I carry those too. I believe I was the first poster to suggest W-1 simply had a special racing bag that he didn't want to part with
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, so no - I don't think the fact of the red bag by itself is necessarily a problem. His original statement in the charging documents is quite detailed, though. He said he watched the employee enter into a transaction with the bank manager, who handed the employee a manilla envelope which the employee then gave to W-1.
Why would he think the money being in a manilla envelope vs the red bag (which the employee saw and put the money in) was something to make up on the spot like that? Why wouldn't he just say he put the money in a manilla envelope when he got to the garage? That's not suspicious. But lying is. So, then I wondered about the red bag. If he already had a manilla envelope, why didn't he just use that to start with if his bag was special to him?
I don't know, but my guess that he didn't want to talk about the red bag for the same reason he decided not to leave the money in the bag. Instead, he switched the money to a manila envelope, which would be more businesslike. The red bag, by contrast, was very unbusinesslike. Maybe he didn't feel like talking about how he carried $40K in a grocery tote.
Maybe, you know, the bag was specifically embarrassing to him:
I presume that the bag was an undignified way to convey $40K cash, so he came up with a manila envelope. Later in the aftermath of the murders, he didn't feel like talking about the stupid red bag or his stupid texts of the cash to his girlfriend, either.
As a teenager, I once got in trouble for burning the sleeve off my windbreaker, in a lounge at "very important place" where I worked. I wasn't really creating a fire hazard (stone floors), but, you know, very important places aren't thrilled to hear about deliberately setting one's clothes on fire. So, I was hauled in to the head guy's office to explain myself.
"Why were you burning the sleeve off your jacket?" he asked me.
"Ah ... to match the other sleeve," I stammered. "The left arm was missing. I decided to make a vest out of it."
"So, your jacket came with one sleeve?" he asked.
"Not exactly."
"So, how did it come to have one sleeve?"
"The left sleeve burned off."
"Burned off."
"Right."
"And how did the left sleeve burn off?"
"It caught on fire while I was driving, sir."
"Was your car on fire also while you were driving?"
"No sir. I was smoking."
"So you were driving down the road, smoking, and noticed that your jacket was on fire?"
"That's right, sir."
"And what did you do about that?"
"I pulled over. There was man watering his garden with a hose, and I asked him to put out my jacket."
"Which he did?"
"Yes sir. I thanked him and went on my way."
"Do you have a special attraction to fire?"
"No sir. I was just trying to even it out."
"Because wearing a jacket with one arm would be crazy."
"That's right, sir."
Sometimes young guys do dumb things, which makes sense to them or are funny to them in the moment, but sound really stupid later when spelled out in a different setting. In my case, I thought it would be amusing to make a vest out of my ruined jacket, never dreaming that the whole story would end up coming out to the big boss.