Fugitive behind notorious 1988 Florida heist died while hiding out in NC, FBI says

A Florida fugitive who allegedly vanished in 1988 with $1.3 million was apparently living off the grid in western North Carolina – right up until he died of natural causes at an Asheville hospital, according to federal officials.

It was only after John Anthony Quinn’s death in December that fingerprints linked him to the notorious robbery of an armored car service, the FBI office in Charlotte reports.

So notorious was the heist that Quinn was featured on both “Unsolved Mysteries” and “America’s Most Wanted,” the FBI says.

“John Anthony Quinn, also known by various aliases such as Dale Calvin Cluckey, Dale Clucke, Jack Quinn, James Sullivan, and on his death bed as Jim Klein, was wanted for his alleged role in the April 1988 theft of $1.3 million in cash from Federal Protection Service, an armored car service in Riviera Beach, Florida,” the FBI reports.

“Quinn was employed as a manager and is alleged to have stolen the money from the company’s vault.”

“Unsolved Mysteries” reports he spent the morning of Saturday, April 9, 1988, at the office, “transferring the money into boxes,” which he then put in the trunk of a company car. “Police believed he had transferred $1.3 million into suitcases. When he arrived at the airport, Quinn unloaded his car and vanished,” the show says.

Riviera Beach is about a 75-mile drive north from Miami.

Quinn was known to use different birthdates, officials said, but it’s believed he was around 85 when he died in December.

He faced prosecution on charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution by the FBI and first degree grand theft, officials said.

A fingerprint card was used by the FBI Laboratory Latent Prints Unit to positively identified Quinn as the robbery suspect, officials said. The N.C. Bureau State Bureau of Investigation and Asheville police assisted in identifying Quinn.

The FBI did not release details on the life he led in North Carolina, and whether any of the money was recovered.

Asheville is about a 130-mile drive northwest from uptown Charlotte.

This story was originally published March 24, 2026 at 4:26 PM with the headline "Fugitive behind notorious 1988 Florida heist died while hiding out in NC, FBI says."