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. Authorities believe Nordahl is responsible for more than 70 burglaries this year in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. “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. 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 is OCD the way he goes about his business,” Mason said. 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. 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 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. Mason said he watched Nordahl get arrested over and over again only for him to return to crime once he was released. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, and then placed on parole in Florida on April 19, 2010. When released in November 2010, Nordahl had his probation transferred to Jacksonville, where he and Music ostensibly ran a pool service company. “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.
– 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.)