Two Burglaries Rock Richland
A post office and a general store are looted in a single night as deputies scour the countryside for suspects.
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.
Richland experienced its first real metropolitan excitement this week following two burglaries. The post office was broken into Tuesday night, with nearly $500 in stamps and cash stolen. The safe was opened by manipulating the combination, leaving few clues. Nearby, H. F. Yedica’s general merchandise store was also broken into, though the loss there was minimal as the safe had been largely emptied earlier. Harry Maupin, who lives behind the store, reported that his dogs barked fiercely around 2:00 AM, and he later found a scrap of overall fabric on his porch, likely torn by a dog. Sheriff C. E. May has arrived to lead the investigation, noting tracks in the moist ground that suggest two suspects with small feet. The robbers also broke into the local grade school to steal a pinch bar and apparently spent time there earlier in the evening.
“Richland is experiencing its first real metropolitan excitement due to the fact that on Tuesday night two real robberies were committed.”
Today's Richland is a high-tech city, but in 1915, it was a small community reeling from the shock of a 'metropolitan' crime spree. The reliance on tracking footprints and searching for discarded clothing reminds us that forensic science was in its infancy, even as the scale of rural crime felt just as invasive then as it does now.
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