Authorities on Monday captured a notorious cat burglar they say is responsible for stealing silver worth millions from homes in Athens and across the Southeast. 
 
 Blane David Nordahl, 51, is a career criminal often called the “Silver Bandit” due to his penchant for stealing just sterling silver. He had also been dubbed “Burglar of the Stars,” because past victims included Bruce Springsteen and Ivana Trump. 
 
 Following a previous conviction in New York, Nordahl’s probation was transferred to Florida when he relocated to Jacksonville, which investigators said became his new base of operations. 
 
 From there, he traveled to locations across state lines, but not so far that he could not make it back home and be missed by probation officials. 
 
 Authorities believe Nordahl is responsible for more than 70 burglaries this year in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. The stolen silver was worth more than $4 million. 
 
 Athens-Clarke police said they believe Nordahl struck homes in Athens three times in July, netting some $30,000. 
 
 A task force formed to track down the burglar and was headed by a detective from Atlanta, where the upscale Buckhead had been particularly hard hit. 
 
 An Athens-Clarke police detective was in Jacksonville on Saturday when authorities raided his home only to discover he wasn’t there. It’s believed he may have been tipped off when his girlfriend, Elizabeth Irene Music, got picked up soon before near the home they share. 
 
 Authorities were able to obtain the cooperation of an unnamed witness who arranged to meet with Nordahl in Hilliard, Fla., about 30 miles from Jacksonville. Police were waiting and captured Nordahl after a brief foot pursuit. 
 
 Though it could not immediately be learned whether anyone of note was victimized by Nordahl, he is suspected of breaking into the historic Cooleenee Plantation in Davies County, N.C., where he allegedly swiped sterling silver items valued at about $145,000 plus spoons made by Revolutionary War patriot Paul Revere considered priceless. 
 
 A consummate pro who was careful to not leave behind incriminating evidence, Nordahl’s “signature” led to him being identified as the prime suspect, authorities said. 
 
 In the burglaries, the suspect worked patiently and methodically. He disabled phone lines and alarms, carefully removed door panels and replaced them when leaving homes, and took out windows by removing the putty. 
 
 Cornell Abruzzini, a retired detective from the Greenwich Police Department in Connecticut, helped put Nordahl behind bars more than a decade ago after he broke into three homes in that New York City bedroom community. That included Ivana Trump’s mansion on the Long Island Sound from which 120 pairs of sterling silver salt and pepper shakers were stolen. 
 
 At one home in Greenwich, Abruzzini said, Nordahl spent two hours removing window moldings and panes to get inside. 
 
 Abruzzini, now an officer in Norwalk, Conn., assisted in the current investigation in Georgia and neighboring states. 
 
 When a detective in Aiken, S.C., was searching the Internet for crimes in which only sterling silver was stolen, he came across an article about Nordahl that had been published in The New Yorker magazine in which Abruzzini was extensively quoted. 
 
 That detective sent Abruzzini crime scene photos and reports, which were “like carbon copies of my reports from the 1990s,” Abruzzini said. 
 
 The former Greenwich detective then reached others who previously investigated Nordahl, including Lonnie Mason, a retired detective for the Office of the Monmouth County Prosecutor in New Jersey, where Nordahl was first arrested for burglary in 1983. 
 
 Nordahl began as an amateur, breaking windows and stealing whatever he could, Mason said, but over the years refined his methods to the point they became so distinctive they became so-called signature crimes. 
 
 According to Mason, the burglar began specializing in sterling silver thefts because flatware and other dining items are kept downstairs, away from sleeping residents in upper rooms. 
 
 Mason, who acted as consultant with the task force in the current investigation, is considered the leading authority on Nordahl’s methods and behavior because of his many interactions with the thief over the past two decades. 
 
 “Nordahl is OCD the way he goes about his business,” Mason said. “He does things the same way every time. He removes window panes and paneling and neatly stacks them in the yard outside. When you see one of Blane’s crime scenes, you know that no one else but him could have been responsible.” 
 
 The diminutive, athletic crook was able to crawl through small spaces and bypass alarm systems. 
 
 The local burglaries that netted the thief some $30,000 in silver happened within a span of about a week last month, at homes on Milledge Circle, Red Oak Trail and Tallassee Oaks Trail, Athens-Clarke police said. 
 
 A victim of the July 8 burglary on Milledge Circle said several days went by before he realized. 
 
 “My wife went into the dining room to straighten up before we had guests over and she called out that there’s glass missing from the window,” the victim said. Then a drawer was found to be missing from a sideboard. 
 
 Turns out the burglar used the drawer and a punch bowl to carry from the home two sets of sterling silver flatware, mint julip cups, a demitasse set, bowls, saucers and other sterling silver items, said the victim, who asked to not be identified. 
 
 After Nordahl was charged in warrants obtained by Connecticut police in 1996, he was nabbed by investigators who followed a trail of burglaries that ran through Chicago and to the suspect near where he grew up in Wisconsin. 
 
 In September 1997, Nordahl signed off on a deal with federal prosecutors in which he admitted to 144 burglaries, allowing police in various jurisdictions to clear open cases. In exchange, Nordahl pleaded guilty only to the interstate transport of stolen property. 
 
 In accordance with the plea bargain, Nordahl was sentenced in 2000 to five years in prison. 
 
 Almost immediately after being paroled the following year, Nordahl went on another burglary spree in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, for which he was sentenced to another two years in prison. 
 
 More arrests followed after his release in November 2003. He avoided an extradition hearing and became a fugitive as mansion break-ins spread along the East Coast. Nordahl was arrested again in 2004 in Philadelphia. He was sentenced in December 2004 to eight years in prison. When released in November 2010, Nordahl had his probation transferred to Jacksonville, where he and Music ostensibly ran a pool service company. 
 
 Mason believes that the latest arrest will finally ended Nordahl’s career. 
 
 “By the time he’s finished being shipped from state to state and prosecuted in the various jurisdictions, he’s looking at 100 years or more,” Mason said. “This time it looks like we’ve got him for good.” 
 
 • Follow Criminal Justice reporter Joe Johnson at www.facebook.com/JoeJohnsonABH or www.twitter.com/JoeJohnsonABH. ||||| Even after he was arrested dozens of times, after stealing from Ivana Trump and legendary sportscaster Curt Gowdy and being suspected of trying to steal from Steven Spielberg, after spending much of his adult life in prison or on the run from prison, the investigators who knew Blane Nordahl best say he couldn’t stop. 
 
 These detectives have tracked him for 20 years, arresting him for dozens of burglaries along the Atlantic Coast. You could lay his crime scenes side-by-side and see his unmistakable style, the way he removed glass from windows so he could crawl in, the way he snatched high-quality silverware, leaving behind lesser silver and priceless jewelry. 
 
 On Monday, Blane Nordahl, 51, was arrested again — this time in Nassau County — on charges out of Georgia. 
 
 “He’s the complete package,” said retired detective Cornell Abruzzini of Greenwich, Conn., where he arrested Nordahl for six burglaries. “Blane’s the perfect storm.” 
 
 Retired detective Lonnie Mason first began investigating Nordahl in New Jersey in the 1980s, and now he leads a four-man crew of retired police detectives and one retired federal marshal. All of them have been tracking Nordahl ever since he came across their respective professional paths, in New Jersey, In Pennsylvania, in Connecticut. 
 
 Mason said he watched Nordahl get arrested over and over again only for him to return to crime once he was released. 
 
 In September 1997, after being arrested for the Greenwich crimes, Nordahl admitted to 144 burglaries. He was sentenced to prison in 2000 for five years. He was paroled the next year, then he was sentenced to new burglaries for another two years. A year after that release, in 2004, he was arrested again. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, and then placed on parole in Florida on April 19, 2010. 
 
 Once, during a burglary, Nordahl nabbed the silver, but stacked $1,000 on the table to taunt Mason, the former detective said. 
 
 Mason said he talked to Nordahl in 2004 about the thefts. There was a historical silver, Nordahl told him, originally smithed by Paul Revere in the 1700s. “His eyes were bugging out,” Mason said. The set was intricate, Mason said Nordahl told him, and he wanted a set of his own. 
 
 When he came to Florida in 2010, Nordahl received a driver’s license that fall. He listed an address in Arlington where Mason said he lived with his girlfriend. 
 
 In December of 2011, he was named the vice president of a new company, Sunshine Pool Services Inc. It listed his home at Charter Landing apartments, again in Arlington. Apartments start out at $469 a month there. 
 
 A TV show called “Masterminds” dedicated an episode to Nordahl. The New Yorker featured him in a 12-page story with a subtitle that said, “The Story of a Burglar Who Was Too Good for His Own Good.” 
 
 Nordahl wasn’t always that good, but he learned quickly, repeatedly figuring out where he went wrong, said Abruzzini the former detective from Connecticut. 
 
 “What made him good,” said Abruzzini, was that “he learned... Every time he figured out what jammed him up, he changed.” 
 
 When he was caught because of a fingerprint, Abruzzini said, Nordahl began wearing gloves. When he was caught from muddy shoe tracks, he learned to trash his shoes after each burglary, Abruzzini said. When he was caught because of credit card purchases, he started paying in cash, Abruzzini said. 
 
 In February 2011, Mason came across an article detailing silver thefts in Georgia. Then in October 2011, the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina announced that a plantation had its silver stolen, including a set of spoons crafted by one Paul Revere. 
 
 The group of former detectives and the former federal marshal began looking at crime reports and photos of crime scenes. They spotted what they considered similarities to cases they’ve tracked for years. They reached out to authorities in several states to tell about Nordahl. 
 
 Law enforcement agencies in Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina contacted the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office. Monday morning, in Hilliard, Nordahl showed up to the Canterberry Apartments to meet his girlfriend’s daughter. 
 
 Nassau authorities say Nordahl took off running, and a citizen helped snatch him. 
 
 The Nassau County Sheriff’s Office arrested him on two warrants out of Atlanta on charges of burglary with intent to commit a first-degree felony and conspiracy to commit a felony. 
 
 derek.gilliam@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4619 
 
 andrew.pantazi@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4310 ||||| ATLANTA — Even before someone carefully removed a windowpane from a secluded Buckhead home here one rainy June night and slipped away with a 1734 silver mug that had belonged to George II, it was clear to detectives that a meticulous thief with a singular obsession was stealing the great silver pieces of the Old South. 
 
 For months, exquisite sterling silver collections had been disappearing, taken in the dead of night from historic homes in Charleston, S.C., and the wealthy enclaves of Belle Meade, Tenn. Nothing else was touched. 
 
 The police in different states did not at first connect the thefts, some of which initially went unnoticed even by the owners. But as the burglaries piled up, a retired New Jersey detective watching reports on the Internet recognized a familiar pattern. 
 
 He called an Atlanta detective and said, “Let me explain how your burglaries occurred.” 
 
 Early Monday, outside an apartment building in the tiny northern Florida town of Hilliard, the police arrested Blane Nordahl, 51, the man they believe is connected not only to the recent Southern silver burglaries but also to 30 years’ worth of antique silver thefts in several states.
– It's a criminal tale that reads like Catch Me If You Can. At its center: a thief of antique silver alleged to have burgled 500 homes over 30 years (including that of Ivanka Trump) and the retired detective who spent his career trailing him. Blane Nordahl was arrested yesterday in a small town in north Florida, thanks in part to the dogged efforts of Lonnie Mason, a former NJ detective who twice captured Nordahl and who tipped Atlanta police off to the 51-year-old after noticing a pattern of Southern burglaries via Internet reports—as many as 70 this year, reports the Athens Banner-Herald. Among them: A 1734 silver mug once sipped by George II, slipped out of an Atlanta home via a removed windowpane; and silver spoons made by Paul Revere that disappeared from a NC plantation home whose alarm system was deactivated. The descriptions of Nordahl, per the New York Times, are fascinating: At 5-feet-4, he's able to squeeze in through windowpanes or door panels, breaking in so neatly that homeowners often don't realize they've been robbed until an occasion arises that demands the good silver (in the case of the Atlanta robbery, neither the homeowner's cameras nor those of neighbor Tyler Perry spotted the thief). He is so schooled in silver, reportedly thanks to his painter father, that he'll decline to take things that might fool others—a utensil with a hollow silver handle, for instance. (The Florida Times-Union notes that during one burglary, Nordahl allegedly taunted Mason by leaving $1,000 arranged on the table.) He's been arrested more than a dozen times, first in 1983, and was last paroled in 2010. He headed to his sister's home in Florida, leading Mason to keep an eye on theft reports there. It wasn't until Mason thought to search neighboring states for reported thefts that he realized Nordahl was allegedly back at it. Mason went on to advise a team of two dozen police in six states, ultimately leading to yesterday's arrest. (Click for another wild burglary story.)