Published: May 07, 2008 04:32 pm            

Yesterday In Newton: Burglaries in Newton 1966-1967 Part I

NEWTON — Do you remember when the Newton Post Office in downtown and the Sunflower grocery store on Scanlon Street were burglarized during the same week in December 1966? In December 1967 the Sunflower was robbed again.

Burglars entered the Newton Post Office on a Friday night, December 9, and escaped with more than $20,000 in postage, $93.95 in cash, 600 blank money orders and two or three pouches of mail. Investigation was underway, but there were no clues when the Newton Record went to press December 14, 1966. T. L. Eklund of Meridian was the postal inspector.

The burglary was discovered by Glover B. Simmons Jr. when he reported for duty at 4 a.m. Saturday. He found the back door open, and the vault door cut. He then notified the Postmaster, J. Ottis Waldrop, who in turn alerted Parks K. Wilson, City Chief of Police, Sheriff Hubert Valentine of Decatur and the postal inspectors in Meridian. These officials were on the scene early.

Time set was made by checking with the night mail truck driver who left several pouches of mail at 9 p.m., to find two or three missing on his return from Jackson at 1:30 a.m. The back door was unlocked, the mail carrier said, but he did not report to local postal officials or police. At 1:30 the driver thought he saw someone in the post office, but assumed it was a worker.

The burglar gained entry through a window in the women’s lounge on the east side of the first floor of the post office. They apparently mounted the mail cart near the unloading ramp to get to the window, as the cart windshield was cracked Saturday morning. They simply opened the back door from inside and walked out the south end with their loot.

The vault door was cut cleanly, apparently with professional equipment through the layers of steel, one and a quarter inch thick and the inner layer a thin one. The storage spaces for cash and postage were forced open, along with the safe that held bulk postage.

Local mailers could get no postage Saturday except in limited amounts from lobby dispensers, and there was no Christmas stamps, they were all taken.

The Enterprise post office was burglarized the same night and investigating officials thought there might be a connection with the two.

Businesses and individuals reported that they did not receive expected mail and packages. Those may have been in the stolen mail pouches and perhaps would never be found.

Ref. – Newton Record, December 14, 1966

        

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