Chain Store Thieves Wreck Safe, Get $15

CHAIN STORE THIEVES WRECK SAFE, GET $15 Drag Heavy Iron Box Into Refrigerator, Hack it With Cleaver Tugging a small but heavy safe from the front of the American Store located at Ninth and Vine streets, into the refrigerator, thieves used a butcher's cleaver to hack their way into it after an attempt to break open the door had failed. The burglars secured $15, the only reward for their trouble in battering a hole in the rear of the safe which was hammered "almost beyond recognition," as a city detective expressed it after investigating the break today. The theft was discovered by Earl Bryant, manager of the store, when he "opened up" this morning about 8 o'clock. The intruders had forced a [?] cellar window open, climbed the stairs from the cellar, and knocked a panel out of the door leading to the store. Detectives Louis Shaw and Thomas Cheesman believe that the break occurred shortly before midnight. They said that a freight train usually passes in the rear of the store on the West Jersey and Seashore Railroad tracks about that time. The safe had been left in the front of the store, Bryant told the detectives. A trail of cigarette butts and overturned boxes, and wheel tracks gouged in the floor, led Bryant to the refrigerator where the safe was found. Although the combination lock had been smashed, the door had not been forced. Apparently blocked there, the thieves turned to the rear of the safe, and using the cleaver and a hammer, battered a hole large enough to insert a hand.