Our fair village is generally a peaceful place, as it always has been. However, if one knows just where to look, provocative cases of crime can be found in the pages of our history. While stories of malice and violence are hidden in certain places, most of the stories of lawbreaking in Mokena’s long history are relatively small-time affairs. Nevertheless, in brittle newspaper clippings and long-forgotten memories, there is one tale of a treacherous burglary followed by a daring jailbreak under the cover of darkness. Let us turn the hands of time back to 1909, and set the stage in John A. Hatch’s general store on Mokena Street.
The shop was a one-stop location for the Mokenian of the early 20th century. From boots and shoes to groceries and even sewing supplies, Hatch had it all. One of the village’s founding fathers and a much-respected citizen, on October 8th, 1909 he opened the store much as he did on any other morning. Inside though, something was amiss. Sometime during the night, burglars had struck the store, and plundered it of goods. After they climbed in through a window in his storeroom, Hatch figured out that that the thieves snatched 30 cents from a slot machine, as well as a hodgepodge of pipes, cigars, chewing gum and combs. To his relief, the storekeeper’s cash drawer was untouched.
The former store of John A. Hatch, the scene of the 1909 burglary, at today's 19711 Mokena Street.
When word spread through tiny Mokena that Hatch had been looted, some townspeople remembered having seen a pair of strangers milling around some neighboring coal sheds. Those who saw them remembered that they were young men, 16 or 17 years old, more like boys. Their light-colored suits and tan shoes stuck out and were noticed by Mokenians. On the same day of the burglary, the two were tracked down and arrested on suspicion of having been the thieves, and gave their names as Edward Clark and William Rhodes of Chicago. An early report of the arrest pointed out that the duo were “inveterate cigarette smokers.”
John Hatch was a man known in town for his gentle ways with area youngsters, and after the boys were taken into custody, was willing to go easy on them. It was his wish that if their parents could come to town and make good for his losses, he would not press any charges. In the meantime, the teens were locked up in the village calaboose by constable Conrad Schenkel, Mokena’s one-man police force. The Front Street jail was barely more than a small wooden shack furnished with a potbelly stove. As the autumn night descended over the village, the two youths felt a chill in the air. They mentioned to the German-born Schenkel that they were cold, and a warming fire was built for them inside the lockup. Long after Mokena was asleep, they then patiently heated a fire poker to a red-hot glow, and used it to singe a wooden post upon which the shack’s door hung. After diligently working, the door had been loosened enough for them to slip away into the darkness.
That Thursday’s issue of the Joliet Weekly News heralded the escape by screaming “Use Red Hot Poker to Gain Liberty” from its headlines. The jailbreak was even said to have caused a “mild sensation” in the county seat. Back in Mokena, uncomfortable questions began to be raised to constable Schenkel, namely as to his whereabouts that night and why he hadn’t kept a better eye on the lockup. Firing back, he defended himself by proclaiming that there was never a poker in the calaboose to begin with. He suspected that some town boys may have slid it to the prisoners through a barred window without realizing the consequences.
Schenkel phoned neighboring towns with the names and descriptions of the suspects, hoping to catch them before they got too far from Mokena. The officer’s frustration with the entire situation only got worse when he followed up on the city addresses given to him by his arrestees, as they turned out to be fake, along with their names. His vexation reached a peak two weeks later, when he took a phone call from Orland. Schenkel learned that a similar burglary had taken place there, and that two males were in custody whose looks matched that of the boys. Upon their presentation to him, he was bowled over to see that these were not the two he was looking for. To add insult to injury, in the last days of October Schenkel received what was mildly called “a comic postcard” with a Chicago postmark referencing the whole episode, and some were of the opinion that it was from his fugitives.
Luckily for Conrad Schenkel, he received word from authorities in the city that a Pinkerton detective had caught his suspects, whose real names turned out to be William Reel and Edwin Scott. They were shipped back to Mokena in handcuffs on November 5th, where they stood trial by magistrate Willard Owen. They admitted their guilt under little pressure. Before long, they were sent to Joliet to withstand sentencing by the grand jury. While there, their jailer made a comment to the Weekly News in which he cracked that any fire pokers “would be kept on the opposite site of the bars from them.”
In the end, William Reel and Edwin Scott were given 100 days in the county jail for their theft of Hatch’s store. The juxtaposition of the two city boys and their crime against then rural Mokena was greatly enjoyed by the day’s media. The News editorialized that the “temptations and pitfalls…presented by the city of Chicago” were ultimately responsible for Reel and Scott’s immoral act. So it was, that they earned their place in our community’s history, a footnote among other stories of love, friendship, and memories. While some may not be fond of reminiscence of tales like this one, a full understanding of our illustrious story cannot be had without them.
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