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Lewis Jones III was sentenced to 32 years and one day in prison by a U.S. District Court last Thursday.
Lewis Jones III, pictured bottom right, has been sentenced to 32 years and one day in prison for his part in the robbery of six jewelry stores across the Southeast. Abigail Lee Kemp, pictured top left, carried out five of the six robberies solo, allegedly to Jones’ and two other accomplices’ instruction.
Panama City, Fla.--The saga of the female armed robber and the three men found guilty of aiding her has come to a close, at least for now.
Lewis Jones III was sentenced to 32 years and one day in prison by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Panama City Division last Thursday, according to court documents.
He was also ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution “jointly and severally with co-defendants.”
Jones was apprehended in January 2016 and indicted a month later, for his alleged role in a series of jewelry store robberies across the Southeast United States committed between April 2015 and January 2016.
At trial last summer, he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit robberies affecting commerce and multiple weapons charges, as were his alleged accomplices, brothers Larry Bernard Gilmore and Michael Bernard Gilmore.
News coverage of the case was widespread because in five of the six robberies, then 24-year-old Abigail Lee Kemp committed the robberies alone, zip-tying jewelry store employees at gunpoint before emptying the store’s cases of jewelry.
Typically, armed robberies are committed by more than one person and, more often than not, those people are men; having a lone armed female robber is almost unheard of.
Law enforcement and the district attorney said that Kemp was trained by her purported boyfriend Jones, as well as the Gilmore brothers, and communicated with them during the robberies via an ear piece while they acted as look-outs.
She did not wear a mask, and her image was captured in multiple surveillance videos.
Last July, Kemp entered into a plea deal, testifying against Jones and the Gilmores, and in January this year was sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Larry Bernard Gilmore got 32 years.
In February, Michael Bernard Gilmore also was sentenced to 32 years.
According to a Panama City newspaper, the News Herald, like the Gilmores, Jones plans to appeal his sentence.
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