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2002
The series: in 2002 the South Bend Tribune reported a run of robberies at South Bend banks that the city's police were working as one man's series. No weapon was displayed in any of the South Bend robberies; the robber worked by note, and in at least one of them the note handed to the teller stated that he had a gun. South Bend Detective David Pflughaupt, quoted in the report, put the connection plainly: not only were the physical descriptions similar, but no weapon had been shown in any of the South Bend jobs.
The link under investigation: the Tribune's report was of police in two counties testing a connection between the South Bend series and a robbery in Michigan City, where, in LaPorte County chief of detectives Dick Buell's account, the robber had scribbled a request for large bills on a bank deposit slip and handed it to the teller, then walked to a Family Express store a few hundred feet away and fled west on U.S. 20, apparently alone, in an older two-toned, boxy sedan. Whether the connection held — and who the man was, and what became of him — is not in the record reached for this section: no arrest, indictment or sentencing naming the 2002 series was found in the Department of Justice's or the Bureau's published case record. The entry prints the series as the Tribune documented it and the disposition as a gap.
Sources:
- South Bend Tribune, "Police investigate connection between M.C., South Bend robberies" (2002), as indexed in the ProQuest newspaper record — Detective David Pflughaupt on the South Bend series (no weapon displayed; a note claiming a gun); Dick Buell, LaPorte County chief of detectives, on the Michigan City robbery (the deposit-slip note, the Family Express, the flight west on U.S. 20).
- U.S. Department of Justice and FBI published case records, searched for this section — no case naming the 2002 series found.