If a plea agreement is accepted by Kosciusko Circuit Court Judge Rex Reed, Jeffrey R. Zoll of Warsaw will get a total of 5-1/2 years in prison for robbing a Leesburg bank in January and taking a pickup from a neighbor.

Zoll, 40, pleaded guilty Thursday morning in Kosciusko Circuit Court to conspiracy to commit robbery, a Class C felony, and auto theft, a Class D felony. The presumptive terms for those offenses, respectively, are four years and 1-1/2 years and, by pleading guilty, the Kosciusko County prosecutor agreed to seek only that amount of prison time for Zoll.

As a condition of the plea agreement, the prison term here would be ordered served consecutively to a 20-year sentence in Whitley Circuit Court, where Zoll was sentenced in June for robbing a South Whitley bank.

Zoll's plea agreement has yet to be accepted by the court, but if it is, Reed will sentence Zoll during an 8:15 a.m. hearing Sept. 18.

Zoll was free on bond from the January robbery of the Farmers State Bank in Leesburg when he robbed the First Federal Savings Bank of Wabash at South Whitley.

In the Leesburg robbery, an unarmed Zoll entered the bank on Jan. 7 and demanded money. He then fled the bank on foot with an undisclosed amount of cash and got into a nearby vehicle. Zoll was apprehended the following day after the owner of a local car dealership helped police identify him; the vehicle used to leave the scene of the robbery was taken for a test drive by Zoll shortly before the crime. He later returned the vehicle.

The pickup Zoll took from his neighbor was reportedly seen at several other area robberies, including an April 3 incident at the Pierceton Lake City Bank and the South Whitley robbery. The Pierceton robbery remains unsolved.

Zoll was chased into Allen County and apprehended by police after the South Whitley robbery. He was convicted of bank robbery in Decatur in 1975, authorities said. [[In-content Ad]]