She was charged by criminal complaint on Friday with conspiracy to interfere with commerce by threats or violence, the Department of Justice said Monday.
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An FBI agent’s sworn statement also filed in court says Jones was with Abigail Lee Kemp when she was arrested Friday.
People who knew her said they noticed her wearing new, expensive jewelry “that some of the callers believe she can not afford”. Jones is said to also be wanted in connection with two armed bank robberies committed last summer in DeKalb County, Georgia.
The suspect in a series of jewelry store robberies across the South wept softly as she was led from a federal courtroom in Atlanta after her first appearance before a judge.
She was taken into custody in Smyrna, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, without incident, the FBI’s Jacksonville, Florida, office announced on Saturday.
“We continue to thank the public for providing us with information that helped our agents identify and locate these suspects”, said Michelle S. Klimt, special agent in charge of the FBI Jacksonville Division.
Abigail Lee Kemp’s family and friends said nothing as they left the Atlanta court. Authorities allege Kemp visited the store the day before the robbery.
If convicted, Kemp faces up to 20 years in federal prison, authorities have said. Police said she tied up the workers and then stole an undisclosed amount of jewelry. The methods used to track her down after robberies in Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee also surfaced in court filings.
The last heist according to FBI investigators involved the woman holding up store employees at gunpoint, zip-tying their hands before robbing the store. Authorities have not said whether any of it has been recovered. In at least one of the robberies, in Panama City Beach, a male accomplice is seen on video removing the front door stop and letting the front door close while he remained outside of the store.
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While friends painted a gregarious picture of the lingerie model, cops described the scantily-clad brunette girl seen striding through jewelry stores in as little as a vest top, shorts, and a pair of gloves – grabbing bags’ worth of jewels as a high profile risky woman.
