[12/16/04]A 30-year-old Vicksburg man was sentenced Wednesday to spend the rest of his life in prison, closing the door on a career in crime that started 10 years ago.

Bobby Earl Wilson, first convicted of auto burglary in 1994, was sentenced as a habitual violent offender after his third conviction for robbing a Trustmark bank his last arrest coming six days after his release from a federal term for an earlier holdup at the same branch.

The robbery at the bank at Mission and Grove was reported at 9:38 a.m. on March 30. Wilson was arrested minutes later while hiding behind a public school bus parked on Hayes Street, about a half-mile away.

When authorities approached, he gave them his name as “Bank Robber.” The missing $11,000 was found nearby.

He was convicted Nov. 3 of simple robbery for the holdup and could have been sentenced to a maximum of 15 years on that charge. But he was given life in prison because Warren County Circuit Judge Frank Vollor ruled Wilson to be a habitual violent offender. Under Mississippi law, multiple violent crimes can trigger the life term.

Wilson’s first conviction, also in Warren County Circuit Court, resulted in a five-year suspended sentence. The suspension was later revoked, however, and he was sent to a restitution center. Records show he escaped from that facility and was caught in 1995. He was then held at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman until August 1997.

Ten months later, he robbed two Trustmark banks in one month. In 1999, he pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts of bank robbery robbing the Mission 66 Trustmark and the Trustmark on Cherry Street at East Avenue. He was released from federal prison on March 24 and rearrested on the new charge before the end of the month. He’s been in the Warren County Jail since.