On dusty small town Front Street, the acrid smell of soot from coal-fed locomotives would have greeted a visitor to Mokena in 1924. Citizens doing business passed on the street, where every face was familiar and every personality known. The old Mokena State Bank, a beacon of stoic white Bedford stone and solid red brick, stuck out among a sea of wood frame buildings. Founded in 1909 by a group of influential Mokena businessmen, this institution came to reflect a rock of financial stability in the rural farm village. It was here on Tuesday, October 27th 1924, that one of Mokena’s most audacious crimes was committed.
At 31 years of age on that autumn day, Karl Krapp was a lifelong resident of Mokena and the bank’s assistant cashier. The son of one of the bank’s founders, Krapp found himself occupied with some bookwork behind the bars of his cashier’s cage. Perched atop a high stool, in his periphery he would have been aware of two men entering the building’s front door. In the matter of seconds, a .45 Colt pistol was shoved through the bars into Krapp’s face, and a brusque voice barked “Hands up!” The young cashier laughed at what he took for a mischievous joke, not an unexpected reaction in a small town where not much of note happened. Upon seeing the rage of the armed man when his order was not complied with, and that at least one of the men had a handkerchief wrapped around his face, Krapp realized the deadly seriousness of the situation. The bank was being robbed.
Also present in the bank at this time were local blacksmith Albert Braun and his brother-in-law Harry Peterson, as well as George Hacker, who not only was the bank’s cashier, but also served as Mokena’s mayor. Having held the small building in their firm grip, the two robbers herded Braun, Peterson, and assistant cashier Krapp into a rear room, where the bandits forced them to face a wall with their hands in the air.
The lead thief jammed his pistol into Krapp’s side and vulgarly threatened him as cashier Hacker was forced into the bank’s vault. Karl Krapp would later recall that the criminal’s weapon “felt like a cannon” and with his senses at their highest level of awareness, he expected a shot to ring out at any second. At the vault, bundles of currency were scooped into the second thief’s burlap sack; such was the robber’s haste that a packet of bills containing $200 burst onto the floor where it was abandoned.
Mokena State Bank on a better day. Pictured here around 1910 are, left to right, bank secretary W.H. Bechstein, John Cappel, cashier Frank Liess, and president Christian Bechstein. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)
As quickly as they carried out their brazen task, the criminals bolted from the bank and into a large touring car, where three comrades awaited them, one of which was said to be armed with a shotgun. The auto disappeared as it roared westward down Front Street. The robbers’ loot equaled slightly more than $4,000, consisting of paper bills as well as gold and silver. Measured by the standards of today, the value of the heist would equal approximately $50,500.
In the immediate aftermath of the robbery, Mokena and the surrounding countryside became alive with law enforcement personnel. After being notified by local telephone office manager Clida Deadmore, Will County Sheriff John Walker and deputies from Frankfort, Joliet, New Lenox, as well as Mokena took up the chase. Initially these men were unsuccessful in getting ahead of the robbers, until the tread of the getaway auto’s tires was followed in Front Street’s dust over rural roads to an abandoned farm outside New Lenox.
Approaching the light brown touring car with trepidation, attending deputies found the auto to be devoid of life. Inside were discovered the empty billfolds of George Hacker and Karl Krapp, which had been snatched from them during the robbery, as was the handgun which had been employed in the attack. The thieves’ loot was nowhere to be found. Most ominously, more tire tracks along the dumped vehicle indicated that a second car escaped with the wanted men, from which all traces dissolved into oblivion. In a last attempt to nab the fugitives, two police German shepherds were used to track down the men. While promising at the outset, the presence of farmers in the surrounding fields quickly threw dogs off the target scent.
The trail seemed cold until shortly after the robbery, when Sheriff’s Deputy Walter Fisher, a Front Street storekeeper, took George and Vernon Touzen into custody. Newcomers to Mokena and initially claiming to be brothers, Vernon supposedly had been held at gunpoint outside the bank during the raid. During questioning, he eventually confessed that his actual surname was James. Their kinship wasn’t the only part of their story to be bogus; a claim of being prohibition agents also fell apart under scrutiny.
Having made what were deemed “suspicious statements” about the robbery by our town newspaper, the News-Bulletin, James and Touzen were summarily locked up at the county jail. In their absence, authorities removed suitcases from their temporary place of residence in Mokena, inside which were found not only matching ammunition for the robbery gun, but also piquant letters from local girls.
The issue of James and Touzen intensified when it was discovered that the pair were known to be friendly with John Frisch, a Mokena railroad worker and the village’s constable. Many in town openly wondered about Frisch’s involvement in the robbery, as one of the suspected twosome had recently swapped pistols with him. So loud was the mistrust against Frisch that the Mokena Village Board was forced to investigate him until Deputy Fisher vociferously defended him, stating that James and Touzen had “pulled the wool over Frisch’s eyes as to their intentions.”
As history notes, no charges were ever formally leveled against James and Touzen. There was simply no conclusive evidence, no smoking gun tying them to any involvement in the robbery of the Mokena State Bank. After their release from jail a short time later, James threatened to exact revenge on Deputy Fisher, and promptly disappeared along with Touzen into the untraceable void of time.
Mokena was a changed place after the heinous robbery, with all strangers looked upon with suspicion. An unknown face would be asked to explain his business in town, and if a satisfactory answer wasn’t becoming, would be hustled out of the village. The bank was quickly stocked with firearms, and the building itself was fortified. Within a year of the robbery, the cashier’s cage was completely surrounded with bulletproof glass, while all woodwork in the bank was backed with steel, not to mention the windows that got bullet resistant screens. The doors to the cashier’s space and the president’s office also got a treatment of steel, as well as an apparatus that allowed them only to be opened from the inside by means of an electric button. The directors of the bank weren’t about to take any chances on the supposedly bulletproof glass, and invited Deputy Fisher to give it a test. On the afternoon of Tuesday, November 24th, 1925, the deputy fired three rounds from his .38 caliber revolver into the glass. Not a single one made it through. The News-Bulletin was there, and noted that “the only effect on the glass was a whitening of the surface, same as seen on a piece of ice when it is struck.”
Mokena may never know who was behind the robbery of October 27th, 1924. Loose ends existed that were never followed up on, and ringers for the crime were released without charge. What is sure, is that the crime resonated so deeply in the collective psyche of this sleepy railroad village of decades past, that it is still remembered with dread to this day.
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