An ex-employee of Xerox was arrested for robbery and murder.
The crime was allegedly committed in 2003 by 56-year-old Richard Leon Wilbern at the Xerox Corp. campus in Rochester, New York state, but the FBI did not have enough evidence at that time to detain him. Wilbern had previously been an employee of Xerox, and had also tried to sue the company for racial discrimination, but was unsuccessful, reported Democrat and Chronicle.
In a strange turn of fate, in July this year, Wilbern contacted the FBI to say that he was “a victim of tax fraud”, and as the law enforcers had been researching him after a tip-off, they were able to interview him. Special Agent Adam Cohen said that “he came here on three separate occasions”, and that in July the FBI tricked Wilbern into “signing some paperwork and sealing an envelope by licking it”, leaving DNA that gave them a match to a “genetic sample on an umbrella” that he “allegedly left behind in 2003”.
Once the questioning about Xerox started, the accused requested a lawyer. The family of the victim, Raymond Batzel, who was shot in the head and died during the burglary, were in contact with police after they arrested Wilburn, and Batzel’s mother said that “I’m 89½ years old and it was in my prayers that I would live long enough to see this case come to justice”.
The suspect has a previous record and had robbed a bank in 1980, spending a year in jail, and then in 1986 he was found to be in possession of a sawn-off shotgun, spending two years in jail for that as well as a further two years in 2004 for “possession of stolen goods”. Bill McKee, a spokesman for Xerox, said that in 1997 the “company did not do criminal background checks”, and so they were unaware of Wilbern’s history.
After a news conference in March where the FBI encouraged witnesses or informants to come forward, someone contacted them with information regarding Wilbern. Cohen said that “the caller provided information that we were able to quickly corroborate”. When Wilbern allegedly committed the robbery he told the employees that he was an FBI agent, and even questioned some of them about the security, before pulling out two handguns and announcing that it was a robbery.
Two employees were shot; Batzel died but the other man survived a shoulder wound. Wilbern has been charged with “the Xerox Federal Credit Union robbery and with the homicide of Batzel”, and if he is found guilty, he could face the “federal death penalty”.