The Hanford Heist
Two strangers are held in the county jail after a clean safe-cracking job leaves the town of Hanford without its store funds.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The safe in the general merchandise store of H. H. Boie, at Hanford, was blown last Friday night by two unknown men who secured about $100. The robbers did a neat job and left behind no clue. The merchandise stocks were undisturbed and the checks and papers in the safe were left behind. Sheriff Duffy and his deputies have been working on the case and Monday Deputy James Sheppard arrested Roy Lucas and S. Soufield at a cabin between Priest Rapids and Beverly. The men, who are held in the county jail at Prosser on suspicion, deny all knowledge of the robbery, but as yet they have been unable to give the officers a satisfactory story of their presence in the Hanford district. Both men are strangers in the county.
“The robbers did a neat job and left behind no clue.”
The town of Hanford, a bustling community in 1915, would be completely erased from the map just a few decades later by the Manhattan Project. This story captures a fleeting moment of daily life—petty crime and law enforcement—in a place that modern residents only know as a restricted site of nuclear legacy.
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