Published: April 29, 2008 11:37 pm            

Duct Tape Bandit pleads guilty

Kasey Kazee sentenced to 10 years in prison

CATLETTSBURG — Turns out Kasey Kazee had it right.

He’s not no Duct Tape Bandit.

Two negatives equal a positive, remember.

So, what Kazee was in effect saying in his now-infamous jailhouse interview with a local TV station was that he was, indeed, the perpetrator of what was perhaps the most dimwitted and highly publicized crime in northeastern Kentucky history.

And, on Tuesday, he stood before a judge and admitted as much.

Kazee’s trial was set to begin next month. However, Kazee apparently did the math and did the homework and determined that he would be better off accepting a plea deal.

Kazee, of Ashland, pleaded guilty in Boyd Circuit Court to one count of second-degree robbery in connection with the liquor store holdup that generated national and international headlines, spawned dozens of Internet parodies and made him the poster child for criminal stupidity.

Under the terms of his plea agreement, Kazee will be sentenced to 10 years in prison, the maximum for the charge. Because he wasn’t armed when he robbed Shamrock Liquors, he will not be classified as a violent offender, meaning he will be eligible for parole consideration after he has served 20 percent, or two years, of his sentence.

Kazee, 25, has been in custody ever since the incident, meaning he already has nearly nine months’ credit for time served. He can also shave additional time off his sentence by earning statutory “good time” while he is behind bars.

Boyd Commonwealth’s Attorney David Justice said he doubted that Kazee would make parole on his first attempt. And, even after he has finished his Kentucky sentence, Kazee still owes the state of Ohio three years for a 2001 robbery conviction in Lawrence County, he said.

Kazee was on parole from Ohio at the time of the Kentucky offense, Justice said.

Kazee’s trial was scheduled for May. 12. Judge C. David Hagerman set the date earlier this month after ruling that Kazee was mentally competent to stand trial. At the request of his attorney, public defender Brian Hewlett, Kazee had earlier undergone a psychiatric evaluation at the Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center at Lagrange.

Doctors at KCPC found no evidence that Kazee suffered from psychosis and determined that he was able to appreciate the seriousness of the proceedings against him and participate rationally in his own defense.

By pleading guilty, Kazee admitted what folks pretty much knew all along — that it was him who entered Shamrock Liquors, located at 13th Street and Pollard Road, on Aug. 10 with his entire face and head wrapped in duct tape and his shirt pulled up over his head, a la “Cornholio,” the hyperactive alter ego of the cartoon character Beavis from MTV’s “Beavis and Butt-Head.”

Kazee indicated to a female clerk that he was armed and threatened to harm her if she didn’t give him the money in the cash register. The clerk complied by placing the bills from the register in a paper sack, but Kazee panicked and grabbed only a couple of rolls of quarters from the cash drawer after store manager Bill Steele walked in brandishing a club.

Kazee ran out the door, but before he could make his getaway, a Shamrock Liquors employee, Craig Miller, tackled him in the store’s parking lot. Miller and other men who came running from the Foodland store next door detained Kazee until the police arrived.

In his bizarre, rambling and oft-replayed TV interview, Kazee maintained his innocence, claiming police arrested the wrong man.

The case of Duct Tape Bandit was featured in a dumb-crook documentary on the True TV cable network, and in a People magazine article on cretinous criminals.

Hagerman scheduled Kazee’s final sentencing for 9:30 a.m. May 23.

        

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