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Joseph Pennello (RUTHEFORD PD MUGSHOT)
The FBI said it will take over the case and pursue federal charges against Joseph Pennello, a career robber with an admitted heroin habit.
“He walked into Hasbrouck Heights PD and turned himself in. He said he had an attack of conscience,” Rutherford Detective Lt. Patrick Feliciano told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “Maybe he saw the media coverage with his picture and decided [that] sooner or later we were going to catch him.”
Pennello, a 46-year-old former plumber who most recently lived in Washington Township, first made headlines in 1990, when he robbed $400 from four Bergen County stores while using taxi cabs parked around corners as his getaway cars.
He was living in a Moonachie trailer park at the time with his girlfriend, Jaclyn Feeney, who admittedly shared his drug addiction.
Both were later convicted in federal court in connection with a string of Bergen-area bank robberies — earning them the nickname in law enforcement circles of “Bonnie and Clyde on heroin.”
This time, Pennello is charged with holding up the Wells Fargo branch in the center of Rutherford’s business district just before noon last Thursday.
He’s being held on $100,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail pending transfer to federal authorities.
The FBI is looking to pursue charges in four other holdups that Feliciano said Pennello admitted to:
*PNC Bank in Washington Township, on Jan. 29;
*TD Bank in Scotch Plains, on Feb. 7;
*PNC Bank in Hackensack, on Feb. 11;
*Chase Bank in Hackettstown, on Feb. 18.
Authorities who issued bank surveillance photos predicted he’d be easy to identify: No taller than 5-foot-4, Pennello has crooked teeth and was wearing a mechanic’s jacket in last week’s robbery, Feliciano said.
Wells Fargo bank surveillance photo
Although he didn’t show a weapon, he kept his hand in jacket pocket the entire time, the lieutenant said.
Pennello has spent nine years in state and federal prison for assorted holdups and parole violations, beginning in 1994.
Pennello was on parole after serving five years for armed robbery when he and Feeney knocked over banks in Hackensack, Hasbrouck Heights, and Union City in 1996 — netting more than $10,000 to feed their heroin habits.
They were caught after a car wash owner in Union City chased them — running red lights to Route 3 west and, eventually into Moonachie, where a patrol officer pulled both cars over.
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