The Great Kapowsin Safe Heist
After bandits blew open a safe and vanished into the night, police are left with no clues and a ghost train.
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.
Although city police officers of Tacoma, Seattle and other Sound cities, and deputy sheriffs of all the western counties have instituted an energetic search for the safe-crackers who blew off the door of the Shun Brothers' safe at Kapowsin Sunday night and escaped with more than $1,000, not one clue has been unearthed as to the men's identity or hiding place. The handcar which the men rode from Kapowsin to Fern Hill under cover of darkness, and which was ditched at the Fern Hill crossing, leads detectives to believe that the men came into Tacoma, but whether they are still here or have fled to another part of the country can only be conjectured.
“The handcar which the men rode from Kapowsin to Fern Hill under cover of darkness, and which was ditched at the Fern Hill crossing, leads detectives to believe that the men came into Tacoma.”
This daring heist on a rural company safe captures the era of interurban rail and the vulnerability of remote payrolls in the South Sound. Today, the Fern Hill area remains a distinct neighborhood, but the lawless frontier atmosphere has long been replaced by the quiet hum of urban transit.
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