In 1966 the office of the Frenchtown Building & Loan Association was burglarized. The crime was made noteworthy by miscalculations by the crooks, by the cops and by the next-door neighbor.
The B&L was in the easternmost storefront of the Williams/Kerr Block on Bridge Street – where Modern Love is now. At about 2 a.m. on Labor Day, two men pried open the front door, went in and hauled out a 700-pound safe. The noise they made loading it into the trunk of their dusty, black 1957 Chevy attracted the notice of David A. Johnson, age 23, who lived next door in the funeral home.
He called the State Police, who may have told him to call Frenchtown Police Chief Walter Schaible. Johnson got the impression that the troopers were going to call Schaible. The unmade call to Schaible was like a fly ball landing uncaught between two reticent outfielders.
Entertaining a vigilante impulse, Johnson got his shotgun, but couldn't find any shells for it, so he did not challenge the burglars.
The thieves drove away over the bridge with a safe that contained nothing but papers – no cash, no checks. But the safe itself was valued at $280. That's the account published by the Delaware Valley News.
Johnson, who would himself be a state trooper in 1968-72, told me recently that the News had it mostly right. He said in those days, the trooper on duty in the Flemington barracks would take the phone to bed with him. Johnson's call woke him up, and the trooper said, “We'll send somebody and we'll call Walt Schaible.” But, Johnson said, “the trooper just took the information and went back to sleep.”
Strangely enough, Johnson would see that safe again the following winter. He was part of a crew from the Garden State Underwater Recovery Unit that was doing a practice dive in the Stewartsville quarry, when they found the safe in 65 feet of water and had it hauled out. Papers inside it confirmed its identity.
I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't read it right here!
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
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