Print On Note Fingered Bank Robbery Suspect Local Man Suspected In Half-Dozen Area Heists

An FBI agent used a fingerprint and results from a sophisticated computer to track down a man considered a suspect in a half-dozen Spokane-area bank robberies.

Dawayne D. Butler, 32, of Spokane, is scheduled to appear today at a detention hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cynthia Imbrogno.

He is charged with the July 29 robbery at Farmers & Merchants Bank, 10808 E. Sprague, and also is a suspect in five other recent bank robberies in the Spokane area, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Hicks. Butler has not been charged with those other robberies.

Additional charges could come after the case is presented next Tuesday to a federal grand jury in Spokane.

Butler was arrested Tuesday when FBI agents and local police stopped a car he was driving on Interstate 90 in the Spokane Valley.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Pam Byerly said she will ask that Butler be held in jail without bond until he stands trial.

Court documents say FBI agent Norman Brown, who recently was transferred to Spokane, recovered a note handed to a Farmers & Merchant teller in the July 29 robbery.

The note said, “I have a gun,” but the robber didn’t display a weapon, authorities said.

After handing the teller the threatening note, the robber demanded $100, $50 and $20 bills but was given a bag of $1 bills and escaped with about $1,000, documents say.

The robbery note was processed by experts at the County-City Identification Lab, and they found a latent fingerprint.

The print was put through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) and the computer “identified it as belonging to Dawayne D. Butler,” the documents say.

The FBI agent then compared a bank surveillance photo of the robber to a previous jail booking photo.

“I immediately noticed a very strong resemblance,” Brown said in an affidavit that convinced a judge to issue an arrest warrant for Butler.

, DataTimes