3 Arrested For Ripping Apart Cheyenne ATM With Stolen Truck, 2 Others Get Away

Accused of helping to rip apart a Cheyenne ATM with a stolen truck and driving off with $25,000 in stolen cash, three Texans are facing federal bank robbery charges and up to 10 years in prison each while two others escaped.  

Christopher Parish, 41, Leo Bernard Smith Jr., 20, and London Beaudoin, 19, were arrested Dec. 2, after police reportedly chased them down and found them in a Nissan SUV with $25,240 in cash – mostly $20 bills.  

Parish and Smith are males and Beaudoin is a female, Cheyenne arrest records say.

Two people escaped from the getaway car on foot before police could arrest them, according to an affidavit filed last week in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming.  

At publication time, the Cheyenne Police Department’s spokeswoman was checking for an update on the two who got away. Cowboy State Daily will update this story as more information surfaces.  

A Truck And A Chain 

It started with a bank alarm.  

The UniWYO Credit Union burglary alarm sounded at 2:57 a.m. on Dec. 2 from an ATM location on Yellowstone Road in Cheyenne.  

Police arrived about five minutes later to find the ATM damaged with its door forced open, broken parts on the ground and cash drawers missing, the affidavit says.

A few feet away a white 2000 Ford F-250 sat running in the intersection of Manewal Drive and Education Drive, with its ignition punched out and a large chain hooked to its rear.  

Police found a Harbor Freight receipt for a recent purchase of a chain, though the affidavit doesn’t say where they found that.  

The Ford looked like it was from Bennett Auto Solutions of Cheyenne. When contacted later, the car dealer said someone had stolen the truck, and it had been listed for sale at $15,000, the affidavit says.  

While officers were investigating the truck and ATM, a Nissan Murano with an out-of-state license plate drove south through the intersection of Yellowstone Road and Central Avenue.  

It was driving 5 mph over the 30 mph posted speed limit, says a booking sheet from Beaudoin’s arrest, so Federer tried to pull the Nissan over.  

Before and after photos of the ATM that was recently stolen in Cheyenne (Cowboy State Daily Staff)

Watch Out For That Cheyenne Ice 

But it didn’t stop, and a chase followed. The Nissan reportedly wandered for several blocks making multiple turns, then driving the wrong way on a one-way street.  

At one point, the vehicle stopped briefly and a male identified as Unknown Subject 1 hopped out and fled north on foot. 

In the back seat, Beaudoin threw two ATM drawers from the vehicle while a pursuing police officer watched, the affidavit alleges.  

The chase ended when the Nissan took a left-hand turn onto 28th Street, documents say. That street was icy, and the vehicle slid into the curb and became inoperable. 

An officer commanded everyone to put their hands up. The driver, later identified as Parish, did not listen to the commands and instead got out of the vehicle on his own, circled around it and tried to run, the affidavit says.  

Federer tased Parish and arrested him.  

Police encountered Beaudoin in the back seat and Leo Smith in the front passenger seat, reportedly. They arrested those two as well.  

A large sum of loose money was in the car, mostly $20 bills, says the affidavit. Police figured it was $20,000, and when they counted it up later it totaled $25,240.  

A bank manager later told an investigator that the ATM was only stocked with $20 bills, so there would have been 1,262 paper bills in that vehicle, the evidence indicates.  

Ford … Tough? 

Officers reviewed surveillance footage showing the alleged ATM heist.  

In the video, the black Ford truck backs up to the ATM and Unknown Subject 1 gets out of the driver’s seat, while Unknown Subject 2 gets out of the passenger seat, the affidavit says.  

Unknown Subjects 1 and 2 were both in dark clothes. Unknown Subject 1 had a white vertical stripe on the back of each pant leg, while Unknown Subject 2 had a horizontal stripe across the back of the knee on each pant leg, the affidavit says.  

Unknown Subject 1 used a tool to pry the ATM door open. One of them hooked a chain from the truck’s rear bumper onto the metal panel covering the cash drawers inside the ATM.  

Unknown Subject 2 got into the driver’s seat and tried to tow the panel out. But he or she failed and let Unknown Subject 1 be the driver for a minute.  

Unknown Subject 1 succeeded, yanking the panel off the ATM so they could get the cash drawers, the document says.  

They gathered the drawers and fled, reportedly.  

Not Those 

The people who yanked the ATM apart with the truck were not among the three arrested, the affidavit says. Those two got away. Cheyenne Police Department announced at the time that officers deployed a K9 search dog to find them.

“Based on a review of booking photos and records checks completed on Parish, Smith and Beaudoin, CPD detectives believed (none) of the three arrested were UNUSB1 or UNSUB2,” says the document.  

They scoured more surveillance video and a pursuing officer’s own dash cam, and now believe that Unknown Subject 2 escaped when Unknown Subject 1 did.  

Also, $260 was unaccounted for, based on a bank manager’s statement to investigators that the official amount lost was $24,980.  

The bank manager also told an investigator that the ATM would cost $60,000 to replace.  

Clair McFarland can be reached at [email protected].

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