A man serving a life sentence for robbing an Arkansas taco shop with a plastic water gun is asking for clemency after 40 years behind bars.
Rolf Kaestel, who turned 70 on Wednesday, has been sitting in the slammer since 1981 for a crime in which no one was injured – and where he made off with a whopping $264.
“I have not been able to make any sense of it,” Kaestel told The Daily Beast, “not because it’s me or my case but because this kind of thing should not happen anywhere to anyone.”
Keeping Kaestel locked up is costing $20,000 a year, The Daily Beast reported in a lengthy story on the case.
Even the cashier Kaestel held up four decades ago at Senor Bob’s Taco Hut in Port Smith wants Kaestel released.
“I actually apologized to him because I felt like even though he was the one that robbed me, I felt like I had taken his life because he had been in there for so long,” Dennis Schlutterman said in an emotional YouTube video posted by filmmaker Kelly Duda
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Schlutterman described the robbery to Duda, saying Kaestel displayed the gun by pulling his jacket back — but never threatened him in any way. He was “shocked” to find out the robber was still doing time 25 years later, he said.
“Many nights I sat there and thought about it and thought about it,” Shlutterman, who was 17 at the time of the robbery, said.
“I couldn’t believe that he was still there.”
“This man has paid the price 10 times over and it’s time,” he added. “It’s time for you to let him go.”
Gov. Asa Hutchinson has to make the call on Kaestel’s clemency application but it’s not the first time the inmate has applied for a chance to get out. Hutchinson denied clemency to Kaestel in 2015, and if he’s denied again he’ll have to wait four years to reapply to the state’s Parole Board, The Daily Beast said.
Kaestel has been a model prisoner, according to the publication: he’s worked as a paralegal, earned three associate’s degrees and taught an astronomy class while in prison.
Duda, the filmmaker, interviewed Kaestel while investigating the state prison system during a blood bank scandal, after which the prisoner was transferred to a prison in Utah.
“When more serious offenders like convicted rapists and murderers get out in less time, one has to wonder what’s wrong with this picture?” Duda told The Daily Beat.
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