MONROE CO.—A Monroe County arrest of a former Carrier Mills woman has left Saline County residents who know her shaking their heads over the situation, and those who don’t know her wondering just what on earth is going on with her.
Mallary Nolen Jarrett, 27, formerly of Carrier Mills and currently of Red Bud in Randolph County, managed to find trouble on the afternoon of January 7 when she traveled to the village of Waterloo in neighboring Monroe County to, say authorities, rob the Quick Cash store armed with a toy weapon.
Jarrett is a daughter of Jeff Nolen, who is a son of former Saline County lawman Jack Nolen, who died four years ago this June after a long battle with cancer.
The escapade that landed her in lockup reads like a script from a dime-store crime novel, but according to police in Waterloo, it’s really real…and absolutely inexplicable.
Left elderly hubby at home
Authorities indicate that on the afternoon of January 7, Jarrett left her ailing, 78-year-old husband, Bill Jarrett (who is recovering from a stroke), at their home in Red Bud and traveled to Waterloo.
Around 3:30 p.m., Jarrett entered the Quick Cash on North Market Street in Waterloo and asked the clerk for paperwork in order to take out a loan (Quick Cash, like a lot of “quick-loan” or “payday loan” facilities, has an application process). The clerk handed Jarrett the papers, and Jarrett walked out of the store, but didn’t leave the front of the building. Instead, said the store clerk, the woman “paced nervously” back and forth in front of the store.
Momentarily, Jarrett re-entered the store and advised the clerk she “had a gun and her boyfriend was outside in a car.”
Jarrett then was reported to have demanded the clerk hand over all the money she had available…which turned out to not be a lot: $131 in the cash drawer.
Nevertheless, Jarrett took it, put it in a plastic shopping back, then ran back outside. The clerk saw her run across Market Street and into a subdivision called Pautler Heights.
At that point, about 3:54 p.m., the clerk placed a 911 call to report the crime, and gave a description of the woman who had just robbed the store, describing Jarrett, a brunette, as a woman in her 20s or 30s, with long blonde hair, clothed all in black, and wearing a black hat.
Caught
It didn’t take long for responding officers to find her: Officers caught up with Jarrett only about a block away on Waterloo Drive.
They discovered she was wearing a blonde wig.
In her possession was a plastic bag with $131 in it….and she had with her a plastic BB gun. Jarrett was brought in for questioning and lodged in the Monroe County jail, with Illinois State Police crime scene authorities examining the scene.
While one of Jarrett’s arresting charges was armed robbery (with the qualifier being that she used a lethal weapon in the commission of the crime of robbery), the next day, Monroe County state’s attorney Kris Reitz reduced that count; she was charged with Aggravated Robbery instead, this owing to the fact that the “gun” was a plastic toy gun, reportedly with the orange tip (used to ensure identification of “not a real gun”) blacked out with some substance.
And, as it turned out, there was no one else in the vehicle with her—boyfriend or otherwise—when authorities called a tow to take it away from the scene. It was registered only to Jarrett and her elderly husband, whose response to the entire mess remains unreported in mainstream media and whom Disclosure was unable to contact.
The history
Jarrett’s father, Jeff Nolen, became legendary in Saline and surrounding counties when Jarrett was young, for a bank robbery, not because he got away with it, but because the way in which he conducted it, and what he was doing when he was found afterwards, showed he suffered from a classic case of the dumbs.
Reports indicate that Nolen traveled to the bank in Stonefort on a stolen motorcycle, walked into the business without even covering his face, managed to get money, went back to the bike and returned to his trailer just a few miles away.
When police responded to the trailer, they reportedly found the bike and some of the money. The rest of the money had reportedly been spent on not only meth, but material to make more, which Nolen was supposedly found in the process of cooking when he was interrupted by the law.
In that ensuing time, he was charged with a multitude of serious crimes in Saline, Williamson and Johnson counties, including Theft, Possession of a Controlled Substance, Financial Exploitation of the Elderly, Possession of Meth, Retail Theft, Bad Check and he is currently working his way through court in Saline on a Narcotics charge, filed against him in late 2013.
Reports out of Carrier Mills indicate that Nolen’s other daughters have suffered some substance abuse issues, possibly from having such a bad example set for them.
However, everyone’s responsible for his or her own actions, as Jarrett has since discovered.
The questions arising in Saline County from the incident bear more on what the girl was doing married to a man 50 years her senior than they do on the alleged robbery…as if people were not surprised to hear that she had been charged with such a crime. Disclosure was unable to gather anything more from anyone questioning such a circumstance except for the fact that they are questioning it.
There’s been no indication of when Nolen’s subsequent court appearances will be; as of press time, she was still being held on $50,000 bail ($5,000 cash bond) in Monroe County.