CHICAGO BANDITS GET 16 BAGS OF AIR MAIL

The New York Times
November 23, 1922

Steal a Truck and Abduct the Driver, Escaping With His Load.

LOOT IS PUT AT ONLY $5

But $12,000 Reward Has Been Offered for the Arrest of the Thieves.

Special to The New York Times.

CHICAGO, Nov. 22.—Bandits kidnapped the driver of a truck carrying 450 pounds of first-class Mail for the Omaha postal airplane in the West Side "Bad Lands" early today, dumped him into the street seven miles north, and then disappeared with the truck and pouches. Four hours after the robbery the truck was abandoned at Sixteenth and Wood Streets. The sixteen mail sacks were gone. Experts from the Bureau of Identification were called to try to find fingerprints on the truck.

It was the first mail robbery in Chicago since the spectacular station robberies of nearly two years ago, following which the Government posted marines to guard the mails.

The alarm was given by the abducted chauffeur, William Hogan, who telephoned from a garage near where he was set afoot. Postal inspectors and police squads hurried to pick up the bandits' trail.

Hogan said the robbers, four or five of them, riding in a touring car, overtook him while he was driving from the main Post Office to the air mail field in Maywood. His cargo of pouches was to have been delivered to the pilot of the Omaha mail plane.

After overpowering him, Hogan said, the highwaymen threw him face downward in their car. They took the key to the screened cage of the mail truck, two or three of the band boarded the truck, and the two cars were driven north.

The postal authorities tonight offered rewards totaling $12,000 for information leading to the arrest of the bandits. Although the men stole sixteen bags, a check-up by A. E. Germer, Chief Postal Inspector, indicated that not more than $5 was obtained.