At the pharmacy he robbed, he varied his routine—rather than demanding money, he demanded prescription medication and ended up with more than 3,000 pills containing controlled substances.

But things took a potentially deadly turn the night of October 19, 2012, when Matthews entered a gas station with the intent to rob it. After brandishing a gun and threatening violence, employees gave him the money and he left. Several employees and a customer chased him, though, and Matthews fired at them, hitting the customer five times and severely wounding him.

The story took another turn the next morning, when a seriously injured man was found beneath a remote bluff outside of Birmingham and taken to a hospital. Local law enforcement responding to the scene found a pickup truck a short distance away with various firearms leaning up against the vehicle and others on the ground nearby, as well as evidence inside the truck seemingly tied to the series of Birmingham robberies. The truck was registered to a Birmingham woman who was the mother of the man found under the bluff. That man was Jamey Lee Matthews, and police soon honed in on Matthews as their suspect.

The federal investigation was led by the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), ably assisted by the Birmingham Police Department, the Blount County Sheriff’s Office, and our partners on the Northern Alabama Safe Streets Task Force, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

According to the FBI Birmingham case agent, the investigation had complicating factors: the necessity of meeting the Hobbs Act threshold, the shooting during the gas station robbery, the pharmacy theft (also a federal offense), etc.

But working in investigators’ favor was the fact that Matthews wore memorable Halloween masks during most of the robberies—including one of a devil—and that the firearms he used stood out—one gun had a clear ammunition magazine, some had different colored tape, another was a silver sawed-off rifle, and another was an Uzi-style weapon. The distinguishing masks and firearms made it easier for eyewitnesses to describe what they had seen, and their accounts were often supported by store surveillance video.

And among the items seized from the pickup truck and from Matthews’ mother’s house were some of those firearms and masks matching eyewitness descriptions, clothing similar to what the robber had worn, a customer’s check written out to the victim gas station, and prescription bottles from the victim pharmacy.

In the face of such overwhelming evidence, Matthews agreed to plead guilty. And a joint law enforcement endeavor resulted in getting another dangerous criminal off the streets for a very long time.