Blane Nordahl is a high end cat burglar who specialized in stealing silver from mansions. He worked primarily on the East Coast before he was caught. While he was active, he would scout for large mansions through Architectural Digest, and then go on a drive with a realtor to look at them. At night he would then return to the ones which seemed the most secluded, and methodically work his way past all their security systems, and make off with only the silver. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Blane Nordahl. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blane_Nordahl