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Sam Penrod reportingThere was a brazen robbery at a Utah County business last week, and police say the robber was a 47-year-old woman who not only used a gun, but tied up the workers with duct tape. The woman robbed a video store in American Fork and now is in jail on charges of armed robbery, kidnapping and witness tampering.
The robbery happened one week ago Friday night, and thanks to a week of good detective work, police arrested a suspect Thursday night whose raspy voice gave her away.
Two female employees of the American Fork Hollywood Video were closing up for the night when a woman pulled a handgun and demanded money.
Lt. Sam Liddiard, with the American Fork Police Department, said, "They had a female suspect that came into the business and took two employees at gunpoint. She had taken them into a back room, and tied them up with duct tape to a chair, and got the combination to the safe and took money out of the safe."
The victims were eventually able to break free and called 911, although the suspect had threatened them, before she left, not to call police. She told them she would be listening to her police scanner to make sure they didn't.
Liddiard says, "The suspect also took their drivers license and things like that and personal ID and told them she knew were they lived and if they contacted the police, she would come back and kill them. And this has been trying for them, and we're trying to help them through that process as well."
The suspect did not wear a mask, so the victims were able to give detectives a good description of the robber, including the fact she had a rough, raspy, smoker's voice. That led detectives to 47-year-old Becky Vanzant of Pleasant Grove.
"The detectives were able to do a kind of a voice lineup where they had some female employees say the same words that the suspect said while robbing Hollywood Video, as well as the suspect herself. And they positively identified her by pictures as well," Lt. Liddiard said.
Vanzant voluntarily submitted to a lie detector test, and the results showed she was 99.9 percent positive as the suspect who robbed Hollywood Video.
American Fork detectives are asking that anyone who was the Hollywood Video last Friday night after 9:30 p.m. and before the store closed to give them a call, as they are still building their case against the suspect.
