CRIME: Case of Mistaken Identity

In Norfolk one morning last week, the telephone rang at the city desk of the Virginian-Pilot. The caller identified himself as James Anderson. He had a confession to make: a few days before, he had tried unsuccessfully to hold up the downtown branch office of the Bank of Virginia in Norfolk. Then he had read in the papers that the FBI had picked up one Daniel Dough Jr., a part-time copy boy at the Virginian-Pilot, who was identified by the bank teller as the holdup man. Said Anderson: "My conscience bothered me. I didn't want an innocent person to go to jail." An hour later, Anderson surrendered to the Norfolk bureau of the FBI.

When FBI agents confronted Teller Eileen Thomas with Daniel Dough and James Anderson, Teller Thomas was flabbergasted. Dough, 19, was 5 ft. 5 in., weighed 140 Ibs., had sandy brown, close-cropped hair parted to the left, hazel eyes, chubby cheeks—all the identification notes that an observant woman would make. Anderson, 20, was 5 ft. 6 in., 133 Ibs., had sandy brown, close-cropped hair parted to the left, brown eyes, chubby cheeks. Only when the FBI took both men into the bank—each dressed in the same clothes he had worn on the day of the attempted holdup—was Eileen Thomas able to identify the culprit: James Anderson.