DARING ROBBERY

Hokitika Guardian, 27 June 1935, Page 8

DARING ROBBERY

£2816 PAY ENVELOPE IN SYDNEY SYDNEY, June 24. Notes, silver and copper coins, totalling £2816, representing the pay to have been distributed to employees of Stewarts and Lloyds steel pipe and tube works, Mayfield, disappeared from a strongroom in the basement of the administrative offices of the works. When the theft was discovered this morning no indication could be found that the door of the strongroom had been tampered with, and police investigations were directed chiefly toward the jjossibility of some unauthorised person having manufactured a key that would open the door. The clerks who were preparing the pay locked the strongroom, door after completing their work and handed the key to an official of the company, who took them to safe- keeping outside the works. A cleaner ,;was on duty tilt midnight, and noticed nothing unusual.' A watchman took charge at midnight, and there was no occurrence t> arouse his suspicions. Shortly after 8 a.m. an official of the company unlocked the door of tho strongroom and found that tho pay envelopes bad disappeared; from tho wooden trays on which they had been placed. A leather bag containing about £IOO in small silver and copper change was also missing. The rifled bag was later found lying outside the building, a few yards from a pay window. .