Farmers Bank

A man paroled in 1993 after serving six years for bank robbery is being sought by authorities who suspect him of robbing as many as 10 Baltimore-area banks since Jan. 3, the FBI said.Henry Darnell Johnson Jr., 35, of the 2400 block of S. Paca St., was identified as a suspect after a former teller whom he had robbed seven years ago recognized a bank surveillance photo printed in The Sun, according to a federal affidavit."She put us on to him. She apparently never forgot his face," FBI spokesman Andy Manning said of Mr. Johnson, who was paroled last March.

JUST OVER a month ago, Mike Lannon learned that Christmas in April-Anne Arundel County Inc. would build a wheelchair ramp for him at his Cape Cod-style Eastport home. A group of volunteers built the ramp in a day's time less than two weeks later. "One day, a construction man was here measuring," Lannon says. "He set everything up, and a couple of weeks later a crew of about 10 people showed up at 7:30 in the morning to build the ramp. They were done by 5 p.m." Lannon, who had been a volunteer firefighter in Annapolis for nearly four decades, is grateful for the ramp, which is discreetly located behind pine trees in front of his home.

After almost 19 years of driving a bus for the city of Annapolis, Amelia D. Wallace has gotten to know most of her passengers. She always greets them with a welcoming smile as they board and often tells them stories about her son, a standout high school football player. So when a nervous-looking man came aboard in June, Wallace took notice. Then, when the bus made a routine stop and the man anxiously departed, the veteran driver for the city's Department of Transportation knew something was wrong.

For three weeks Boots has been lying in limbo in a veterinarian's freezer while her distraught owner fights for a cemetery plot to bury her beloved dog.Elaine Smith bought the plot -- her fourth, actually -- at Elkridge's well-known Rosa Bonheur Memorial Park three years ago. But now she can't bury her 15-year-old black and brown mutt.The troubled cemetery was sold two weeks ago and the new owner hasn't disclosed plans for the eight-acre, 22,000-plot property, home to the deceased pets of former Gov. William Donald Schaefer and Blaze Starr, the stripper.

A Harford County jury yesterday convicted Louis Hill III of premeditated murder in the 1992 robbery of a Randallstown bank that left two tellers dead and two other employees wounded.The jury deliberated just three hours before returning its verdict after Hill, 26, declined to testify at the end of a seven-day trial.Baltimore County prosecutors today will argue for the death penalty, alleging that Hill fired the shots into the heads of four employees who were forced to lie on the floor of the vault in the Farmers Bank & Trust branch in the 9800 block of Liberty Road by two masked robbers on Oct. 26, 1992.

Louis Hill III told Baltimore County police he was driving aimlessly up Liberty Road 13 months ago when two men he didn't know waved him down for a ride to a Randallstown bank, where two employees were shot to death and two were wounded, an officer testified yesterday.Mr. Hill, a 26-year-old businessman from Rodgers Forge, is on trial for first-degree murder in Harford County Circuit Court. His request for a change of venue was granted because prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against him as the alleged gunman.

Louis Hill III, the 26-year-old Rodgers Forge man accused of shooting four women in the back of the head as they lay on the floor during a Randallstown bank robbery, sold the murder weapon at least a month before the crime, a defense witness testified yesterday.Willie Wilson, a college and business friend of Mr. Hill's, told a Harford County jury that he saw the murder weapon -- a Cobray Mac-11 machine pistol -- in the apartment of Benjamin Franklin Boisseau Jr. a month before the Oct. 26, 1992, robbery of the Farmers Bank & Trust Co. branch in the 9800 block of Liberty Road.

Witnesses came from all over the East Coast yesterday to portray Louis Hill III more as a religious peacemaker than as a murderer who may be headed for Maryland's gas chamber.The 26-year-old Morehouse College graduate and businessman was convicted Tuesday of the premeditated murders of Dorothy J. Langmead and Anastasia "Stacey" George and the attempted murders of Barbara Mitchell Aldrich and Cindy Ann Thomas.The women worked for the Randallstown branch of the Farmers Bank & Trust Co. in the 9800 block of Liberty Road.

It took only seven minutes last Oct. 26 for Baltimore County police, aided by 911 center dispatchers, to find and arrest two men suspected of robbing the Farmers Bank & Trust Co. in Randallstown and shooting all four tellers, killing two.That quick action, police Maj. Kevin Sanzenbacher thought, saved the county hundreds of hours of detective and patrol work and perhaps thousands of dollars in overtime costs. And he wondered, since the county has given cash awards to officers for money-saving ideas such as replacing flares with orange cones at accident sites, why shouldn't the people who helped catch the two suspects get awards?

The first thing you notice is the flowers, blanketing the lawn in front of the bank. Some of the arrangements are quite elaborate, quite beautiful. Some are moving -- two wooden crosses covered in flowers. But, somehow, what seems most real is a simple glass jar filled with daisies.On the door of the bank, a nondescript brick building that betrays none of the horror seen there, hangs a single rose. Above the rose, a sign tells some of the story: "Sorry, we are closed due to an emergency." But it's a generic emergency sign.