The Great Vienna Postal Robbery

Rendo wrote:THE GREAT VIENNA POST OFFICE ROBBERY –Rendo, 2010 (684 words)

Back in the early seventies, seventy five, I believe it was... the Post Office opened after I went to work in the mornings and closed before I returned home at night. These hours meant that I was required to pick up my entire week’s mail on Saturday mornings. One Saturday, when the Farmington Fair was operating, I encountered several police cars surrounding the Vienna Post Office. The Post Master, Lucinda Lord, informed me that the office had been robbed and that my week’s mail had been stolen as part of the items taken.

Two carnival workers at the fair had come to Vienna on Friday night and torn the protective screen off the Post Office window, waking Lucinda who lived next door. She, in turn, called Linwood Meader, the town Constable at the time. He surprised the two as they jumped out the window and fled up Kimball Pond Road in their vehicle. At one point of the chase, one robber jumped from the car and ran up a small hilly pasture owned by Herb Kelley. As he disappeared into the woods, the second robber was chased up the dead end road. He hid a mailbag in an old celler hole near the Rhem place and was soon apprehended.

Now, as I stood there talking to Lucinda that morning, the local, state and Federal Police were questioning folks, searching for the missing mailbags and for the robber who went up the hill of Kelley's pasture. They were organizing to go in after him. It was at that time, that I told an officer: “You know, if you go up that hill, you will come out and down the other side of those woods onto route 41.” No one seemed to listen, so I headed off to Farmington on Route 41 to do my grocery shopping.

As I drove up the highway, I saw a rough looking fellow thumbing a ride at the edge of the road. He was wet up to his waist from running through the brush, covered with the mornings dew. “Must be the robber,” I thought to myself. “Surely the police are patrolling and will soon come along and pick him up.”

After I did my shopping, I again stopped by the Post Office on my way home, to find out the progress of the hunt. “Did they catch both of them?” I asked.

“They found some mail in the cellar hole up the road,” she said. “And they caught the second man on the edge of the highway.”

“I saw a man wet up to the waist, when I went by him,” I remarked.

At that, Lucinda yelled at me. “Why didn't you come back and tell the police?”

“Well, I figured that if you go up a mountain, you will come out the other side. I just figured that the police would think the same and grab him.” Apparently, one local man who traveled the same road behind me, also saw the man by the roadside. The driver did a three point turn in front of the robber, returned to town, told the police and they just drove up to him and picked him up!

Several weeks went by until I received a knock on the door and there stood two FBI men. One man held a Federal check in his hand made out to me. The check was recovered in the mail found by them. They informed me that they wanted to use the check as court evidence to make the crime a Federal Case. I agreed to its use and the check was returned by them months later. I kept the check for over thirty years as it was initialed by the court as evidence; at one time I offered it to the historical society to be kept as a document of history, but was told it was not needed. I have since misplaced it. I am sure that someday the check will again rise from the dust, as has this story of the Great Vienna Postal Robbery!