Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1903 — WOLCOTT POSTOFFICE ROBBED. [ARTICLE]

WOLCOTT POSTOFFICE ROBBED.

Burglar* Loot Sato and Set nr j S6OO In Stamps and Cash.-Thiove* Still at Large. Monticello Journal: Burglars entered the Wolcott postoffice early Sunday morning, blew the safe open and secured nearly SSOO in cash and stamps. Postmaster W. E. Fox and his assistant closed the office at the usual hour Saturday night leaving what cash and stamps they had on hands locked up in the office safe. On going to the office Sunday morning they found that someone had been at work during the night. The safe door was lying on the floor shattered in fragments while the interior of the safe had been rifled of its contents. Nothing else had been disturbed. Entrance to the room was made through a rear window which had been raised. The handle of the safe had been wrenched from place and enough explosive used to shatter the door to pieces and force it from its hinges. The safe in question is one of the ordinary small sized tire proof kind and does not contain an inner vault. After the door was removed it was au easy matter to secure its contents. The work is supposed to have been done about two o’clock Sunday morning, as parties living near the postoffice heard a muffled explosion at about that hour. The burglars secured $460.99 in stamps and $134.65 in cash for their work. The same night a horse and buggy owned by Will Conder, living one and a half miles east of Wolcott, wns stolen from his place. Parties who started in search of it Sunday morning found the buggy in the James Burch ditch nine miles north-east of W olcott, and the horse loose on the other side of the ditch. Whoever took the rig had made a wrong turn in the highway and drove some six miles over an unfrequented road over which no other rig had passed for weeks, rendering it an easy matter to trail them. Some are of the opinion the parties who burglarized the postoffice were the ones who stole the horse and buggy, intending to use them to drive to some station on the Monon in order to catch a train to Chicago. Making the wrong turn in the road they came to grief in the ditch where the buggy was found. Outside of this there is no tangible clue to the guilty parties.