Three days before Christmas 2009, two men carrying Uzi-style guns stormed into a Country Club Hills bank, instructed tellers to pile cash into a red bag, then shouted "Merry Christmas" as they carried almost $53,000 out a back door.

Attempting to track the robbers, Mayor Dwight Welch, who is a retired cop, and five officers followed a trail of footprints in the snow outside First Midwest Bank, located in a strip mall near City Hall, to a town home in a gated community just south of the mall.

Welch allegedly ordered three men — one of whom had previously campaigned for him — at gunpoint out of the home, then high-fived the other officers and told them to tell the news media that they had caught the bank robbers, according to an account by the arrested men.

The town put out a news release the same day, before any charges were filed.

The only problem? They'd nabbed the wrong guys.

By the time federal authorities charged three other men in the robbery, one of them was being held in Cook County Jail on murder charges. Another man, whose left arm is tattooed with the phrase "Here one day gone the next," according to state records, is still on the run.

The men who were arrested but never charged filed a federal lawsuit late last month against the city, the mayor and the five officers seeking damages for false arrest and unreasonable search and seizure.

It's unclear if the police missed other opportunities while focusing on the three — Reginald Slaughter, Roy Williamson and Remondo Henley — who were mistakenly arrested. "It certainly didn't help," said their attorney Daniel Kiss.

Through a spokeswoman, Country Club Hills officials declined to comment.

Authorities searched Henley's home twice and took the three men to separate interview rooms where they were questioned for hours about the 2 p.m. robbery. Each of the men was told the other two had confessed to participating, Kiss said.

They were released that night and walked about a mile and a half home barefoot in the snow, Kiss said. Police had confiscated their shoes, apparently to see if they matched a print a bank robber left as he stepped on a teller's counter.

An FBI special agent noted in a court filing that the getaway van that eventually led agents to the men charged was towed by Country Club Hills police less than an hour after the robbery. The day after Slaughter, Williamson and Henley were released, it was moved to an FBI facility in Chicago, the filing says.

Tracing the van's sales history led the FBI to Brandon Starks, 23, who was in Cook County Jail when two FBI agents interviewed him in January.

Starks and the alleged getaway driver were arrested 15 days after the bank robbery when they ran from Chicago police staking out a Chatham address for another suspect. The bank robbery charges against the driver later were dropped.

At the time, police recognized Starks as the man witnesses identified as having gunned down Robert Shines, 24, at a convenience store on Nov. 3. He also had an active warrant out on heroin charges, which Starks told the FBI had made him a bit reluctant to take part in the robbery.

"I wasn't coming out unless it was worth it," he said.

Starks told authorities that he and Corey "Kid" Frierson, 26, robbed the bank at 4101 183rd St. after devising an escape plan they were sure would stump police. On Dec. 22, they went to Frierson's Richton Park home to pick up the weapons and put on bulletproof vests and black ski masks, Starks told authorities.

They parked a rental car in the gated community just south of Heritage Plaza, then drove a van to the bank. Starks and Frierson went inside with the weapons slung over their shoulders, according to the complaint, yelling, "Get on the ground!" and "Give me all the money!"

When a teller sarcastically asked Frierson if he wanted the last $5 in her drawer, he told her to put it in the bag, Starks said.

The men ran out the back and drove south through a parking lot to a service road behind a strip mall. They then jumped a fence, ran to the rental car and drove back to Richton Park to split up the cash, Starks said.

Around the same time, Slaughter and Williamson were walking back to the home where Williamson lives with Henley, his brother, when police officers began pouring into their subdivision. They stopped one officer to ask what was going on and were told to get inside their home, Kiss said.

Not long after arriving home, Williamson saw Welch — whom he had campaigned for in prior elections — standing in the backyard with a gun drawn. As more officers came into the yard, Slaughter opened the door to find out what was happening, Kiss said.

Welch, who according to the men's lawsuit "was at the head of a group of heavily armed police officers," rushed to the door and ordered Slaughter outside at gunpoint along with Henley. When the FBI later released the men, they returned home to find that their front door had been left open after a police search and someone had stolen their PlayStation video game console.

FBI agents later searched Frierson's Richton Park home, finding cash that had been stolen from the bank, a red laundry bag with cash inside, a black ski mask, shoes with a pattern similar to the one found on the teller's counter and a key chain with a label that matched an identification sticker on the getaway van.

Frierson remains on the loose.

sschmadeke@tribune.com