In December 2002, the pace of robberies accelerated, and Louisville Metro Police Detective Larry Duncan dubbed David Brankle the Interstate Bank Mart bandit, or IBM bandit.

Brankle loved it.

"When you put that in the paper ... that just rocked," he told police later.

Sitting at home in Ellettsville, Ind., and watching a movie about bank robbery, Brankle decided to clue his girlfriend, Dona Jo Hewins, about his career.

Brankle later told investigators that when he announced Jan. 23, 2003, that he was heading "out to work," she responded, "Can I go?'"

"I said, 'No, absolutely not.' And she said, 'But I want to be with you.' I conceded and said OK."

It was robbery No. 15 - the first of 27 in which she would accompany him.

Hewins, who declined to comment on the robberies or her relationship with Brankle, has not been charged with any crime. The FBI declined to comment on her role, citing a pending investigation.

Joins the pursuit

It was a robbery that the Interstate Bank Mart bandit did not commit that marked the investigation's turning point.

Feb. 11, 2003, a holdup man walked into a Fifth Third Bank in Blue Ash and warned in a note that all "heroes" would be shot. He threatened one teller's family by name.

The note seemed a poor match for the IBM bandit's less-threatening instructions, but the robbery was otherwise similar, and the description of the perpetrator so closely matched David Brankle that Blue Ash Detective Joe Schlie concluded that it was his work.

Although that would turn out to be wrong, Schlie came on board as a true believer who, like Louisville Metro Police Detective Larry Duncan, was certain a serial robber was stalking Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.

Schlie also brought in FBI Special Agent C.J. Freihofer, a Cincinnati-based agent who added the resources of the federal government.

Duncan, Schlie and Freihofer created a task force that eventually grew to representatives of 52 agencies.

Theories on the IBM bandit differed. Duncan thought he lived in Lexington because it was about the only city in the region that hadn't been hit at that point. An FBI profiler and several other veteran officers, including Schlie, speculated that the robber probably lived in or near Indianapolis because most such offenders start near home.

The investigators agreed on one thing: This bandit was good.

"Anybody with the IQ of a sprinkler head and a minimum supply of luck can rob a bank or two and stand a good chance of getting away with it," retired FBI Special Agent William J. Rehder wrote in Where the Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World. But the more banks a robber hits, Rehder said, the greater the chance of a slipup.

The IBM bandit was careful, however. He used a minimum of disguises - usually only hats and sunglasses, which allowed him to blend in with customers while obscuring his facial features enough to thwart identification. He didn't know that fingerprints could be lifted off paper, he said, until he saw Eddie Murphy do it in Beverly Hills Cop II. From then on, he handled his notes with tissue paper as he composed them and held them between his knuckles during robberies, if it was too warm to wear gloves.

Police never lifted his prints.

Brankle also controlled his greed. He never went into a vault for more money or demanded that a teller do so. He would later tell police that he knew that would have taken too long. Brankle's explanation for his success? "I stuck with my plan," he told a reporter. "I never tried to get fancy. I just did what I did."

He hits this area

The robberies continued unabated through the winter and spring of 2003:

• No. 20, Hamilton County, Feb. 28, 2003: The IBM bandit wears such a peculiar hat that he doesn't recognize himself in it later. "I don't know where I got that funky hat," he said. It was "a bad, bad hat day."

• No. 22, near Lebanon, March 9, 2003: Brankle's first hit inside a bigg's hypermarket comes off almost by happenstance: He had stopped there previously to go to the bathroom.

• Nos. 25 and 26, Knoxville, Tenn., April 5, 2003: For the first time, he pulls off two robberies on the same day. "Knoxville was such a pain in the butt to get to," he explained later. "I didn't want to have to come back."

Dozens of suspects were investigated and cleared by police.

A woman told police that a man she dated five years earlier might be the IBM bandit. He was 6 inches too tall. Another suspect was in prison during part of the spree.

Desperate to find their man, investigators studied photographs of every paroled federal bank robber - thousands of them - and found an excellent look-alike: Mark R. Kerzich, who has several robbery convictions.

But on the same day that the IBM bandit hit a bank in Franklin, Ohio, Kerzich robbed one in Norfolk, Va. - 617 miles away -- and police realized Kerzich wasn't their man. Suspecting the robber was making his getaways on interstates, Duncan devised a scheme, which he dubbed Operation Intercept.

The plan was to flood the interstates with patrol officers immediately after the next grocery store bank job, pulling over every black BMW series 7 sedan. As each was cleared, officers would give the driver a large piece of orange paper to stick in the rear window.

Duncan stressed in a memo that Operation Intercept would have to be executed quietly, because "BM is definitely monitoring the radio." Operation Intercept was used Sept. 6, 2003, when the IBM bandit hit the US Bank inside the Winn Dixie at 5252 Dixie Highway for $1,980.

But one sergeant failed to get the message to keep it quiet, and over the police radio, he ordered officers to their checkpoints and called in air support.

And, as police suspected, Brankle was listening.

"The radio just went nuts," he said in a police statement. "I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt this was all about me."

He abandoned his planned escape route and followed back roads south for two hours, until he knew it was safe to use Interstate 65 north.

"He escaped our net," Duncan said. "It was a little disheartening."

At that point, Brankle said, he crossed Louisville off his list of cities to rob. He also decided to stay out of Ohio because of a police manhunt for a sniper along interstates around Columbus.

"Those two things in combination took Kentucky and Ohio completely off the list of places to go enjoy bank robbing," Brankle told police.

The Courier-Journal published a story about him showing the various disguises he'd used in 35 robberies to date. Brankle said he went "berserk" trying to figure out which cities' newspapers had picked up the story.

But Brankle also came to treasure the clipping as a kind of trophy. "Here was proof put down on paper that he was somebody. It attested to his brilliance. He couldn't put it down and wouldn't let it out of his sight," Duncan said.

'The guy from Louisville'

Heading west, and thinking he was in a new, safe territory, Brankle was stunned by what he heard on his police scanner as he sped away from a holdup in St. Louis County, Mo., Sept. 20, 2003: "This is the guy from Louisville," the dispatcher announced.

After Brankle robbed another bank eight weeks later in the St. Louis suburb of Des Peres, a manager followed him out of the store in the rain, saw Hewins' vehicle and called police.

But as police tried to race to the bank, officers got caught in rush-hour traffic, and Brankle got away.

Sweating a traffic stop

Four days after Christmas, Brankle was hurrying home with a belated present for his son - a DVD player, he said - when he inadvertently cut off an unmarked police car outside of Bloomington.

The officer was driving a Ford Taurus, and Brankle knew he could outrun it in his BMW. Yet Brankle stopped and handed his driver's license to Bloomington Detective Kevin Hill.

Dressed in a sharp leather jacket, Brankle appeared to be a respectable businessman, thought Hill, who had no idea that he had pulled over one of the nation's most-wanted bank robbers.

But as he ran Brankle's plate, Hill saw that Brankle watched in his rear-view mirror and appeared nervous. Even before the plate came back stolen, Hill said he got a hinky feeling. He approached the car, drew his gun and ordered Brankle out of the vehicle.

Brankle, who had put stolen plates on the car over the course of his robberies, floored it.

"I just hit the gas and ... phzooo," he said. Leading Hill and three other officers on a chase through rural Monroe County at speeds topping 100 mph, Brankle eluded them.

He knew police had his driver's license but figured he still had at least 24 hours before they tracked him down for something as minor as driving with a stolen plate.

He spent the next day with his son, planning to leave that night. He packed the BMW with the tools of his trade - the demand notes, the disguises and the newspaper article. But at the last minute, he said, his son asked him to stay one more night, so they could have breakfast together the next morning.

It would be his last night as a free man for a long time.

About this seriesIn a 20-month spree that ended in December 2003, David Brankle held up 43 banks in six states, seven of them in the Cincinnati area and 11 in Kentucky. Police dubbed him the Interstate Bank Mart bandit. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced Sept. 22 in U.S District Court in Cincinnati to 21 years in prison.

This story is based on Brankle's 481-page confession to police, a five-hour interview with him and interviews with his former wife, the detectives who hunted for him and others.