Adam Murr, 31, of North Tonawanda, started his own landscaping business last year. His family says he was trying to turn his life around.
Instead, his criminal past caught up with him when his mother saw surveillance photos of her son apparently robbing the HSBC Bank on Main Street in the City of Tonawanda.
"I saw the pictures and didn't hesitate," said Faye Johanson. "I called police and turned him in."
"And he said, 'Mom, I can't believe you turned me in.' I said, 'Adam I had to. What made you do that?' He said, 'Mom, I didn't want to tell you but I have a severe heroin problem."
"If I had of known what I know now -- I don't know if I'd have done the same thing," she said.
That's because just hours after he was arrested and transferred to the Erie County Holding Center, Adam hanged himself in his jail cell using his shoe laces.
"Why he was allowed to have shoe laces -- coming off of a heroin addiction -- and being suicidal -- is beyond me," Johanson said. "They couldn't watch him? They couldn't take his shoe laces away?"
Despite popular belief that inmates are required to remove their shoe laces, the holding center's superintendent said 90 percent of inmates keep their shoes, laces attached.
"If something came in indicative of him being suicidal... he would have been placed in difference housing and would not have had the shoe laces," said Robert Koch, the jail's superintendent.
Adam passed the jail's suicide screening and was not deemed a threat to himself.
Despite the outcome, Adam's mother does not regret her decision.
"I still think I made the right decision -- I made the right decision -- someone at the holding did not," Johanson said.
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