The Case of the Bank-Robbing Prostitutes: How a Team of L.A. Hookers Became the "Starlet Bandits"

Two days later, Mnichowski went to the Bank of America in Hollywood. She came up empty there, but an hour later she robbed the Chase bank in Mission Hills — taking nearly $7,000.

Emboldened, Kilgo decided it was her turn. Two days later, she robbed a Bank of America in Palmdale and then returned to the Chase in Mission Hills.

This was imprudent. Tellers might well have been on the lookout for a woman in sunglasses talking on her cellphone, and might have rung the alarm before she even got the counter. But they were not being careful.

ILLUSTRATION BY TIM GABOR

ILLUSTRATION BY NOAH PATRICK PFARR

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More About

• Mallory Mnichowski
• Kayla Canty
• Palmdale
• Crime
• Crime and Law

"She got hooked on doing that — the high, I guess," St. John says. He was frustrated because the cops would have Kilgo's photo, which meant she could no longer advertise on Craigslist: "I can't put you online if you're running into a bank."

As a precaution, St. John also pulled the reality TV footage off of MySpace.

Kilgo traveled to Las Vegas, where she did a bank robbery on her own. She then returned to L.A. and did two more with St. John. At that point, the FBI alerted the media.

"Right now she seems to be unstoppable," KTLA's Chris Wolfe reported on the evening news, "apparently hitting eight banks in the last 10 days in Southern California."

The FBI still believed there was only one robber. She usually was seen talking on a glittery cellphone. She carried a large handbag. She was white.

But some witnesses gave different descriptions. Some said she was 5 feet 3 inches with freckles and red hair. Others said she was 5 feet 7 inches and blond.

"It looks like she's gained some weight," Laura Eimiller, the FBI spokeswoman, said in the KTLA report. "However, she's still wearing the same large sunglasses."

Asked if the bandit was dangerous, Eimiller said, "Of course. Anyone who's willing to rob a bank is clearly desperate."

When Kilgo saw the news reports, she was excited.

"I'm a TV star," she told St. John.

"Hold on," he told her. "This ain't the same thing."

When Kilgo bragged about the robberies, prostitutes started to come to St. John, asking if they could do one.

"Now we're the bank robbers," he says. "I already know when this shit hits the fan, it's on me. ... I'm supposed to have this shit popping, and now everybody wants to rob a bank."

Stephen May is the FBI agent in Los Angeles who specializes in bank robberies. He's the one who dubbed the robbers "the Starlet Bandit." Thinking up nicknames is part of his job.

As the spree went on, it became obvious from the photos that several women were involved. But the disguises were similar and the notes were in the same handwriting. The robbers were returning to the same banks they had robbed before. Most of the banks were in areas known for prostitution, like Sepulveda Boulevard in Mission Hills.

Something was up.

"This is not an everyday occurrence," May says.

The FBI figured an unseen figure was behind the robberies. But the first break didn't come until May 8, three weeks after the spree began, when a tipster reported that a woman had been smoking crack and bragging about robbing banks. She was staying at the Good Nite Inn in Sylmar, room 317.

The same day, the Starlet Bandit struck again, hitting a bank in Granada Hills. (The robber would later be identified as a fourth woman, Billie Jo Hacker.) After detectives finished interviewing the tellers, they decided to swing by the Good Nite Inn. As they pulled into the parking lot, they saw Kilgo — walking around on the third-floor balcony, recognizable from surveillance photos, and talking on her cellphone.

They arrested her. It was her 20th birthday, and she was mad that she would be spending it at the Van Nuys jail, May says.

After Kilgo was read her Miranda rights, the detectives showed her an image from a robbery in Woodland Hills and asked if it was her. She asked for a lawyer.

The detectives confiscated her cellphone, and found a "Mallory" in the contacts; they were able to trace the number to Mnichowski.

Over the next couple days, Kilgo repeatedly called a man from jail. The detectives listened to a recording of one call, in which she told the man not to throw her "stuff" away. The male voice told her everything was in a suitcase and was hidden in a spot where no one could find it. Detectives believed she was talking about proceeds from the robberies, but they couldn't tell who she was talking to.

St. John recalls that Kilgo called soon after she was arrested. He told to keep her mouth shut.

"She never did tell on me," he says. "She held water."

Word continued to spread among junkies and prostitutes that St. John was making easy money by robbing banks. A week later, on May 18, he picked up one young woman, Kayla Canty, at her mother's house in Lancaster, and another woman in Palmdale.

Even though Kilgo was behind bars, no one was slowing down. They hit a bank in Northridge but got less than they expected. So they went to the Chase bank in Mission Hills that they had robbed twice before. St. John sent Canty inside. He had just met her, but he had done so many robberies that he didn't worry anymore.