CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Jeffrey and Jill Erickson

criminal couple

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ87064295 ↗
Source-derived summary

Jeffrey E. Erickson (1958–1992) and Jill Sandra Erickson (née Cohen; 1964–1991) were an American married criminal couple from Illinois known for committing a series of violent bank robberies.

The Ericksons are believed to have committed eight bank robberies in the Chicago metropolitan area in 1990 and 1991. Their modus operandi was for Jeffrey to announce a hold-up while wearing a fake beard and carrying a police scanner, while Jill prepared the getaway cars. She killed herself after a high-speed chase, while Jeffrey was killed after attempting to escape the custody of two United States marshals. He had already shot and killed one marshal before being mortally wounded by a police detective.

The 1996 film Normal Life was based upon the Ericksons' exploits.

Early life

Jeffrey was born on December 11, 1958, to Jack Erickson, a telephone company middle manager, and June, a stay-at-home mother. He was raised in Morton Grove, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, together with his older brother, Jim. In 1977, after graduating from Niles West High School, where he was a member of the swim team, Jeffrey joined the United States Marine Corps, where he acquired excellent marksmanship skills.

Jill was born on January 30, 1964, as the younger of two girls raised by adoptive parents Carl Cohen, a pharmacist, and Fran Cohen, a child education specialist, in Niles, Illinois.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Jeffrey and Jill Erickson” as criminal couple. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jeffrey, Jill and Erickson.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1958, 1992, 1964, 1991—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Jeffrey, Jill and Erickson providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Jeffrey and Jill Erickson”, the useful work is to connect “criminal couple” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q87064295. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1992, 1964 and 1991.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Jeffrey and Jill Erickson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Jeffrey and Jill Erickson primary sources, Jeffrey and Jill Erickson archive and Jeffrey research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jeffrey and Jill Erickson”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Jeffrey and Jill Erickson” 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.