Serial Armed Robber Who Struck Evanston Shops Pleads Guilty

SKOKIE, IL — A man charged with more than half a dozen armed robberies was sentenced to 12 years in prison after he pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of attempted robbery. The robberies took place between September 2017 and March 2018 in Evanston, Berwyn and downtown Chicago.

Preston Gresham, 58, is a veteran, a plumber and now a 10-time convicted felon with a history of armed robbery. According to the charges in the nine criminal cases resolved by his negotiated guilty plea, Gresham targeted fast food restaurants and boutique shops staffed by women.

Gresham had been jailed since his most recent arrest on March 20, 2018, where he was charged with stealing nearly $350 from a Dunkin Donuts in the Loop. According to witnesses, in that incident, like all the others, Gresham walked into a business, lifted up his shirt to reveal a gun in his waistband and demand money.

"Open up the register and don't do anything funny," he told a staff member in one of the robberies, according to Chicago police. Police described the gun he was carrying as a replica in his arrest report.

Gresham was taken into custody after a Dunkin Donut staffer flagged down passing officers while chasing him out of the store onto Van Buren Street. At the time of his arrest, officers learned that there was already an active arrest warrant for Gresham in connection with another armed robbery, as well as investigative alerts for two other recent downtown Chicago armed robberies.

Court records show the warrant was connected to an armed robbery charge from Berwyn, where Gresham was first accused of stealing $179 from a KFC at gunpoint and later indicted on charges he robbed three women. He was arrested Sept. 30, 2017, and released on bond on Dec. 8, 2017, after a friend and neighbor put up the $10,000 cash portion of his bond. The money was returned to her after Gresham's arrest a few months later.

Following his arrest in Chicago, Gresham admitted to investigators that he was the man caught on video on Jan. 22 robbing a thrift shop in the 900 block of Chicago Avenue, Evanston police said last year.

Minutes before stealing about $330 in cash from the shop, he had been rebuffed by staff at a knitting store in the 1600 block of Orrington Avenue after demanding money.

As Evanston police searched for potentially two armed robbers, they detained a Chicago naprapath who described being injured in the encounter.

Gresham served in the armed forces from January 1977 until his honorable discharge in March 1980, according to arrest records. At the time of his arrest, he had been living for about a year at a veteran's home operated by Catholic Charities in Chicago's Gresham neighborhood.

According to Illinois Department of Corrections records, Gresham was sentenced in 1998 to 15 years for eight counts of armed robbery and one count of attempted armed robbery. He was released in 2005 and completed parole in 2008.

Under Illinois criminal law, a gun has to be real to be used in the offense of armed robbery. If a robber says or implies they have a gun or another dangerous weapon — "including a knife, club, ax, or bludgeon" — during a robbery, then the crime is aggravated robbery.

Under terms of his negotiated plea, Gresham pleaded guilty to one count of attempted armed robbery in exchange for other charges being dropped. The Evanston charges will run concurrent with six other cases, and he will receive credit for the more than 14 months he has spent in Cook County Jail.

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