Celia Cooney
American robber
Celia Roth Cooney (1904 – July 13, 1992) was an American who went on a robbing spree in the spring of 1924 in New York City. Along with her husband, Ed Cooney, Cooney robbed 10 businesses before they were caught. She became known as the Bobbed-Haired Bandit for her exploits. The robberies received significant media coverage, making headlines in The New York Times, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and others. The newspapers pilloried commissioner Richard Enright and the New York City Police Department for their inability to catch Cooney. In response, Enright ordered the largest manhunt in the city's history.
Cooney and her husband evaded capture for 65 days, eventually fleeing to Florida after a botched robbery of the payroll office of the National Biscuit Company. While in Florida, she gave birth to a child, who died several days later. She and her husband were caught on April 21, 1924, and both were sentenced to twenty years in prison, of which she served seven. After leaving prison, she spent the rest of her life in relative obscurity, dying in 1992.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q47035019. VIAF identifies the subject as 19091449. The Library of Congress control number is n2005053871. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904, 1992 and 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Celia Cooney” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.