The Case of the Cliff Jumping Bandits

A howdtheydoit mystery

Early one morning, after a chilly evening rain, two men walked into a local bank and demanded all the money from the safe.  The men were dressed in yellow raingear, much like the Gordon fisherman, complete with the hat and galoshes.  One of the men was described as tall and lanky; the other was much shorter and more corpulent.  Neither one seemed too intelligent, but they were smart enough to make it out of the bank with more than $50,000 in cash.

The police were immediately notified and quickly arrived at the scene to assess the situation.  Receiving critical information from an elderly man sitting at an outdoor café, sipping coffee and doing calculus problems, the police ascertained that the Bank Bandits fled on foot in the direction of the Balcones Escarpment—the thick wooded cliffs!

The bloodhounds were called in, and a search team was quickly assembled.  In no time, the hounds picked up the bandits scent at the base of cliff.  Two sets of footprints were found leading up the soiled slope to the top.  Investigators analyzed the prints and determined that the prints’ tread were that of a rain boot and were of different size, consistent with the bank teller’s description.  The smaller prints were slightly deeper at the heel while the larger prints were slightly deeper at the toe.  They determined that the bandits had very distinctive and recognizable gaits.   They appeared to be hot on the bandits’ trail.  As they carefully followed the set of parallel prints up the slope, the trail ended at the edge of a large precipice, with nowhere to go but straight down 300 feet below.  No other tracks were found indicating they went elsewhere, and it did not appear that they covered their tracks, as the surrounding ground was undisturbed.  Where did they go?  Did they jump?  Upon investigating at the base of the cliff, they found two sets of yellow raingear, but nothing else.

With the raingear turning up no traceable physical evidence, and very poor and limited eyewitness descriptions, the bandits are still at large.  Local police have no suspects.  Most puzzling to them, though, is how they were able to get away.

Please enlighten them.  Your job is to write a detailed description, using the evidence of the case, to write a plausible scenario for their getaway.  Good Luck.

© Kevin W. Korpi, 2002