Bonnie and Clyde they’re not

Abigail Goldman, Las Vegas Sun

Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007 | 7:02 a.m.

Love lands you in funny places. Just ask Bonnie and Clyde. Or Robert Lee and Annika Rogers. That first couple rings a bell, right? The bandit lovebirds whose 1930s heists still capture the hearts of true crime junkies?

The second pair is no Bonnie and Clyde, although they've also been tangled in the law. Lee and Rogers haven't captured many hearts, but they have been captured.

As it turns out, there's still room in the Wild West for what police might call a criminally inclined couple to cause trouble. But in this case, trouble lacks the romanticized appeal of tommy gun shootouts. Far from the reviled and revered legend of two gonzo robbers gone wild.

Today, it's none of the mythos, but all of the meth.

Lee has a tattoo of a spider web crawling up his neck and another sort of spewing from his left eye. Rogers has Lee's name, first and last, tattooed on the side of her neck in a curling script that creeps toward her ear.

He's 5 foot 6. She's 6 foot 0. They both weigh approximately 200 pounds. This is according to an Aug. 10 Metro Police advisory asking citizens of the valley for help in finding the couple, wanted in connection with several burglaries in Las Vegas bars.

He's a brunette when he has hair, which he usually doesn't, according to police. She's a bottle blonde. And as with Bonnie and Clyde, he was the brains behind the operations. Although brains weren't evident - just a hammer and a crowbar.

The scheme was simple. Slink into a dark bar, pretend to play a slot machine, then shimmy it open when no one is watching. Extract the cash-collection canisters from inside the machine and make for the door, hiding the metal boxes as best possible.

Working this way, Lee reportedly left Champs Bar on Las Vegas Boulevard with $2,536. When Lee tried the same thing at the Lift Bar on Valley View Boulevard, there was one little problem. According to police reports, video surveillance caught him doing it, quite clearly.

The couple were charged last month with burglarizing three bars, although Metro Detective Keith Pool, who spent a month tracking down Lee and Rogers, thinks the actual number is higher. Unknowably higher.

In the police reports, Rogers is described as the lookout, or Lee's aide in casing locations.

Rogers was charged with conspiracy to commit burglary and possession of a controlled substance, but the case against her was weak and eventually dropped. After all, it could have been a coincidence that at the scene of one burglary Rogers' pink and black wallet was found on the floor.

Ultimately, Lee and Rogers' alleged crimes lacked the enchanting insanity that makes for infamy - notorious criminals who rob have crossed an invisible line that divides the hell-bent from the merely hostile. It's a mind-set of no return: Once you've put a gun in someone's face and meant it, you can never really put it down.

A crowbar, by comparison, leaves something to be desired.

The difference comes down to desperation. What Bonnie and Clyde wanted, legend has it, was some twisted combination of money, glory and revenge on the justice system. What criminals such as Lee and Rogers often want, Pool says, is methamphetamine.

Rogers and Lee were caught Aug. 20 in Sandy Valley, a small town about 40 miles outside of Las Vegas. Metro detectives were dispatched to the town, where they combed the streets until they spotted Lee's maroon car parked outside the Idle Spurs Bar.

Lee was inside, sitting at a slot machine, a nylon bag within hand's reach and a crowbar at his feet. Rogers was with him. Detectives searched the bag and found three plastic baggies containing just more than 5 grams of meth, a matchbook, a hypodermic needle and two $5 bills. Rogers, it was later revealed, had a small baggie of meth in her purse as well.

Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed by six officers on a lonely Louisiana road in 1934 and blasted with machine-gun fire - a hot lead death that forged their fame.

Rogers and Lee were cuffed quietly. He pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery and will be sentenced in December, according to court calendars.

"They didn't put up a fight," Pool said. "They knew their time was up."