'Gentleman Bandit' Turns Self in After 100 Robberies : Crime: Man with courtly manners took up gun after losing job. He surrenders to save an innocent person.

Posh hotels in Louisiana and Texas were his venue. He struck 100 times over two years, surprising guests with his efficiency, his unfailing graciousness and, of course, his gun. Frustrated police and hotel operators posted composite pictures of him, to no avail. Then, there was a breakthrough. A Texas salesman was arrested on June 27 and charged with the crimes. But it was the wrong man.

Once, a man had a heart attack in the midst of a robbery, so the "Gentleman Bandit" called the hospital and ordered an ambulance. Sometimes, he would call victims at home later to inquire if they had recovered from their ordeal.

Why, he would apologize as he tied people up, make them as comfortable as possible, return pictures of the grandkids that he found in wallets, call the front desk of hotels to tell them the guest in Room 319 could use some help getting untied.

HOUSTON — The thing about the "Gentleman Bandit" was his courtliness, his Cary Grant manners as he stole and stole and stole some more.

For a time, the "Gentleman Bandit" watched as the salesman took the rap. But, on Tuesday, he turned himself in to the Houston police, saying he could not let someone else suffer for what he had done.

The "Gentleman Bandit" turned out to be Houston resident Lon Perry, 49, a churchgoing father of two who turned to crime in 1989 when he lost his job and his money ran out.

Not even his wife of 26 years had a clue as to what Lon Perry was up to. She thought he had a job working at night. Police were hard-pressed to even find a traffic ticket on Perry's past.

Perry, a computer programmer, had spent 22 years in the oil business, but on Jan. 1, 1989, the energy bust caught up with him. He was laid off at Texas Eastern Corp.

"The layoff . . . left me an emotional cripple," Perry said in a statement provided by his lawyers. "Here I was nearly 50 years of age, back taxes owed to the IRS, a son in his second year at a college that I really couldn't afford."

He said he entertained thoughts of suicide, the sense that he was more valuable dead than alive. By the spring of 1989, Perry's severence pay was almost exhausted and the bills were mounting, putting him in a "financial pressure cooker, the depression deepening and seemingly no way out."

The thoughts of suicide began turning to thoughts of robbery. In May, 1989, Perry pulled off his first robbery at a motel in suburban Houston.

"Walking around the motel, I saw a room with the drapes open and one man and two ladies inside," he said in his statement. "I knocked on the door. When the man answered, I walked in, pretending to know him and closed the door. I pulled the small .22-caliber antique revolver from my pocket and, inconceivable as it seemed, I actually performed the first of what would be numerous motel/hotel robberies during 18 of the next 25 months."

He would approach hotel guests in a variety of ways, his friendly manner putting them off guard. After being admitted to a room, he pulled out his gun (which Perry said wouldn't fire because the hammer was frozen) and apologized for the inconvenience.

To victims who seemed prepared to resist, Perry would say that he had a friend waiting outside the door in case there was trouble. But, on occasion, "a potential victim would say something to me that would touch my heart, and I would not be able to rob him," Perry said in his statement. "I simply would leave, and most everyone would assure me that they would give me sufficient time to get away."