"Bling Bandit" sentenced in LI robberies

The ex-cop dubbed the Bling Bandit for the flashy jewelry he wore while robbing banks in Queens and Nassau has been sentenced to 5 years in prison for the Long Island crimes, prosecutors said.

Athelston "Kelly" Kelson, a decorated former New York Police Department detective and cancer-stricken Vietnam veteran, pleaded guilty in February to felony robbery charges that he passed threatening notes to tellers at a Bank of America in New Hyde Park, and at Chase banks in West Hempstead and Franklin Square.

He fled the robberies, which he pulled off during the summer of 2008, with between $1,000 and $6,000, prosecutors said.

He was sentenced Thursday.

In separate proceedings in Queens, Kelson, 61, of St. Albans, pleaded guilty last year to robbing a Chase branch in St. Albans in July 2008 in exchange for a promised prison sentence of 1 to 3 years.

The Queens and Nassau prison terms will run concurrently, said a spokeswoman for the Nassau district attorney.

Kelson's attorney, Harold Buster Ramsey Jr. of Manhattan, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

During the robberies, Kelson was polite, loquacious and relaxed, making small talk with tellers and commenting on the weather, police have said.

City and Nassau detectives had zeroed in on Kelson - who served with the NYPD for more than three decades and retired in 2006 - as their suspect in part because the jewelry he wore during the heists included a ring customarily given to retiring NYPD detectives.

In an interview with Newsday on the day of her son's arraignment, Kelson's mother, Hilda Kelson, of Randallstown, Md., blamed the crimes partly on his cancer diagnosis and the trauma of having served in Vietnam.