies at two Madison, Wisc., banks in 1984 and 1985. He told the judge at the 2010 sentencing that he didn't need the money and he had a good job, a house and a fiancee. He said he couldn't explain why he did it.

In 1986, Haydock told a judge he had a cocaine addiction and promised to stop after each robbery, according to the Tribune article.

Reade dismissed the fines against Haydock but ordered he pay $51,718 in restitution to First Federal Credit Union, Linn Area Credit Union and an insurance company.