A serial bank robber is facing a long prison sentence after pleading guilty last week in federal court in Atlanta to heists in Mount Airy and four other locations from Georgia to Michigan.

And a local officer who investigated Anthony Ray Artrip’s 2007 robbery of First Citizens Bank is not only glad the case has ended — except for Artrip’s sentencing — but says the fact he wasn’t brought to Surry County to answer for that crime is a bonus.

“It’s wonderful,” Capt. Alan Freeman of the Mount Airy Police Department said of the outcome of the charges against Artrip, which also included bank robberies in Calhoun, Ga.; Princeton, W.Va.; Marmet, W.Va.; and Frenchtown Township, Mich.

Along the way, Artrip — an escaped convict at the time — made the U.S. Marshals’ 15-Most Wanted List and was highlighted on the “America’s Most Wanted” television program.

Though Artrip won’t actually face a Surry judge or jury, Freeman said, he still will wind up with the same outcome that would have been sought in Dobson — a lengthy prison sentence — with a savings to local taxpayers achieved in the process.

“It saves our taxpayers’ money to try him, and putting him up for months and months on end waiting for trial,” said Freeman, who was a detective on the city police force when the First Citizens robbery occurred on Sept. 14, 2007.

Freeman also said disposing of the multiple cases in a federal jurisdiction will mean a longer sentence for Artrip, 38, who was from Kentucky and had escaped from Grant County Detention Center in that state about three months before the robbery here.

“He’s going to get some heavy time in the federal penitentiary,” the captain said. “I feel very glad that the U.S. attorney took the case.”

Artrip faces a possible life term during his sentencing set for Aug. 27.

U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates told The Associated Press last week that Artrip’s guilty plea “puts an end to the career of a man who unabashedly made his way across half of the United States robbing banks, victimizing citizens and escaping justice.”

Artrip committed the Mount Airy robbery near the end of a crime spree that began with his escape in Kentucky and eventually led to Asheville.

Freeman said it’s his understanding that shortly before the Mount Airy incident, U.S. marshals had traced Artrip to the Elkin area, where he had a girlfriend in the Jonesville-Boonville vicinity, and were conducting surveillance there.

So after a man entered First Citizens Bank at 502 N. Main St. on the morning of Sept. 14, 2007, jumped over a counter and emptied cash tills of an undisclosed sum, local and federal authorities put two and two together.

Mount Airy police were able to capture a palm print where Artrip had touched the counter and another print from a trash bag at the bank. These matched evidence federal authorities had on file regarding other crimes.

Freeman added that authorities believe Artrip had staked out the Mount Airy bank and “knew what he wanted.” No gun was displayed and no injuries were caused during the robbery, from which Artrip fled in an older-model sedan.

Artrip was captured on Oct. 8, 2007, at a hotel in Bridgeville, Pa., about 350 miles from Mount Airy. He was apprehended after trying to flee through a crawlspace at a Knights Inn and vowing that he wouldn’t be taken alive during a standoff there.

Four months earlier, Artrip had escaped from the Kentucky penal institution after first climbing the backboard of a basketball goal. He then used a harness device he had fashioned to suspend himself from the backboard and kick through a roof in the prison recreation area.

Freeman said he was prepared to travel to Atlanta to offer evidence about the Mount Airy bank robbery, but Artrip’s guilty plea meant that wasn’t required. The local police official said he is simply happy the career criminal is getting “what he deserved.”