The Great Bungled Burglary

Doddridge never had a crime problem of any disturbing significance. Such crime that did occur, appeared to have come from elsewhere.

In all of its lifetime, the Doddridge State Bank was never robbed, although bank robberies were occurring all over the country during the 1920s. For burglaries, Mrs. Ney Magee’s store rated the most popular. Burglars didn’t seem to take great quantities of things, certainly not money, because it probably was never left there. The usual “take” for such break-ins was groceries and clothing.

The biggest burglar “hit” ever made in Doddridge took place one night in about 1927. The stores of Henry Field, Henry Atchison, Joe Brown, and the Doddridge State Bank were all broken into on the same night. Despite such an ambitious undertaking, the burglars proved themselves to be amateurs indeed, because they got extremely little for all their labor and the enormous risk they took.

Once inside the bank, they used sledge hammers to beat down the concrete wall surrounding the safe, only to discover the steel wall of the safe, itself. This they didn’t expect to encounter, evidently thinking that only the front of the safe was steel. Consequently, they had to abandon the bank without a dime.

Henry Atchison’s store also had a large safe, and here again they failed. First they beat off the combination knob with a sledge hammer.

This blind effort not only didn’t open the safe, but actually made it impossible to do so. Secondly, they drove a steel rod through the locking mechanism with a sledge hammer, as if that might produce results. At this point they had no choice but to give up on safes and realize they couldn’t be gotten into by such clumsy attempts.

The safes in the Field and Brown stores were left intact. The burglars had to give up their idea of money, and so turned to general merchandise.

Considering the amount of noise that had to come from all this undertaking, it’s remarkable that people who were sleeping nearby didn’t awaken and discover what was happening. As was to be expected, the town was in a state of amazement on the following morning. The Miller County sheriff and his helpers came immediately, along with a whole “posse” of bloodhounds. After the sheriff examined the situation, the dogs were oriented with what was thought to be the scent left by the culprits. The hounds were intensely excited, and were baying and straining at their leashes to get going. Suddenly they were off, heading for the woods and swamps, dragging their trainers behind them. This went on nearly all day.

The hounds could be heard from the woods, and on occasion there would be such a flurry of excited baying that one could have believed one of the culprits had been found and was being chewed. Not so, however, and so people continued about their business.

As the ruckus continued into the day, this whole scene became a matter of humor; it was reasonable to suppose that although the burglars might have been dumb, they were not so stupid as to go trampling into the nearby woods and wait for the bloodhounds to come searching. In any case/ the burglars were not caught.

On the other hand, the dogs had great fun chasing fantasies and dragging their trainers through wood and swamp. What the dogs were so excitedly sniffing was anybody’s guess: rabbit tracks, coon tracks, or even the tracks of boys who had been en route to the swimming hole the previous day.

The burglars didn’t get much anyway, but the damage they caused was far more costly than the goods and money they managed to get. From that time forward, the merchants of Doddridge hired a night watchman to patrol the town. Thus ends the story of the biggest bungled burglary in Doddridge history.