the dealers waited in the car. Under his Atlanta Braves
visor his face was clearly visible to surveillance cameras.
He grabbed a deposit ticket and on the front scribbled a
demand for $1,500, claiming to have a gun. Do not say a
word....Someone outside as well....Be quick and we leave.
Then he presented the note. More confused than scared,
the teller asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Crane wasn’t—but he said yes anyway. The teller handed
over a stack of bills, inside of which was a packet of
distance-activated exploding dye. And just as Crane
reached his car, a few hundred feet away from the front
exit, the packet exploded. “Holy s---!” came the chorus
from the three robbers.
As police cruisers rolled up to the bank, the conspira-
tors sped off, heatedly discussing their next move. W hen
they got back to the Holiday Inn, the dealers split. For
Crane, the possibility of missing his shift at the Masters
was suddenly the least of his concerns.
The cocaine fog having lifted as the gravity of the
situation set in, he figured there was no use in running.
He walked to the hotel courtyard, sat on a bench and
phoned the Augusta police. When the dispatcher picked
up, Crane said words to the effect of: “I know who robbed
that Wachovia Bank. He’s staying at the Holiday Inn.”
Crane recalls being overcome by a wicked cocktail of
emotions—shame, embarrassment, fear, self-loathing.
But perhaps most prominent was relief. He knew he had
been out of control for years. “Drugs wear you down, and
I was so tired,” he says. “Tired physically, but also tired
of screwing up and making bad decisions.”
Lighting a cigarette, he waited for the cops to come
arrest him. He confessed to the crime on the spot, took
full responsibility over his accomplices and offered to
answer any questions. (The two dealers were picked up
at the nearby Augusta Super Inn later that day. Their
charges were dropped.)
One year earlier, the big scandal from Augusta
before play started had been about a 26-year-old man
who fired a gun at the courtesy car assigned to golfer
Tom L e h m a n. The guy from the broadcast team who tried
to jack a local bank was a whole new level of outré pre-
tournament news. While word of Crane’s arrest—and the
bizarre circumstances—rocketed around the television
compound, he was booked at Richmond County Jail on
a robbery charge.
Then he made one last error: He declared himself a
suicide risk, hoping he would be put in a cell by him-
self. The intake officer took all of Crane’s personal pos-
sessions, including his clothes, and assigned him to a
room with six other men who were also deemed dangers
to themselves.
Crane had expected to spend the week at perhaps the
most pristine and dignified enclave in sports. Instead,
as Zach Johnson was being feted on Sunday and fitted
with a green jacket, Crane was 13 miles away, sharing, he
says, a cell with a half-dozen other naked accused felons.APRIL 2020 57That party ended the next morning only because he had
run out of money. (It might have gone longer, Crane says,
had he not let the dealers indulge from their own stash.)
Crane didn’t have an ATM card to get more cash. So he
made a suggestion that—in his haze, anyway—seemed
brilliant: Why not knock off a bank?
In no shape to drive, he gave his dealers the keys to his
rental car and jumped in the back seat. The three men
headed to a Wachovia branch a few minutes down the
highway, six miles from Augusta National. (Three years
earlier Wachovia had bought SouthTrust Bank, Crane’s
first employer.)
At 9 a.m.—one hour before he was supposed to arrive
at work, just as the bank opened—Crane walked through
the front door, unarmed and wearing no mask, while
OLD HABITS DYE HARD
Crane’s coke and crack binge led him, in
desperation, to rob a Wachovia branch,
where a teller’s ink pack blew up his plan.