A 59-year-old transient is asking to be sentenced for as much time as possible after pleading guilty to robbing a Cheyenne bank on July 27.

Linda Thompson entered the plea Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Cheyenne. Judge Nancy Freudenthal set a sentencing date of Oct.12, and said Thompson could receive up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Thompson told the court she had been released from an Oregon prison in June after serving six years for bank robbery there. Thompson says she told Oregon officials that she wanted to stay in jail, but they made her leave against her will.

She says she "jumped a freight train" to Cheyenne in July with the intention of settling down here.

But Thompson says she was assaulted in Martin Luther King Jr. park not long after arriving here, adding the incident made her ''want to go back home" to prison.

She says she knew robbing a bank again would be her ticket back to prison, so she went to the U.S. bank in Cheyenne, told a clerk she had a gun and demanded money. Thompson says she then went outside the bank, threw the money in the air, lit a cigarette and waited for police to arrive, which they soon did.

Thompson was arrested and all of the money she had taken--$16,300-- was recovered.

Thompson told the court Wednesday: "Prison is home to me. I'm just going back home."

Later in the hearing, when Judge Freudenthal asked if she had any further comments, Thompson said in regard to her sentence "I'd like as much time as possible."

Thompson said at another point that she has spent a total of 18 years in prison on seven different felony convictions.

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