Fiancee of Dougherty Gang Member Says FBI Came To His House Today To Talk About Gang’s Guns

Posted Aug 9, 2011 by Howard Altman

Updated Aug 9, 2011 at 09:57 PM

Okay, this story you are about to read is only tangentially connected to the military. Glenn Stanley and his wife -  the aunt of the Dougherty Gang members - took in Dylan Dougherty as a young boy and adopted him. Glenn Stanley was a Vietnam War hero, a Marine whose entire platoon was killed while on patrol, according to a family member. Stanley survived, received a number of medals and never liked guns. Dylan, on the other hand….

Apologies in advance to anyone offended that I am posting a story about the Dougherty Gang here.

Brendon Bookman, the fiancée of fugitive Lee-Grace Dougherty, says the FBI came to his house today to speak to him about the gun feds say she brandished during a Georgia bank job.

The FBI was asking about the weapon – either a Mac-10 or a Tec-9 machine pistol– that surveillance cameras captured Dougherty pointing at tellers as she and her two brothers robbed a bank in Valdosta, shortly after noon Tuesday.

Dougherty, 29, along with her brothers Ryan 21, and Dylan Dougherty Stanley, 26, were captured on video wearing masks and toting weapons as they entered the bank, according to the FBI. Shots were fired toward the ceiling and everyone was ordered to the ground.

Five hours earlier, investigators say, the Doughertys opened fire on a Zephyrhills police officer after a traffic stop.

Dougherty and her younger brother, Ryan, were having recent scrapes with the law. Dougherty was arrested twice in 10 days by Brevard County Sheriff’s Office deputies – the first time for driving while on drugs and assaulting an officer by repeatedly kicking and headbutting him after crashing her car, according to a report. The second time, she got into another crash and took off, according to another report.

During the first arrest, a deputy said she dropped repeated F bombs.

Ryan had his own troubles. He had just been sentenced a day before the sibling crime spree to 12 years probation in Volusia County for exchanging nearly 400 extremely explicit text messages with an 11-year-old girl. Records show that he actually thought she was 13.

Bookman told the FBI he thinks he saw his fiancee’s weapon before.

“I told them it looked very familiar due to the size of the magazine,” he tells me, via a text message, as I am working out. (Okay, so I am on vacation and in the gym, but when the fiancée of a gun-toting part-time topless dancer who is on the run with her two siblings reaches out, well, I’m game.)

Bookman, who says Dougherty is a former student who moved in with him about seven months ago, never saw her fire the weapon.

“I don’t like guns,” he texted. “Particularly handguns.”

The AK-47 and the Mac-10 or Tech-9 shown by the FBI look like ones owned by Dylan Dougherty Stanley, he says later in a telephone interview.

In addition to dancing at a Cocoa Beach club called Cheaters, Bookman says Dougherty danced at a number of other clubs as well.

“She danced at one place called Lollipops in Daytona Beach, in the Inner Room,” he says.  “I had this policy, until we got married. I don’t put a wife and girlfriend in the same category at all. As long as we are not married, we have a ‘don’t ask-don’t tell’ policy. When you go out, you do what you do, just don’t bring it around me. If I go out, I do what I do and won’t bring it around you.”

Bookman says Dougherty recently stopped stripping and that she had aspirations of becoming an orthodontist or chiropractor. Both, says Bookman, were pipedreams.

The Doughertys had another sister, Erin, who died in 2007. She too was a stripper, Bookman says. Another sister, Devon, lives in Texas, he says.

“I have been in touch with their mom,” he says of Barbara June Bell of East Palatka. “The biggest thing her mom wants, she has four children left, she wants them to live, and there is a chance that three of them won’t.”

Bookman says the last time he saw his fiancée was the weekend before she and her brothers took off on their interstate crime spree.

Their last conversation before Dougherty took off was about Ryan’s girlfriend Amber’s pending childbirth.

“We talked about whether or not we had a camcorder to videotape Amber’s childbirth,” he says. “It is a boy. Amber is a really good woman, sorry she is going through all this. I lost another woman, this will probably be the last one I am with, she is losing father of her child, that is much more significant than what I am losing.”

Bookman says he had no idea at the time that she was about to shoot at cops and stick up a bank.

But her flickr account may have offered some clue about what was on her mind.

“I am a Floridian. Born and raised in Seminole County. I have a huge crazy family. I’m 28 but act like I’m 17 most of the time. I love to farm and shoot guys and wreck cars. I’m a redneck and proud of it. I like milk and German engineering and causing mayhem with my siblings.”
Once again, Bookman says he does not expect this to end well.

“They are wanted on attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, now crossing a state line and robbing a bank,” he says. “They are looking at a long time in prison. I don’t see the carrot, but I see the stick.”

Bookman says he is through with women.

“I am going to go back to drinking and watching college football,” he says. “Maybe I will get a hooker now and then, but these women are too much trouble.”