That will buy a lot of disguises and air tickets

That will buy a lot of disguises and air tickets." Which doesn't mean that the FBI has given up on her. The bureau has just published its new "10 Most Wanted List" and Heather Tallchief, aged 25, is number three, the highest position for a woman in 23 years and a symbol of a rising crime wave amongst American women. Lloyd's of London, insurers of the armoured car company, have offered a reward of pounds 200,000 for her capture. Most fugitives on the FBI's Wanted List are career criminals with a history of violent felonies Heather is not one of them Her crime was her first and, seemingly, her last. She had no criminal record when she took Loomis Armored for a king's ransom. In fact, her career, credit and school records were all above average.

It appears that her crime was motivated by a love of ceramics and poetry, and a desire to escape from bad memories of friends dying from Aids.Heather Tallchief was born in Buffalo, New York, a gritty industrial town which shivers under sub-zero temperatures for six months of the year Heather hated every moment she spent there. Intelligent and sensitive, she suffered as the child of an allegedly abusive father. Almost every day she begged her mother, Ann, an Italian-American, to leave In 1988 she got her wish. Ann Tallchief packed up everything and took her only daughter to San Francisco, travelling by Greyhound bus.In California Heather flourished. She was already pretty, a mix of Seneca Indian - her father - and Italian American The San Francisco air quickly made her beautiful. She had ambitions to work in medicine, obtained a nursing qualification and in 1991 was hired by an Aids hospice, the Kimberly Quality Care Center "She was a great worker," says a senior Kimberly nurse. "She had this amazing empathy with patients; even the ones closest to death would be smiling when she left their bedside."In the 14 months she was at the Kimberly 20 patients died, people who had become close friends.

Her sadness and sense of despondency were kept well hidden, but in late 1992 she told a friend that her life was making no sense She told her mother that she wanted more. "She began to wonder why she couldn't be happy, have nice things," says Ann Tallchief. "She said she didn't want to worry about money, or people dying."At the same time, Heather, who had always been interested in ancient Mexican art, began to make a close study of Mayan ceramics This was not unusual for her. Ann Tallchief says that as a child, her daughter collected any beautiful objects she could afford. It is now clear that during her last six months at Kimberly Heather was making some unusual plans.

In mid-1992 she began to lay the foundations for a multi-million-dollar rip- off, using a level of meticulous planning that still astounds the FBI Her first move was to establish a series of fake identities. "That's not hard, although it should be - it just takes patience," says Joe Dushek. "Soldier of Fortune magazine is a good place to start."Heather thought so. She used the monthly crib sheet for wannabe mercenaries to contact "passport collectors", men who sell virgin passports of defunct countries such as Yugoslavia.

She would then travel to small towns and get driving licences in the name on her fake IDs. By the beginning of 1993 she already had legitimate drivers' licences in 12 different names. She then used her exceptional work record at the Kimberly to apply for jobs as an armoured car driver. It may have looked an odd choice to some of the cash carriers she contacted, but she had a disarming explanation.