“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 and Belle Meade, Tenn. The police 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.”
