Cutters

George Laschetzke, trolley conductor, returned from work to his top-floor apartment on South Halsted Street near the Chicago Stock Yards early Saturday afternoon. Outside the building two men stopped him, flashed gold badges. "We're government men," said they, "looking for an escaped convict." Laschetzke took them up to his apartment. There they pulled guns. Laschetzke, his wife and mother were marched down to the second-floor apartment. With two other tenants they were herded into a bathroom. All visitors of the evening, including two children, were imprisoned with them.

Meanwhile six more men had entered the house. They carried boxes of heavy equipment. Neighbors thought they were only 'leggers. In the second-floor parlor they sawed a three-foot square in the hardwood floor. Beneath that they pierced 18 inches of brick. Acetylene torches next cut through a layer of steel. Through the hole beneath yawned the vault of Koch & Co., real estate firm, on the ground floor.

The cutters dropped down into the vault, burned their way through more steel into a safety deposit room. Aided by a card index, they cut into 350 boxes in which Koch clients, distrustful of banks, were hoarding their cash. Jewelry and securities were untouched. At 4 a. m. Sunday the robbers departed with loot estimated at $250,000 in cash. Chicago police blamed a gang of New York specialists for the city's biggest burglary in nearly a decade.

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