“It was just like wildfire. Everyone was jumping into the game.”

In the early afternoon of November 29, 1983, the Los Angeles field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation received a call from a Bank of America branch in the Melrose District. The call was taken by an FBI agent named Linda Webster. She was the person in the office who fielded what were known as 2‑11s: reports of bank robberies. There had just been a holdup, she was told. The suspect was a young white male wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap. Slender. Polite. Southern accent. Well dressed. He said please and thank you.

Webster turned to her colleague, William Rehder, who ran the FBI’s local bank- robbery division.

“Bill, it’s the Yankee.”

The Yankee Bandit had been active in Los Angeles since July of that year. He had hit one bank after another, slipping away each time with thousands of dollars in a leather suitcase. Rehder was growing frustrated. Who was this man? All the Bureau had to go on was that telltale baseball cap. Hence the nickname: the Yankee Bandit.

Half an hour passed. Webster got another 2‑11. This one was from a City National Bank sixteen blocks west, in the Fairfax District. They had been taken for $2,349. The...