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Standoff survivor says bank heist was repeat

KISSIMMEE - The robbers who held four people hostage during a botched heist of a bank near Walt Disney World this week held up the same bank in November, Osceola County sheriff's officials said Thursday.

Investigators said Gaetano Alessandrello, 50, and Amanda Lynn Moeller, 26, longtime business partners, made off with $38,000 after robbing the Mercantile Bank on Nov. 16.

In Tuesday's robbery attempt that resulted in a 10-hour standoff, a sheriff's sniper fatally shot Alessandrello after he refused to release the last hostage and attempted to drive off with her and Moeller. The hostage was not hurt. Moeller was arrested and jailed without bail.

Moeller has confessed to the November heist, sheriff's spokeswoman Twis Lizasuain said. On Thursday she was charged with armed robbery with a firearm, grand theft and kidnapping in connection with it. She was already charged with one count of armed robbery related to Tuesday's attempt, and Lizasuain said she faces a possible felony murder charge relating to Alessandrello's death.

In November, the pair entered the bank, locked the manager in the back room at gunpoint and demanded cash from the teller, authorities said. No one else was in the bank at the time.

In 1979, Alessandrello was sentenced to eight years in federal prison after he was convicted of kidnapping a New Jersey banker's wife and holding her for a $217,000 ransom.

After he was released, he opened a pizzeria in Bloomingburg, N.Y., in the Catskills. That's where he met Moeller, according to neighbors.

Records show Moeller recently worked with Alessandrello at Empire Commercial Cleaning Services, a business he opened that specialized in cleaning vacation rentals near Disney.

[Last modified January 13, 2006, 01:45:18]