Safes Blasted in Old Mill Inn, $5000 Is Taken; Guard Tied Up

SAFES BLASTED IN OLD MILL INN, $5000 IS TAKEN; GUARD TIED UP ’Pros’ Work Unmolested by Vicious Police Dog at ’Deighan’s Place’ EMPTY BOX PASSED UP; CHARITY FUND IN LOOT Safe crackers with professional technique early yesterday looted two steel safes at the Old Mill Inn, on Route 25, Pennsauken township, after blasting doors from the strong boxes with nitroglycerine. Neil F. Deighan, proprietor of the place and president of the New Jersey Licensed Beverage Association, estimated the haul was between $4500 and $5000. Police were mystified by the fact that a vicious police dog, tied in the rear of the building, failed to bark as the robbers parked their automobile near him. Only two or three yeggmen known to police in South Jersey were capable of the job, it was said. Authorities were convinced that at least one of the robbers knew the dog and was familiar with the entire layout of the building. Passed Up Empty Safe The fact that the robbers passed by a large safe which contained no money and went directly to two smaller safes in the rear of the office in the building led to this belief. So far as is known, only two men worked the robbery—first bigtime safe job in South Jersey in many months—but the dozen police assigned to the case worked on a theory the men had one, perhaps two, confederates. They escaped in an automobile, later found abandoned in Camden. The night watchman, Otto R. Vohringer, 42, of 903 Federal street, was alone in the building at 5.45 a. m., two hours and three-quarters after it had been closed in compliance with regulations, when the pair of masked men gained entrance. A bartender, Ernest Mitchell, had left for home an hour before. The men knocked out a cardboard that temporarily was replacing a pane of the front door broken during the past week. The door, police learned, is seldom used. Investigate Noise One of the men reached through the empty pane and turned the lock. Vohringer said he was cleaning up the main dining room and heard the noise out front, sounding like the tapping of a steam pipe. He went to investigate. With the terse assertion “this OLD MILL INN SAFES BLASTED FOR $5000 ’Pros’ Work Unmolested by Vicious Police Dog at Deighan’s Place (Continued from Page One) is a hold-up,” one man, a black scarf masking his face stuck a gun against the watchman’s body. The other man, shorter in stature than the leader, followed. They commanded Vohringer to walk backward the length of the 100-foot dining room and forced him to open, with his keys, a small adjoining storeroom. They shoved him inside. There they bound him with a clothes line, brought along for the purpose, and tied him to a chair. Warned on Outcry “We don’t want to hear any outcry,” the first bandit, described as being about five feet nine inches tall, and weighing 180, warned Vohringer. “If you do, we’ll blow your brains out!” The watchman said he heard a mumble, as the men left him tied in the dark closet: “This Mr. Deighan has tried to clip me. Now we’ll clip him!” Vohringer heard their footsteps die down in the direction of the kitchen, in the rear of the south side of the place. Then he said he heard a sound indicating more men—how many he could not guess—were being let into the building through the back door. There was silence, he said, for 10 or 15 minutes. Suddenly he heard a muffled explosion from the direction of Deighan’s office, directly across from the kitchen. Five minutes later there was another blast, a slight detonation like the first. Then, in a few minutes, footsteps of men hurrying out the back door, the purr of a starting automobile, which sounded as though is was going toward Camden. Telephones Police Vohringer struggled with his bonds and in 15 minutes worked himself loose. He telephoned Pennsauken police, and Sergeant Willis Perkins and Patrolman Fred Wyman arrived in a radio car. Police Chief Thomas Thorpe was on the scene a few minutes later. Chief Lawrence Doran and Detective James Mulligan, of the Camden county detective force, joined the local police in inspecting the work of the safemen. They concluded at once experts performed the job. The Deighan office is a long and narrow room. The two damaged safes were piled, one on the other, in a back corner. The larger safe was next to the doorway, and near to it were desks where Deighan and his wife, Mrs. Clara Deighan, usually worked. Although the room was a shambles—pieces of cement and steel spattered about from the two blown safes, a typewriter tossed from a desk to the middle of the floor, and an electric fan, which had been on the top safe, thrown on a desk—no damage was done to any other part of the building. The big safe, in which there was no money, was not molested. Just Enough Nitro The setup indicated, police said, the burglars inserted almost a perfectly-gauged amount of the highly explosive nitro into each safe, or else the concussions would have inflicted damage for many yards around and been heard for at least a half mile. In each case, the safes were opened by hammer blows on the tumblers. Then small holes were drilled through the walls, the “soup” was inserted, connecting wires placed in the holes, and a switch adjusted to set off the blasts. The wires were found in the wreckage. Five hours after the burglary, Camden police received a telephone call an automobile was abandoned on Clinton street near Thirtieth. Radio Patrolman Clarence Barnes and Russell Maurer searched the machine and found a sledge hammer, apparently used to dislodge the safe dials; two broken bottles, one a small vial that had contained nitroglycerine; a box of cigars identified as stolen from the Old Mill Inn; a box containing several hundred pennies, and some loose change strewn around the tonneau. About this time Louis R. Vogelin, of 702 Division street, notified police his car, which he left in its customary place in a garage at 786 Division street, had been stolen. A check proved it the same car abandoned in East Camden. Charity Funds Taken Deighan said the loot consisted of money that was to have been paid employes today for their weekly salaries, Saturday night’s receipts, some money he had withdrawn from a bank to pay a bill, and funds that had been turned over to him as chairman of the state-wide drive for the Betty Bacharach Home. It also included $400 he had intended to, give his son, Neil, Jr., as tuition when he left yesterday for Villanova. About 18 months ago the Licensed Beverage Association started a drive to raise $25,000 for the hospital for invalid children at Longport near Atlantic City. The police dog at the Old Mill, it was learned, is a vicious animal which several weeks ago inflicted wounds on a man’s legs that caused him to have seven stitches taken. The investigators said if the dog had not known the intruders, it would have barked at their approach. At the scene of the burglary and on the stolen car, state police of the identification bureau obtained fingerprints they said would prove valuable in tracing the bandits.

—Courier-Post Photos Here's what was left of one of the two safes at Old Mill Inn, well-known Pennsauken roadhouse, blasted open early yesterday by yeggmen who escaped after looting them of $5000. Below is Otto R. Vohringer, 42, the night watchman, who was bound in a small closet by the men and who heard them crack the safes.