Police think a Sioux Falls woman arrested on robbery charges late Thursday night had a role in at least three separate stickups in Brandon and Sioux Falls.
Nicole Marie Thode, 36, faces two counts of first-degree robbery for thefts in August and January at Blinky's Casino at 1201 Teakwood St. in Brandon and one count for a January theft from the Easy Dough Casino at 2309 W.
The clerks gave similar physical descriptions of the suspect in each respective robbery, but the break in the case came when a security camera at the Easy Dough caught Thode's white Ford Taurus on tape, Brandon Police Chief Dave Kull said.
Kull's detectives found a toy handgun at Blinky's after the first incident, but no one saw Thode's car.
"No vehicle had ever been seen in Brandon," Kull said.
A Brandon police officer saw the vehicle driving through town a few days after the Sioux Falls robbery. Officers from Brandon and Sioux Falls served a search warrant on Thode's home and found enough evidence to persuade a grand jury to indict her on robbery charges.
The indictment and warrant for her arrest were signed Wednesday.
Thode will be in court Monday for an initial appearance on the charges, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.
She remains in custody at the Minnehaha County Jail on a $10,000 cash bond.
Thode has several felony arrests for forgery in her South Dakota criminal history but no violent offenses. The forgery charges, all from 1999, were dismissed, as were two counts of grand theft and two counts of passing checks against a nonexistent account.
She has a pending forgery and identity theft case in Minnehaha County, however, and pleaded not guilty to theft by insufficient funds check Jan. 4 - just two days before the alleged robbery at Easy Dough.
Reach reporter John Hult at 331-2301.
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