Today’s Ungrateful Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
In February of 1980, Michael Briddle, Pamela Perillo and an unidentified friend robbed a man who was a customer at the topless bar where Perillo worked. Briddle and his wife Linda promptly fled the state, and Perillo soon joined them in Arizona. The three began hitchhiking, and in Houston, Texas, they were picked up by Bob Banks. Banks, 30, was in the process of moving house and agreed to pay the three hitchers to help him move. Over the next two days, the Briddles and Perillo helped Banks move his furniture to his new house, and he took them to dinner and the rodeo. They observed that he carried large amounts of cash and decided to rob him.
On February 23, Bob Banks and a friend, Bob Skeens, 26, went out to pick up doughnuts and coffee for everybody. When they returned, Briddle and Perillo attacked them, clubbing Banks in the head, binding both men with rope and taking Skeens into another room. Perillo and Michael Briddle then strangled Banks by pulling on opposite ends of a rope. The pair then took a break to eat the doughnuts and coffee that Banks had bought for them, and then Skeens was strangled in the bedroom, Perillo reportedly saying “I don’t like looking at you; your face is turning blue.” The killers then left, taking money and various other items, including a cassette player they’d used to record Banks’s murder.
The tape player was pawned in Denver, and the pawnshop owner discovered a cassette still inside it. He listened to it and immediately called the police. The three killers were soon arrested. Linda Briddle received five years probation, as it was disputed whether she was present during the actual murders; Briddle claimed he made her go out and wait in Skeens’s VW (which they stole) but she had blood on her jeans when arrested. Briddle and Perillo were both sentenced to die, the recording of Robert Banks being strangled to death a key piece of evidence in court. Briddle died by lethal injection in 1995. Perillo’s death sentence was overturned, then reinstated, then overturned again and she accepted a sentence of life plus 30 years in 2000.
Culled from: Murderpedia
Submitted by: Aimee
Now, which act is stupider? Taking a group of people you picked up hitchhiking into your home, or forgetting to remove the tape of your crime from the player before you pawn it? – Aimee