Gary Craig

@gcraig1

A former Xerox Corp. employee who once sued the company for racial discrimination is now accused of the 2003 robbery and fatal shooting at a credit union on the company's Webster campus.

Little information was available Tuesday about the suspect, Richard Leon Wilbern, who was charged in federal court Tuesday with the robbery and the homicide of Raymond Batzel, 51, of Lima, Livingston County.

Federal authorities did not announce the arrest Tuesday, and plan a press conference for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday. The Democrat and Chronicle was in court Tuesday when the charges against Wilbern were unsealed.

Two Xerox employees who were in the Xerox Federal Credit Union to transact business were shot by the man in the course of the robbery. Batzel was struck in the head and later pronounced dead at the scene. Joseph Doud, then 28, of Rochester was shot in the shoulder but survived.

Rowena Bennett, Batzel's mother, said she learned Tuesday of Wilbern's arrest..

"All my other children were calling me to say, 'Are you OK?" said the 89-year-old Bennett, who lives in Bloomfield, Ontario County. "I said, 'This is the best day of my life.' "

The charge against Wilbern makes him eligible for the federal death penalty; though federal executions are rare.

Records show that Wilbern worked at Xerox in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and sued the company in 2000. According to a 2003 article from The Daily Record, Wilbern claimed in the lawsuit that he was harassed and retaliated against because of his race. He is African-American.

During the lawsuit, Xerox fired Wilbern, claiming he was constantly absent from work. He said in a deposition that he was often late and took long breaks, but said that the company allowed other workers to make the same lapses while being tougher on African Americans, according to The Daily Record.

A judge dismissed Wilbern's lawsuit in December 2002, eight months before the robbery and homicide.

An appellate court later upheld the dismissal.

The robbery unfolded on the morning of Aug. 12, 2003, when a man entered the credit union and identified himself as an FBI agent. He questioned employees for a moment about their security arrangements, then pulled two handguns from under his windbreaker and announced a robbery. He shot the two men during the robbery.

The credit union, now known as Xceed Financial Credit Union, is on the campus of the Xerox Corp. manufacturing center in Webster.

The entire Xerox campus was locked down for hours as police frantically searched for the gunman, but with no success. The robbery-homicide continued to garner a great deal of public attention for weeks, and authorities released a photograph of the robber, but his identity remained unknown.

Batzel's mother, Rowena Bennett, said she intends to be at the news conference Wednesday. Her son was one of nine siblings, and he suffered from meningitis of the brain when an infant, she said.

Batzel survived his sickness and grew into a man with a light-hearted sense of humor, his mother said. Twice married, Batzel had one son from his first marriage and two daughters from his second.

The daughters "were teenagers in high school (in 2003)," Bennett said. "It was very difficult for them when he was killed."

Bennett said she feared the investigation into her son's killing had languished. But in March of this year the FBI and Webster police said that they had reinvigorated their investigation over the previous 18 months.

Authorities said they had information suggesting the suspect lived in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area and had ties to Rochester, and had placed his photograph on electronic bulletin boards in the region in hopes that someone would step forward to provide his name.

A $50,000 FBI reward plus $10,000 more from the credit union and Xerox remained in place.

It was unclear Tuesday whether the campaign helped lead to the arrest.

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GCraig@Gannett.com

Includes reporting by staff writer Steve Orr.