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Joseph Pennello
Pennello — who police said walked into Hasbrouck Heights headquarters over the weekend and confessed to the crimes — had a Tuesday afternoon court appearance scheduled in U.S. District Court in Newark. He was ordered held without bail.
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 holdups the past two months in Hackensack, Rutherford, Washington Township, Scotch Plains and Hackettstown.
His last job was at the Wells Fargo branch in the center of Rutherford’s business district just before noon last Thursday. The FBI said he made off with his smallest haul in the spree: $1,099.
His biggest, $8,531, was from a Chase branch in Hackettstown on Feb. 18, according to a complaint filed with U.S. District Court in Newark. A week earlier, it says, Pennello made off with $3,335 from the PNC Bank on Route 17 South in Hackensack, after passing a note that said: “This is a robbery. No alarms. No dye-packs. No tracers. No one gets hurts [sic].”
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