Whatever happened to James R. Little, the helicopter pilot that was involved in the notorious helicopter bank robbery in Leesville in the early ’80s? Is he out of jail?

The five men involved in the robbery were all released from prison years ago. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, James R. Little was released from prison on July 25, 1994.

Marvin A. Rodgers was released Feb. 13, 2008; Russell E. Auzston was released July 5, 1995; William J. Gross was released July 7, 1989; and Russell R. Kelly was released April 26, 1989.

The column told the story of the robbery in 2009:

I was told that in the early 1980s there was a bank robbery in Leesville where the robbers escaped via a helicopter. Is this true?

Yes.

“It was just like a Hollywood movie, but it was real life drama as a team of robbers dropped out of the morning sky Wednesday in a helicopter and robbed a branch bank near Fort Polk,” reads a story that appeared in the Thursday, Feb. 16, 1984, edition of the American Press.

The men — five of them, all dressed in “police type” uniforms — landed the copter in front of the Merchant & Farmers Bank and Trust at about 10:15 a.m. The pilot remained in the aircraft while the other four, armed with automatic weapons, went into the bank and stole $163,000.

Five minutes later the men returned to the helicopter, which then flew off to the north. “Authorities generally agreed that it was a well-planned robbery,” reads the Press’ initial story.

The men stopped three times to refuel the aircraft — once in Texas and twice in Missouri — before ditching it in an Oklahoma field, where it was found partly covered with a tarp on Feb. 21.

Newspaper stories repeatedly quoted FBI agents as saying the robbery was the nation’s first helicopter bank heist.

“I’ve been in the FBI almost 17 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever heard of it,” one said in a Feb. 22 story. “I hope there are no copycats.”

‘Way they did it’

Within hours of the holdup, two men were selling “I survived the Leesville bank robbery” T-shirts — at $7 each — and baseball caps in their shop outside Fort Polk. They reportedly sold more than 1,000 shirts in less than two weeks.

“I’d say about 90 percent of the police force have bought them — the sheriff, city and state,” one of the men said in a Feb. 26 story. “We even sold one to an FBI agent and I understand it has been shipped to Washington. The director of the FBI is supposed to be receiving one.”

By midsummer, a West Monroe musician had recorded a country song that, as an American Press correspondent wrote July 7, “immortalizes the daring holdup of a Leesville bank by five adventurous men using a jet powered helicopter.”

The lyrics of the song, called “The Ballad of the Leesville Five,” used the name of a fictitious bank. But it incorporated an early rumor — later discredited by the Merchant & Farmers president — that the robbers had missed by mere hours the arrival of an armored car laden with $12 million in Army payroll cash.

The song was written by Shreveport resident Don Futch and was recorded by his brother, James, who used the pseudonym James Pastell. “If anyone did it again, it would just be another robbery,” James Futch told the newspaper. “The way they did it was unique.”

Out of the bag

On July 21, five armed men in beige jumpsuits landed a helicopter outside a bank in Valley View, Texas, at 9:30 a.m. and made off with an undisclosed amount of money.

The aircraft, found a week later outside Colorado City, Colo., was the same model as the one used in the Leesville heist. Authorities said both helicopters had been stolen from the same Galveston, Texas, airfield.

A couple of months later, two of the men robbed a bank in Overton, Nev., of $111,000 and fled, along with a hostage, to a nearby airport, where they boarded a Cessna and escaped. The hostage was released unharmed before the men flew away.

In addition to the hostage, the bandits left behind a black bag that contained fake beards and other items, including a prescription bottle, which authorities used to identify one of the men and crack the three cases.

Five men were eventually arrested. Four pleaded guilty to various charges; three of them were sentenced to 25 years in prison and one to 10. The fifth man, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and a former Alaska state trooper, was found guilty and sentenced to 45 years.

All of the men have since been released from prison.

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The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com.