One for the Books

Chicago was the setting for another sort of dubious achievement last week: the largest cash theft in American history. Until then the all-time record belonged to the perpetrators of the 1962 Plymouth, Mass., mail-truck robbery, who stole $1.55 million in cash, and of the 1950 Brink's holdup in Boston, where $1.2 million of the $2.78 million haul was in cash. The profitable target in Chicago was the fortress-like facility of Purolator Security, Inc., one of the nation's largest armored-car and guard-service companies.

Over the weekend its vault bulged with an estimated $25 million in cash, including $1.3 million from nearby Hawthorne race track, mostly in bills of handy $10 to $100 denominations. In what police are convinced was an inside company job, thieves looted the vault, then attempted to set its interior afire.

The fire only smoldered for lack of oxygen, but it did trigger fire alarms after the burglars had fled, revealing that they had got away with a record $4 million in virtually untraceable bills. In view of the immense fortune the thieves left behind, that sum, weighing perhaps 700 lbs., was presumably all they could conveniently carry.

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