The mystery of a 1988 armored car heist that stumped federal investigators for nearly four decades has finally been solved—not in a courtroom, but in a North Carolina hospital room.
The FBI announced this week that John Anthony Quinn, a fugitive who had been on the run since Ronald Reagan was in office, was positively identified following his death from natural causes this past December. Quinn passed away at a hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, using the name “Jim Klein.”
For 38 years, Quinn was the subject of an intense manhunt involving the FBI and Florida state authorities. Investigators allege that in April 1988, Quinn—then 48 years old—was working as a manager for Federal Protection Service, an armored car company in Riviera Beach, Florida.
Officials say he utilized his position to walk away with $1.3 million in cash directly from the company’s vault.
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The disappearance was high-profile enough to be featured on national television programs like Unsolved Mysteries and America’s Most Wanted. Despite the media attention, Quinn managed to stay off the grid by cycling through a long list of aliases, including Dale Calvin Cluckey, Jack Quinn, and James Sullivan.
The breakthrough in the cold case came from the FBI Laboratory’s Latent Prints Unit. Technicians were able to match a fingerprint card to the man who died in Asheville, confirming his true identity. The identification process was a collaborative effort between the FBI’s Miami and Charlotte field offices, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, and the Asheville Police Department.
While Quinn was wanted by the FBI for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution and by the State of Florida for first-degree grand theft, his death brings a quiet conclusion to one of the region’s longest-running fugitive cases. With the identification confirmed, the search for the man behind the 1988 vault theft is officially over.
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