Money makes the world go ‘round, and while most of us gain our living through honest means; it can drive others to get it through more nefarious ways. So it was that in the autumn of 1911, a team of yeggmen, or safecrackers, descended upon our village under the cover of inky darkness, and laden with explosives, tried to blow their way into the Mokena State Bank’s safe.
A new edition to the community’s streetscape, the bank was built on Front Street in 1909, after having been founded by a group of local businessmen. With a regal facade of Bedford stone and a small interior heated by coal, the prominent landmark stood directly across the street from the Rock Island depot, and couldn’t be missed. After likely having cased the bank for some time, the team of unknown burglars closed in during the early morning hours of Monday, September 25th, 1911. They scored their entrance to the building relatively easily, simply having broken in via the front door after jimmying upon its lock.
Front Street circa 1915. The Mokena State Bank, seen here at left, was a commanding presence in town.
Surviving historical records aren’t rich with details regarding their target, the bank’s vault. One account describes its door as “being almost impregnable, made of three layers of different grades of steel” and an exterior wall made of brick, which lends to the idea that the safe may have been built into the bank’s structure itself. Before getting to work that morning, the yeggs lined the exterior of the vault with empty sacks and grass to dampen the sound of the coming explosion. They set the charge, dove for cover, and threw the fuse.
It turns out that the burglars didn’t do quite as good a job muffling the blast as they hoped, for the sharp report echoed over dark Front Street and was heard by at least one neighbor. Anna Sutter, a grocer’s wife who lived next door to the bank, was jarred from her slumbers at about 2am. She peeked through a window, and seeing a soft light leaking from a window at the bank, Mrs. Sutter put two and two together and promptly lost any desire to investigate in person.
Inside the bank, the robbers moved in to assess the results of their handiwork. As the smoke and dust settled, they realized that their bomb blew the safe’s combination dial clean off, but also that a weird twist of fate caused the force of the blast to jam the vault’s inner doors firmly shut, their hinges and workings having been horribly mangled. The yeggs realized that their shot at the riches within the steel walls was now hopeless, and the would-be safecrackers fled the scene.
Meanwhile, Anna Sutter was raising the attention of other Mokenians by phone, but as she was busy at the task, she caught notice of the sounds of some hurried footfalls disappearing into the night. The next morning, bank officials were in damage control mode. In checking over the building, only one item was actually missing: the teller’s revolver. Elsewhere in the village, two residents noticed their carriage rigs were gone, and local minds made a connection, surmising that the bandits had stolen them.
In the words of a journalist at the Joliet Weekly News, local inability to access the vault “put a stop to the bank’s business to some extent.” The issue with the doors became a huge vexation, as no one in Mokena was able to open them. Specialists from Chicago were summoned, none of which were successful in prying them open either. At one point, an elaborate scheme was attempted involving tearing out part of the brick wall on the exterior of the vault, then boring a hole through to the inside in hopes of triggering a manual release. After hours of work, this too proved fruitless.
In its vulnerable state, night security was being provided by Mokenians John Frisch and Philip Werner, who both toted shotguns on the job. On September 29th, four days after the blast, bank affairs were still at a standstill, and in the words of the same Joliet journalist, the institution had by now become a “heavy loser.” At around this time, representatives of the safe’s manufacturer had come all the way from Cincinnati to try their hands at solving the door crisis, and they too were no more successful. A Mr. Loeding of Chicago’s Ocean Accident and Guarantee company changed the tide of events on October 3rd. Working a sharpened rod through the hole previously drilled into the vault’s side, Loeding was finally able to manipulate the lock, thus finally opening the doors.
Four days after the blast, customers began to come and go as usual, and a sense of normalcy returned to the Mokena State Bank. As far as history has noted, no one was ever prosecuted for the attempted robbery. In terms of suspects, the nearest anyone could think of were some suspicious strangers that were seen at a village picnic shortly before the attempted burglary. While the failed safecrackers of 1911 escaped, Mokena’s townsfolk rested assured, knowing that their money stayed safely in local hands.
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