Eddie Dodson was one of those people who came to Los Angeles to re-create himself, again and again.
In the 1970s, he owned a trendy antique shop on Melrose Avenue, befriended aspiring actresses and celebrities alike. He frequented the hottest bars and restaurants, had a townhouse in tony Hancock Park, and drove a restored 1965 black Lincoln. Dodson also had a serious and growing drug problem.
By summer 1983, he was broke, his business was failing, and he had mounting debts. By fall 1983, he was driving the FBI nuts.
He had turned to bank robbery, holding up tellers in West L.A., Beverly Hills and the San Fernando Valley with a polite smile and a fake gun. He was smooth, unflappable. On his best day, in November 1983, Dodson pulled off six robberies in four hours, collecting more than $13,000.
The FBI's bank robbery squad in Los Angeles, led by agent William J. Rehder, played cat-and-mouse in searching out Dodson. The agents, with the Los Angeles Police Department, set up stakeouts at various bank branches around town, but he always eluded them.
Finally, his luck ran out. In 1984, a bank employee followed him after a robbery and alerted police. Seven months, 64 banks, more than $280,000.
Rehder was intrigued. Who was this guy? How had he eluded capture for so long?
"I just love the back stories of these guys," Rehder said recently. "I got hooked ... right away."
It was this curiosity that led Rehder, with co-author Gordon Dillow, to write the just-released "Where the Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World," (W.W. Norton & Company). Dodson's story is the centerpiece of the book about the famous, the infamous and the unknown bank robbers of Los Angeles.
The book also focuses on four other subjects, though none as prolific as Dodson: the gang leader who hired his underlings for a portion of the proceeds; the tunnelers who dug their way to a Hollywood bank vault; the bank manager who helped her boyfriend, a Los Angeles police officer, steal more than $700,000; and the two heavily armed robbers who made national news when they held up a Bank of America branch in North Hollywood and then engaged police in a gun battle in which the robbers were killed.
But it was Dodson that really captured the attention of Rehder and Dillow.
He was known to the FBI as a one-on-one bandit, someone who robs a teller usually without anyone else in the bank knowing. He was polite and apologetic.
