DARING ROBBERY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22142, 22 June 1935, Page 10

DARING ROBBERY

PAY ENVELOPES STOLEN SUM' OF £2816 MISSING 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, Now South Wales, disappeared from a strongroom in the basement of the administrative offices of the on a recent night. When the theft was discovered next morning no indication could be found that the door of the strongroom had been tampered with, and police investigations were directed chiefly toward the possibility of some, unauthorised person having manufactured a key that would open the door. It is believed that, after entering the building and using the key to open the strongroom door, a thief took the money through the basement to the pay windows, which are separated by the length of the building from*the etrongroom. Ho then, it is thought, put his loou through the w'ndow, which .was subsequently found open, and also used the window as his own means of exit. ' The clerks who were preparing the pay locked the strongroom door after completing their work and handed the keys to an official of the company, who took them to safe keeping outside the works. A, cleaner was on duty until midnight, and noticed nothing unusual. A watchman took charge at midnight,- and there was no occurrence to arouse his suspicions. Shortly after H a.m. an official of the company unlocked the door of the Etrongroom and found that the pay envelopes had disappeared from the wooden trays on which they had been placed. A leather bag containing about £IOO in bmall silver and copper change was also missing. The rilled bag was later found lying outside the building, a few yards from a pay window. Detectives found that no obvious force had been used to enter the strongroom. Inquiries showed that it was impossible for the thieves to have had access to either of : lie two official keys to the strongroom door. Examination of the strongroom also proved that it would have been unenterable by any method usually adopted by thieves. Investigation then turned toward whether any person could, at any time since the erection of the strongroom some months ago, have secured a cast of one of the keys to the door. The pay* was covered by insurance. The company . made special arrangements to pay' employees on the day following the robbery.