Getaway Driver in Killingworth Bank Robbery Pleads Guilty

A 31-year-old Westbrook woman identified as the getaway driver in a Killingworth bank robbery in August pleaded guilty in court Wednesday after being indicted by a federal grand jury in early September.

Jennifer Jacques appeared in a U.S. District Court in New Haven before federal Judge Janet C. Hall where she admitted to her role in assisting two men in the Aug. 6 robbery of a TD Bank branch on Route 81.

She is due to be sentenced on Jan. 9, and is now facing a 20-year prison sentence and a potential fine of up to $250,000.

According to a U.S. Justice Department news release, Jacques was the person who drove 40-year-old Marcus Dwyer and 32-year-old Dario Pabey to the bank branch during that quiet summer afternoon, where she then dropped the two men off and fled the scene. Jacques drove off and parked the getaway vehicle on a nearby road as the two men robbed the bank, officials said.

Dwyer and Pabey, one of whom carried an apparent handgun, were wearing ski masks and gloves when they entered the bank. They ordered both the customers and the employees to the floor, and tied up at least one bank employee while ordering another to open the vault.

One of the men repeatedly pointed the gun at everyone in the room, and the robbers also demanded that customers give him their wallets, cellular telephones and car keys, officials said.

The two men in total stole $43,573 from the bank and its patrons, officials said.

They fled the scene in a vehicle they stole from a bank customer — identified as a white Scion — which they later abandoned on a nearby dirt road. Jacques was waiting there in the getaway vehicle, officials said.

She then drove the two men away from the bank while they changed out of clothes that they wore during the robbery.

According to the news release, a federal grand jury in New Haven returned an indictment on Sept. 7 charging both Pabey and Dwyer with committing this violent bank robbery. 

In pleading guilty, Jacques admitted that after the indictment was returned — and without the knowledge of law enforcement officers — she traveled to New York to meet Dwyer, who was a fugitive from justice, and drove him to Connecticut. 

The Conecticut State Police and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation located and arrested Dwyer while he was in New London on Sept. 19