From Olympic team athlete to bank robber - the curious story of Tom Justice

The Bicycle thief - a life less ordinary.

In 1983, at the age of 13, Tom fell in love when a girl invited him to the local velodrome.

Tom didn't fall in love with the girl... but with the sport of bicycle racing. This wasn't an endurance race like the Tour de France, but high speed racing on an indoor track.

Track cycling was introduced at the first modern Olympics in 1896, contested at varying lengths and as a relay, team, and individual event.

Tom devoted himself to the sport, with daily training and weekly races. As a high school junior in the North Chicago suburbs, he was one of 40 cyclists in the country selected to attend the Olympic training camp in Colorado Springs. His best event was the 1,000-meter match sprint. After graduating from college, he moved to Los Angeles, training with the U.S. Olympic team and racing in the 5,000-seat Olympic Velodrome.

Tom had natural ability, but other cyclists said he lacked the discipline needed to become an Olympian. After not making the 1996 U.S. team, he spent a few years drifting.

"I felt kind of dead inside. I wanted to do... something extraordinary," Tom told the BBC in an April 2022 interview.

He tried to become a DEA agent, or an underwater welder, or a repo man. He even joined the French Foreign Legion. He made a list of jobs he thought he might like: Priest. Helicopter pilot. EMT. Bank robber.

Eventually he moved back home to Chicago, found a girlfriend, and got a job as a social worker. But he wanted to do something exciting. Nothing in life gave him the thrill he'd had as a cycling sprinter.

Nothing... until October 23, 1998, when he walked into an American National Bank in his home town of Libertyville, Illinois. Tom was wearing a blue oxford button-down shirt, a striped tie, a navy blazer, and khaki slacks, along with a Rick James-style wig, a black baseball cap, and oversized sunglasses. Using a pay phone -- they still had those in 1998 -- he made an anonymous call to the local police department, saying he saw a man with a gun in a nearby park, hoping it would divert any patrol cars in the area.

Then he walked into the bank and handed the teller a note demanding money and a white plastic bag. She filled it with $5,580.

Two minutes later, Tom was back outside. He took off the baseball cap, the wig, and his clothes. Underneath, he was wearing his cycling spandex. He shoved everything into his messenger bag and pedaled home -- just another cyclist on the suburban streets.

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Tom parked his bike in the garage, kicked off his shoes, and tiptoed into the basement. He knew he’d never be able to tell anyone about this. Still, he wasn’t remorseful. Banks are insured, and he didn’t care about the money anyway. He’d choreographed, costumed, and delivered a flawless performance. His getaway vehicle was poetic. A sense of euphoria overwhelmed him. Years later, he’d compare the rush of robbing banks to the sensation of drinking four cups of coffee and taking an intensely hot shower while holding back the urge to pee. It had been a long time since Tom felt this alive — or this important.

The FBI investigated the bank robbery, but it was just one of 171 bank robberies that year. Tom hadn't injured a teller or flashed a gun, so it wasn't a top priority. No one had recognized him through his disguise or spotted the license plate on a getaway car, and no one had seen him pedal away on his bike. He didn't rob another bank that year, and he didn't have a distinguishing look or a trademark move that could connect him to other bank robberies. He'd given the FBI nothing to go on.

He did it... he got away... now what?

Assuming the money was marked, Tom threw it in a gym bag and hid it inside his closet. Months later, he took out two $20 bills as souvenirs, then put the rest of it into brown paper bags, tossing them into dumpsters behind fast-food restaurants.

A year later, he did it again, this time in Lake Forest. Wearing a similar disguise, and again pedaling away on his bike after, he made off with $3,247. Once again he didn't keep any of the money. Most of it he put into paper bags and left it in alleys for homeless people. This time the haul included some $2 bills, which he hid in the bushes outside his apartment building where kids could find them.

Ten weeks later, he did it again, this time at a bank in Evanston, and made off with $2,599.

Still, Tom dreamed of being an Olympian. Track racing isn't like gymnastics or figure skating, where you're too old for the Olympics by the time you're old enough to drink. (The current U.S. cycling team has 39-year-old Adrian Hegyvary.) Tom was 29, but his Olympic hopes didn't have to be extinguished just yet.

He moved back to Southern California and dedicated himself to training for the Olympic trials -- and promised himself he'd never rob a bank again.

But now even racing wasn't as thrilling as robbing banks. In a five-week spree between February 15 and March 24, he robbed six banks. Once again, he gave away almost all the money, leaving it in public bathrooms and port-a-potties.

The bank robbing was going great, but the Olympics, not so much. Tom overdid it with the training and threw out his back. After a few weeks in agony, he had to admit he wasn't going to be able to participate in the Olympic trials. He moved back to Chicago, where his girlfriend dumped him. He moved into a new apartment, with a roommate -- who happened to be a cop. (Tom liked to live dangerously. After his very first robbery, Tom had pedaled home to his parent's house... their next-door neighbor was the chief of police. Another time he met a woman at a nightclub who introduced herself as a U.S. marshal. "So what do you do?" she asked. "I rob banks," he replied. She thought he was kidding.)

Back in Chicago, Tom once again couldn't resist the urge. He took $4,009 from a bank in Highland Park, and dumped it all in a park trash can. A week later, he attempted to rob three banks in three days -- though two were busts. (One, a dye pack exploded in his bag, and he had to dump it. In another, the teller refused to give him money, and Tom fled empty handed.) Coming home from the third robbery with $4,244, Tom saw two cop cars outside his apartment building. He thought for sure he was caught... until he realized they were just work buddies with his cop roommate.

By now, Tom had robbed enough banks to earn an FBI nickname: "The Choir Boy Robber." They called him that because, to obscure his face from surveillance cameras, he would bow his head and clasp his hands in front him. He also was nicely dressed and exceedingly polite, usually thanking the teller. (And the one time the teller refused, he left without incident.) The FBI had noted the lack of a getaway car, but still didn't know about the bicycle. Their theory that the Choir Boy used public transit to escape the scene.

Tom was still cycling, and not just after bank robberies. His back recovered, he joined a cycling club, where he learned about a used bicycle for sale -- a 1996 12-speed Steelman, painted bright orange. Steelman bikes are hand-made, and only 50 a year are built. Tom paid $1,200 for it.

Then Tom found another thrill. On Halloween 2001, three years after his first bank robbery, Tom had his first experience with crack cocaine. A few months later, ecstasy. He quickly became addicted.

With such expensive habits, Tom stopped giving away the money from the banks he robbed. He still didn't have a job, but he always had cash. When his sister asked him where he was getting the money from, he told her exactly how he got it -- robbing banks. He asked her if she wanted to come with him on the next one. "I can't," she said. "And it's really shitty you asked me."

Tom felt shitty, too. He was no longer robbing banks just for the thrill and giving away the money. Now he was robbing banks to buy drugs. "I was just like a common thief," Tom told the BBC. "It did not feel good."

The next day, he robbed a bank for $12,115.

At the end of 2001, Tom moved back to California, this time to the San Francisco Bay area, living with a 6'5" opera singer named Marty. When Marty asked Tom what he did for a living, Tom said he was training for the Olympics.

On March 7, 2002, Tom robbed the Union Bank in Walnut Creek -- the 26th bank he'd robbed in four years. Police responded quickly, and set up road blocks to stop the presumed getaway car. Police Officer Greg Thompson was driving to the scene when a guy on an orange bike flew by.

The suspect had been described as wearing a button-down shirt and slacks, and the guy on the bike was wearing cycling spandex. But Thompson, an 18-year veteran of the force, had a hunch. He pulled up alongside the bike and asked the rider where he was going.

"I live in San Ramon, I'm riding home," Tom said.

"Do you mind if I look in your bag?"

"Yeah, no problem," Tom said. He said he just had to unclip from his bike pedals. Then -- using the acceleration that had made him an Olympic hopeful -- raced away! He turned down a street and disappeared before Thompson could turn his car around.

As Thompson tried to radio it in, Tom sped through a red light and right toward another police car, this one driven by Officer Sean Dexter. Tom swerved around him and into a parking lot.

Then Dexter's radio crackled as Thompson reported: "A guy on a bicycle just ran from me!"

"I've got him right here!" Dexter shouted, driving into the parking lot. But Tom was gone.

Soon there were police officers, detectives, and K-9 units searching the parking lot and, on the other side of a fence, a creek.

The police dog found a pair of cycling shoes and an orange bicycle. But no bicyclist. It got dark after a few hours, and police assumed the robber must have gotten away. They ended the search.

But Tom hadn't left. He'd squeezed himself into a narrow animal-made hole in the riverbank, squirming about 11 feet through the muddy, dark tunnel until he reached the end. He waited six hours, until he could no longer hear the police and the helicopters. Then he crawled out. Looking around, he saw his prized Steelman was gone.

He walked about two miles to his car, drove home, and packed. He started driving, not sure where he was going, but knowing for sure the police had his bike... and that the bike would lead them to him.

Sure enough, police quickly learned how rare Steelman bikes are. They told the media they were looking for owner of the orange Steelman, and a month later, the manager of a bicycle shop in Chicago called the Walnut Creek Police Department after recognizing the bike on a cycling message board. Walnut Creek told the FBI, and an FBI agent called Libertyville's police chief and said the Choir Boy Robber was a local resident named Tom Justice.

The chief was stunned. It was his next-door neighbor.

Tom, meanwhile, had fled to Tijuana, where he'd tried to buy a counterfeit passport. Unsuccessful, he crossed back into San Diego, then back to Oakland, and finally, back home to Libertyville.

That night, Tom had dinner with his parents, then went for a drive. He noticed a police car following him, then another, then another. He pulled over, and five cops surrounded his car with guns drawn.

Tom said he felt not fear or sadness, but relief. It was finally over.

In all, Tom had robbed 26 banks in Illinois and California (and one in Wisconsin) between October 1998 and March 2002, making off with a total of $129,338.

In the interrogation room, Tom confessed to everything, even to robberies the FBI hadn't connected to the "Choir Boy."

He was facing up to 120 years in prison, but in light of the fact that he never used a weapon, and that he cooperated, he was sentenced to 11. He was released after nine.

"Going to prison for nine years saved my life," Tom said.

After being released in 2011, Tom returned to cycling at the velodrome in Northbrook, where he still loves careening around the corners. He considered applying to grad school but eventually found a job at a doughnut shop. Little do the cops know that the 48-year-old handing them their chocolate glazed is one of the most prodigious bank robbers in American history.

Last year, Tom told the BBC he now works as a care worker and has a girlfriend named Bari.

"Bari and I were looking back at the pictures from over 20 years ago, and I can recognize who that is, but I can see a spirit reflected in that photo that I no longer associate with," Tom said. "Maybe no one else can see it, but I can see it. I don't know what is wrong with that guy, but I'm glad that he's better now.”