Crime & Safety
Bank Robber Who Prompted Tinley Park Manhunt Pleads Guilty to Escape
Kenneth Conley, arrested for a Homewood bank robbery, staged a dramatic escape from the federal lockup downtown and then led cops on a wild manhunt.
A bank robber who escaped from a federal jail and led police on a manhunt through Tinley Park and the south suburbs last year pleaded guilty Monday morning.
Kenneth Conley pleaded guilty to one count of escape in federal court. In May, Conley was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the 2011 robbery of a Homewood bank.
Conley, 39, and his cellmate, Joseph Banks, staged a daring escape last December from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in the Loop, dropping to the street from a 17th-floor window with a rope fashioned out of bedsheets.
A massive manhunt in Tinley Park, New Lenox and other suburbs ensued. Conley came to a home on 176th Street in Tinley Park that morning to see his mother, Sandy, but she turned her son away. Formerly a floor host at a Chicago Heights strip club, Conley used to live in Tinley Park
Officers caught Conley on Jan. 4 when he tried to disguise himself as an elderly man while hiding out in Palos Hills, police said. Banks was caught in Lincoln Park.
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