By K.C. BAKER
Family trips were memorable times for Raymond Batzel, of Rochester, N.Y. He took his wife, Sharon, a nurse, and their two daughters, Shannon and Carrie, on trips around the country, from Washington, D.C., to Walt Disney World. “He liked to spoil us on vacations,” says Shannon Batzel, 36. But in the summer of 2003, when Shannon was 15 and Carrie was 13, the girls went on their first trip without their parents, to Santa Rosa, Calif., to visit cousins. At the airport, their dad mouthed “I love you” from a glass-enclosed walkway. “I remember waving goodbye,” says Shannon, “and him smiling and trying not to cry.”
It was the last time the Batzel sisters saw their father alive. On Aug. 12, 2003, Raymond, 51, a machine operator at Xerox in Webster, N.Y., was shot and killed during a robbery at the company’s credit union by a gunman who wore a wig, sunglasses and a fake FBI field jacket. Witnesses say the robber shouted at Raymond to get on the floor, then shot him at close range. As people dashed for cover, the gunman shot another customer Joseph Doud, who stumbled out the front door, wounded in his shoulder. Minutes later the killer was gone with $10,000 cash in a bag, says retired FBI Special Agent Peter Ahearn. “He disappeared into thin air.”
It was clear that only someone who worked for Xerox would target the credit union, housed in an office building on the company’s corporate campus. FBI agents pored over lists of former employees, put up posters with the suspect’s image and aired the case on America’s Most Wanted—but got no solid leads. An umbrella carried by the gunman in an apparent attempt to hide from cameras yielded a DNA sample—“but we didn’t know who it belonged to,” says Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Gregory.
Finally, after photos were digitally enhanced by the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., and released at a press conference in 2016, there was a break-through. A former Xerox employee recognized the face of the coworker Richard Wilbern, who was fired for absenteeism and had sued the company for racial discrimination in 2001. (The suit was dismissed.) Wilbern also had been convicted of bank robbery in 1980.
Three weeks later, by chance, Wilbern called the FBI's Buffalo office to report a real estate scam. Under the guise of hiring Wilbern as an informant, FBI agents invited him to the office—and obtained his DNA from an envelope he licked and sealed during the interview. Wilbern was arrested and after a five-week trial in 2019, was found guilty of murder and robbery and sentenced to life in prison. “I could breathe again,” recalls Shannon, the mother of two sons, ages 3 and 5, and a stepdaughter, 13. “My son Jackson has asked about his grandfather. I told him, ‘He was shot. He’s no longer around. And he would have loved you—and spoiled you.’ My dad lives on through our kids.”
CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM RIGHT: RADLEY STUDIO/WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY; MONROE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE; ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE(5); COURTESY BATZEL FAMILY(2)