Bail Hearing Delayed for Confessed Bank Robber

GLENDALE —  A bail hearing was postponed Friday for a confessed serial bank robber whose alleged crimes include recent heists in Glendale and Burbank.

U.S. Magistrate Robert Block postponed the hearing at the request of the defendant, Bryant Suntwanuparp, 27.

Suntwanuparp, dubbed the “Ponytail Bandit” and described by police as a compulsive gambler, was arrested Thursday after an FBI investigator spotted him outside a supermarket near his Glendale motel and recognized him from bank surveillance photos.

At a press conference Friday at the Glendale Police Department, officers disclosed that Suntwanuparp had been renting the same room at the same place--the American Motel on East Colorado Street--as another alleged bank robber arrested this week, so-called “Baseball Cap Bandit” John Duane Buckland.

Suntwanuparp checked in two days after Buckland’s arrest Monday, said Lt. Ray Edey. Despite their similar tastes in motels and alleged crimes--serial bank robberies in the Glendale and San Gabriel Valley areas--the two men did not know each other, Edey said.

Buckland, 61, was also being held without bail in the federal detention center downtown.

According to court records, authorities were tipped off to Suntwanuparp’s identity by an anonymous caller, who also warned them that Suntwanuparp was planning to leave soon for his native Thailand. Investigators then obtained his driver’s license photo from the state Department of Motor Vehicles and matched it to the man depicted in the bank surveillance shots.

Meanwhile, a bank teller who was held up Thursday at a First Interstate Bank branch in Glendale picked Suntwanuparp out of six mug shots as the man who had demanded money from her and claimed he had a bomb.

During questioning at the Glendale Police Department, according to investigators’ affidavits, Suntwanuparp confessed that he robbed eight banks within the past two weeks, including First Interstate in Glendale and Sterling Bank in Burbank--both of them on Thursday. He also consented to a search of his motel room and car, which turned up a blue denim shirt like the one shown in bank surveillance photos and a black bag containing $3,780 in cash.

In addition to a string of bank robberies, he is also being charged with holdups at a movie theater, a doughnut shop, a foreign exchange service and a parking lot, Glendale police said. They added Suntwanuparp has a gambling problem and was spending the stolen money at area card clubs.

He was booked on a 9 p.m. flight to Thailand on the day he was arrested, and police believe he may have been on his way to a robbery at the shopping center when he was caught.

“He was just robbing places like crazy,” Edey said. “All of his crimes occurred within less than one month, so he was literally on a robbery frenzy. There’s a very good chance that when we picked him up, he was about to commit his next crime.”

Berger is a Times staff writer and Ryfle is a Times correspondent.