Wrecker

One September day, Watchman John. Drexel, whose duties included guarding the closed Chicago stonecutting plant of St. Louis' big Steven & Son, made an excited long distance call to his employers. "The plant has been stolen," gasped Watchman Drexel. "It's gone." Chicago police, after a look at the dismantled plant, immediately recalled that, two weeks before, the stonecutting firm of T. C. Diener Co. had also reported that their closed plant, consisting of four buildings full of machinery, had been completely razed. Investigation disclosed that both jobs had been done by a crew of Negro workmen. A trail of canceled checks soon led to their employer, hulking 225-lb. Edward Rockwood.

Arrested on charges of grand larceny and brought to trial in a Chicago courtroom last week, Defendant Rockwood sat sheepishly silent as Prosecutor C. Vernon Thompson described his unique activities. Until his business slumped last summer, 43-year-old Mr. Rockwood, father of six children, had been a highly respectable wrecking contractor. Hard times set him to stealing and his regular crew asked no questions when he sent them, to dismantle the Diener factory. After moving out safes, typewriters, files and adding machines from the office and $30,000 worth of machinery from the plant, they proceeded on Mr. Rockwood's orders to tear down a three-car garage, a brick mill, a woodcutting shed 100 ft. by 30 ft. From the Steven plant, which had been closed since 1933, Wrecker Rockwood's men took, among other things, a 15-ton derrick, two electric hoists worth $4,500. Mr. Rockwood, explained Prosecutor Thompson, had disposed of his huge swag chiefly to local junk yards by means of forged bills of sale. Most puzzling problem he left in his wake was a big overhead electric crane, which he had sold to a firm of contractors for $250 and which they had paid $350 to move from the Diener plant, where there was no building in which to reinstall it last week.

Sentencing Wrecker Rockwood to one-to-ten years in the Joliet penitentiary, Judge Cornelius Harrington held up his hands in horror when Mr. Rockwood asked to be released on bond to wind up his affairs. Snapped the judge: "I should say not. I want to be sure this building will be here when I come back. . . .:

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.