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Subscribe to RSSA manhunt is on for Kenneth Konias Jr., 22, who Pittsburgh police say killed his partner and stole more than $2 million from an armored vehicle. WPXI-TV's Jodine Costanzo reports.
An armored car guard allegedly shot his partner in the back of the head, stole more than $2 million in cash from the truck and then took the time to call his mom as he fled the Pittsburgh area, police said.
Police have launched a massive manhunt for Ken Konias, Jr., 22, of Dravosburg, who also called a friend Tuesday and asked about extradition laws in Canada and Mexico.
“This is a premeditated murder,” Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala said, according to local NBC affiliate, WPXI. “Our belief is that he planned to rob the company, and if he had to kill the guard, then he planned to do that. He shot the guy from close range in the back of the head to accomplish the robbery. That’s pretty cold.”
Konias, is wanted in connection with the shooting death of Michael Haines, 31, of East McKeesport, and with stealing $2.3 million from the Garda Cash Logistics vehicle. Police said they believe Konias to be armed and dangerous with two semiautomatic guns and his dead partner's duty weapon, a Glock 9mm.
Haines' body was in the back of the truck found idling under a Pittsburgh bridge in the Strip District on Tuesday afternoon.
According to a report Friday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Haines appeared nervous during one of his final stops on Tuesday. "He was almost perspiring," said the witness, an employee at Crate and Barrel, which was among several collection stops.
Konias was originally thought to be driving a tan 2002 Ford Explorer with Pennsylvania license plate GZW-4572. But now, police say he may be driving a tan or champagne 2006 Explorer with the same license plate from the older model.
According to the criminal complaint, Konias called a friend on Tuesday and said, "I [expletive] up. My life is over."
The police paperwork cited the friend as asking, "What? Did you kill someone?"
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The friend told police that Konias then answered, "Yes," and said he had enough money to live on for the rest of his life. Police said Konias also asked the friend about extradition laws in Canada and Mexico.
The criminal complaint also stated that Konias called his mother after the incident and stopped by his Dravosburg home, leaving behind a coat with what detectives said appeared to be blood splatter on the front.
Debbie Wilson, who lives near the house, said the entire community is in shock at what happened.
“It’s just a real tragedy. It makes me sick,” Wilson said.
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Leave a Comment:
Post a picture of Ken Konias Jr here.
he's cute....but, damn, he's gotta be pretty dumb
"The love of money is the root of all evil."
HMmm I'm thinking this could and should be fast tracking right to the lethal injection stage.
Did I miss something in the Dummies guide to F...KING up your life.
What was the purpose of him killing the guard?
It all really points to him. He could have handcuffed the guy and had the same results.
picture here:
http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2012/02/29/armored-truck-shooter-my-life-is-over/
Pennsylvania license plate GZW-4572 he may be driving a tan or champagne 2006 Explorer
Konias to be armed and dangerous with two semiautomatic guns and his dead partner's duty weapon, a Glock 9mm.
10% finders fee = $230,000
He's going to really enjoy all that blood money... in prison for the rest of his life.
real smart.
I don't like that he killed his partner. Maybe he wouldn't go in on it.
Pre-meditated first degree murder. I foresee a lethal injection in his future.
I mean why kill the guy? Couldn't he have just knocked him out or something? I am not condoning stealing the money, but executing your partner in cold blood make this so much more terrible.
How come he only realizes afterwards that he f'ed up his life????
beforehand he thought this was a bright idea???
I hope PA has the death penalty.. This guy seems like an outstanding candidate for it to me.
Bella
PA does have the death penalty. And this crime meets the aggravating circumstance requirement. "The defendant committed a killing while in the perpetration of a felony."
Odds are he will flee to Mexico, or perhaps Canada, where they will MANDATE a deal on extradition that the death penalty, and perhaps life without parole, are taken off the table. Canada is a 3 hour drive and Mexico is a hard 2 or 3 day drive from Pittsburgh. Irony would be he goes to Mexico and is shot by the cartels while being robbed.
He will at least try to flee to Canada and Mexico. Hopefully we catch him before he makes it to one of those places.
Frankly if he makes it we should send in a hit squad and tell them they can bury his body. It would be poetic justice if he was shot in the back of the head and the $2 million taken back, but it just won't happen. Maybe we can make him move a 100 pound boulder 100 feet for every dollar he stole? Make him not illegible for parole until it's all done. That should keep him busy for the rest of his life. And with all the exercise he should live a long life. Moving stones.....
Of course that's if we can't execute him for his crimes.
often people misuse the word'irony.' but trust_verify pretty much hit it on the head.
You do realize if he gets to mexico, he doesn't have to stop there. There are many other countries further south.
" Haines appeared nervous during one of his final stops on Tuesday. "He was almost perspiring," said the witness, an employee at Crate and Barrel, which was among several collection stops" Appears to me that he knew what was going to happen. Probably the heist was going to be done by both, and Haines got cold feet.
Or his partner just decided that 100% was better than 50%.
Why not just point the gun at his partner, say "give me your gun and get out" ar tie him up somehwere, and then run. Why kill him? I'm sure in cases like this the partner knew to just go along since the cash is insured anyhow. The weapons they have are not to stop robberies, they are merely to defend themselves. If they are presented with a give up the money or die situation they are told to simply walk away. So sad, what a nasty story...
Agreed. Thats too bad he had to kill his partner. What a dumb sh!t!
He probably rode with this guy a lot and maybe even had been quasi friends? If you are stupid enough to do this why not knock your partner out when he is not looking, Tie him up at gun point, use ether to put him to sleep or shoot him in leg at the most.
COME ON!!!
I hope they post a reward for his capture, because then he will know no rest. Since he killed for money, he will never be able to trust anyone with whom he associates... the righteous will act rightly and turn him in while the immoral will just want to cash in... just like him.
I want to send my best to the wife and family of the guy who died. I feel it was totally unneccesary. He could have easily locked him in the back of the armored vehicle alive and walked away. He's just a cold blooded killer...Can you spell death penalty???
I would say nearly all murders are totally unnecessary. There might be a person or two who needed killin'.
But ditto in the dead man's family and friends.
I used to be a Armored Car Courier and I made $9.50 an hour with no benifits, it can be very tempting to ride around all the time with several million dollars in cash. Killing the partner was uncalled for, he could have tied him up left him in the locked truck and took the keys. Everyone that works for or has worked for an Armored Car company has had the Fantasy of taking the money and running off.
I've worked where I had access to a lot of money too, but, there's something called karma that one always needs to be aware of. If you have any sense of right and wrong at all, it just doesn't feel very good when you know you've done something dishonest, no matter HOW alluring "taking a lot of money and running" may seem. Problem is, you'll never be able to run far enough to get away from yourself.
I think of any money that I haven't earned or been given as a gift as Monopoly money. That viewpoint definately keeps me out of trouble.
You are probably right. I'm sure a lot of people have had fantasies about that. I doubt most of the fantasies didn't involve killing their partner. That guy is an idiot. Most people really don't care if someone takes money from the big banks at this point in time, but to take a man's life during the process is totally unforgivable.
Luckily, most of the individuals that deal with large amounts of cash are sensible enough to understand the consequences of such actions and refrain themselves from ever doing anything so preposterous, despite the fantasies. No sane person would consider shooting their partner in the head as part of the equation either. Fantasy land still holds limits for anyone with any decency.
$2.3M USD is a lot of money to move around physically --- you could fill up the the trunks of two fairly larg cars and still wouldnt have enough room for it all --- Where does this knuckle think he is going to keep it all? Where does he think he is going to hide it? If he values his life he will essentially have to abandon the money(or a majority of it) and go into hiding .....by this time tomorrow either he will be caught or the majority of the money will be retrieved or both. --- some people suffer from poor impulse control ...usually frontal lobe damage or developmental issues --- the psych test for this position should have ferretted, this guy out as a bad candidate for the job.
My initial response was similar to yours, but I was curious so I crunched some numbers. Professor Google tells us that the dimensions of a freshly minted U.S. bill is:
(length) X (width) X (thickness)
6.1" X 2.6" 0.0043"
We can safely assume money in an armored-car is freshly minted, or at least fairly new. To make the calculations prettier, I'll say each bill is 0.005 inches thick. The original $2,300,000 stolen from the armored-car was some combination of {$1, $5, $10, $20, $100} bills. If the armored-car was carrying only $1 bills (silly assumption), let's see how much space that would take up:
Stacked in one pile, the height would be:
2,300,000 X 0.005 = 11,500 inches
= 958.3 feet
If he made a 10 by 20 stack of bills in the back of his Explorer (200 bills per layer), each layer of bills would take up:
6.1*(10) x 2.6*(20) = 61" x 46"
This is approximately 5 feet by 3.8 feet, which will easily fit in the back of an (empty) Explorer. However, dividing our above 953.3 feet into 200 equal piles still makes each pile ~4.8 feet feet tall, where we run in to some problems due to height. Instead of trying to "maximize" space by looking up the cargo space of an Explorer, let's go back and make more reasonable assumptions.
Let's instead assume that (of the original $2.3 million), half were $100 bills, and half were $20 bills, and that we make the same 20 by 10 stack of bills in our car.
Doing the same calculations above we get:
$1,150,000 split into $100 bill increments:
11,500 bills (1 stack)
57.5 bills (200 stacks)
0.2875 inches (height per stack)
$1,150,000 split into $20 bill increments:
57,500 bills (1 stack)
287.5 bills (200 stacks)
1.4375 inches (height per stack)
Combined: 1.7525 inch tall stacks!
So if you split the $2.3 million evenly into $100 bills and $20 bills, and pile it into your car with 200 bills per layer, you'll only make a stack of bills 1.75 inches high! If you instead made a 10 by 10 row of bills (100 bills per row), the height of all the stacks would still only be 3.5 inches.
So as long as a large proportion of the bills from the armored-car were in $100 and $20 bill increments, Mr. Konias Jr. would have no problem fitting this amount of money into the back of his SUV.
Weight would not be an issue either, it turns out. Checking with Professor Google, a newly minted U.S. bill weighs 1 gram. Converting this amount to pounds, 67,000 bills (11,500 + 57,500 from above) would weigh ~152 pounds. If you factor in humidity, the weight could go up a bit, but it would still be within the feasible limits for one 22 year old male to load into a car.
So the lesson of the day? $2.3 million dollars only weighs around 50 pounds if it's in $100 bill increments, and could fit into a large silver suitcase. I guess Hollywood routinely gets this one right.
If I read the article correctly this was the retail store daily pickup. Figure a lot of $20 bills. Perhaps 3 duffel bags 60lbs each or 5 at 40lbs each. Very doable and not that odd in the back of a SUV.
It's chilling to think that he actually went through with killing his co-worker in cold blood. Even if he got away with it, his conscious and karma would make for a pretty miserable life, not to mention the fact that he'll always be wondering if today is the day he'll be caught by the authorities. What a great life - for a bargain 2.3 million dollars!
loveblue2,
"What a great life - for a bargain 2.3 million dollars!"
Which really isn't that much money with the value of the dollar these days; especially not if he thinks it will allow him to live a lavish life style. He'll burn through that 2.3 million in no time, and then he'll be left with only his conscience if he has one.
Too many of the last two generations of kids just want fame and/or riches and they will do anything to get it.
They see so many kids their age, who are rich and famous, and they want it to.
They think it's easy and "why can't I have it to."
They don't want to work for anything; they want it all given to them.
They don't see any value in having a decent job and working for a middle class living.
And boy, do the girls have an attitude... "It's all about ME!"
The saddest generation of all time. The fat, lazy, obnoxious, and entitled "Internet Generation.:
Why bash the girls? That's kind chauvinist attitude.
ageofreason
apparently you haven't been around some of the girls of the current generation. Stating a truth does not make one chauvinist. Stating an opinion treads there but local guy is entitled to that without being labeled.
So the people that have been steeling money for the past 2000 or so years weren't doing it to get rich quick? This is a problem of tyhe last 2 generations? OK buddy, whatever you say...
Way to read whatever you want into a statement.
Let me guess... you're a high school dropout?
And what is "steeling?"
You must live in a cave if you can't see that kids today want it all and they want it now, and they sure don't want to work in a factory for 40 years to get ahead in life.
ageofreason, I've seen multiple posts from Local_Guy. He has some sort of animosity toward women in all of them. I've tried to engage in a conversation about his attitudes, but he refuses to acknowledge me. Unfortunately, some men just hate women. This is one of those men.
Don't tell me he could have accomplished this without killing his partner. What a jerk.
He could have wounded him in the leg to know he meant business.
Go to Hades. Go directly to Hades. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 dollars.
There would be something cool about this guy if had respect for human life.
I can have some respect for a robber who won't harm other people permanently or kill to get what they want.
Unnecessary evil.
Respect for a robber? Are you serious? How much respect for him would you have if he robbed your WIFE? Idiot!
Are Americans really incapable of expressing opinions without acting childish with name calling.
I'd return the favor, but not on an MSNBC forum.
And you are calling me an idiot? Ironic when you cannot tell the difference between this forum and one where you don't have to conduct yourself with some decorum.
Yes, I have respect for people like Bernie Madoff who steal without intentionally killing someone versus someone who could have wounded someone without killing them and accomplished the same goal. Do I agree with robbery? No. Absolutely not. But I will take a Bernie Madoff over this cold blooded killer any day of the week.
Yeah this kid is already cooked. He'll end up doin' himself with one in the mouth. He will never rest.
2 million to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life and the guilt of killing another person, not worth it. they will catch this fool in some local motel to scared to spend the money or to scared to be in public, he will slip up pretty quick
I would have done it. Except I would have just locked up my partner and booked. 2.3 million is a lot of cash and would set me for life.
He didn't have to kill the guy....he'll never see the light of day again.
He could've handcuffed him or something, took the money, buried it somewhere, turned himself in and do his 15 to 20.
Probably should have checked out that whole extradition thing before killing your partner Mr. Premeditation. Now that your face will be plastered all over the tv and internet, I'm sure you'll be able to live a comfortable, hassle free life in Mexico. Do the world a favor and off yourself.
Not the brightest bulb in the box.
All I can say, is this idiot better not head for Mexico... They will deal with you real quickly while they take your stolen cash, shoot you, toss you in a gutter and stash it with all their drug money from idiotic Americans that fund those cartels with their drug purchases. And it's too late to get on an airplane, cause you might have made it to Taiwan if you hadn't killed your partner. Murder and Robbery are two different things. And if you show up in my neighborhood, I can shoot you in self defense since you are an armed felon and I would fear for my life and that of my child. Then I could turn that money in for the reward! Hey, come on by! (and it is ridiculous that a previous poster was a guard and made $9.50 and hour. Nobody can survive and have a decent life in America on that and way too many people have to do so while the 1% just take all of the money.)
I very STRONGLY suspect that his partner was in on it from the get-go and probably had cold feet at the last minute. Why else would he have looked so flushed at their last stop?
Haines appeared nervous during one of his final stops on Tuesday. "He was almost perspiring," said the witness, an employee at Crate and Barrel, which was among several collection stops.
I think Ken Konias Jr. killed his partner after Haines changed his mind about the heist -OR- Konias killed Haines so as not have to do a 50-50 split with him.
Ummmmmmmmm, he may have viewed killing his partner as a "necessary" part of his plan.........
I could be mistaken, but I believe we have had problems extraditing people from Canada in the past because a) they do not have the death penalty and b) won't allow extradition if the person faces the death penalty....... cold-blooded murder would almost certainly make him a candidate.
Callous, cold, calculating, or just plain dumb?
I hope I am wrong - I hope he is found quickly and that jsutice is swift and cheap (about the cost of a few .45 cal rounds) I'm sure he won't be able to cross the border at any of the normal checkpoints, but as easily as others get in, so too can people get out.
Mexico wont extradite if the death penalty is on the table.
Another 99%er moving into the 1% for a short period of time. Too bad he had to murder and steal his way there. Never fear an all taxpayer expense paid trip to the big house awaits this maroon.
3-1 odds he takes his own life when confronted by authorities in Mexico........
Hey, Kenny - guess what? To say you 'f*ed up' is an epic understatement.
Wait - listen - you hear that? It's the sound of Haines...you remember Mike, your late partner, right?...breathing down you neck. Live another week, live a 'good' long life - you'll still hear him. His blood is on your hands and cries out for justice.