Groton -- Town Police earlier this month charged a Michigan man with the July 19, 2015, armed robbery of the Wal-Mart on Gold Star Highway, saying Jeremy E. Goodale left behind a fingerprint that identified him as the perpetrator.

Goodale, 35, of Battle Creek, was charged Dec. 8 with first-degree robbery and third-degree larceny. He is being held in lieu of a $200,000 bond at the Corrigan-Radgowski Correctional Center. During an appearance Monday in New London Superior Court, Judge Hillary B. Strackbein appointed attorney M. Fred DeCaprio to represent Goodale and continued the case to Jan. 25. DeCaprio entered a not guilty plea on Goodale's behalf.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, a heavyset white man walked into the customer service area at the Wal-Mart and used one of the store's clipboard's to write a note telling the associate he had a gun and to put all the money from the register into a bag. As he handed it to the woman, he told her, "I'm serious. You have three seconds."

The employee, scared for her life, said she was unable to open the register. She called over her manager, who looked at the note, opened the register and typed in a code to alert other associates the store was being robbed. She handed the robber a bag containing $6,769, and he fled the store after telling the two women to walk to the bathroom. Witnesses said he drove away in a white sedan.

Town police were able to lift from the clipboard an impression from the suspect's right ring finger and enter it into a national database. They learned it belonged to Goodale, who had been charged with two robberies in Michigan and was incarcerated in the Kalamazoo County jail. They learned he had been visiting friends in Groton when the Wal-Mart robbery occurred, and said the friends identified him as the man depicted in surveillance photos from the robbery.

Two weeks after the Groton robbery occurred, Goodale allegedly attempted to rob a Battle Creek, Mich., gas station after telling the clerk he had a gun and with carrying out another robbery after he pressed a claw hammer to the back of a store clerk's neck "to simulate a firearm," according to the affidavit.

k.florin@theday.com