While they were doing this work as convincingly as possible, the end-of-day business was getting done and the shop clerks were heading out. Behind the bank building were two other men who had arrived in the Chevrolet Malibu today. They were using bicycle locks with jacketed cable to keep the already-locked rear doors of the building shut. Then the two men walked around the building to enter the doors into the foyer.

When the minute hand of the big clock on the wall clicked forward two spaces and back one to say 5:56, the first two men finished writing and brought their slips to the two tellers’ windows. The two new men went to the two doors and each took out another bicycle lock, wound the cable through the two door handles until they were closed tightly, and locked them there. They each produced a paper sign that read, “Bank Closed for Fumigation” and stuck it on the glass door facing outward.

Both men—Tony Wagner and Dave Sherman—stepped to the front counter, vaulted over, and ran to the interior hallway of the building behind the tellers’ stations. The tellers and the few customers were startled and confused, but they hadn’t figured out what could be happening. This seemed to be an emergency. Was there a fire? A heart attack?

What was happening was that Dave and Tony were hurrying along the corridor, sticking their pistols in the faces of the people in the offices, dragging them out into the hallway, and making them sit there on the floor. They patted down the two men and four women and found six phones, which they took. Then they stood over the employees, occasionally aiming a gun at anyone who moved.

In the open foyer of the bank, Lee Wolf and Bob Carpenter raised their pistols and Lee Wolf called out, “Tellers! Take two steps back away from your stations. If an alarm goes off and I hear it, all tellers are going to die. If I don’t hear it and cops begin to show up, all tellers are going to die.”

He walked along the counter, staring hard at them as he spoke. “All we want is cash. Each of you take one of these laundry bags and fill it with cash.” He took three bags out from under his coat and tossed them on the counter. “Do not reach for the bait bags they give you for robbers. This is not your money, and not even the bank’s money. It’s covered by the FDIC. Do not die or make your friends die for a federal agency.”