A Thief in the Night

Throughout the wee hours of the morning of April 6, 1916, a little crime wave washed over the heart of Hobart.

It began on Center Street at the home of Harry and Fay Paxton. About 12:30 a.m., Fay heard the clinking of a bottle against on the cement sidewalk outside their house. She went to investigate. When she saw a flashlight shining through one of their windows, she quickly got on the phone to "Central" and alerted the town's Night Policeman, Burt Guyer. The would-be burglars apparently noticed her, too, and they slipped away into the night.

While Officer Guyer was checking out the Paxton house, the burglars were probably two blocks over on New Street, checking out the home of Harry Gutelius. This time they managed to get in without waking up the occupants. It would not be until morning that the Guteliuses realized they'd had nocturnal visitors who made off with a suit of clothes, a gold watch and chain, and about $175 in cash taken from Harry's clothing and his wife's purse.

Sometime later, the widowed Emeline Lounsbury was startled awake by a mysterious noise somewhere in her Cleveland Avenue house. Upon investigation, she found that someone had broken a window lock by prying one of her windows open. Frightened by their own noise, or perhaps by Emeline's approach, the burglars had fled.

Around 2:00 a.m., John W. Thiel was awakened by one of his children crying. When he got up, he noticed that the bathroom window had been pried open. Checking around, he found the kitchen door open as well, and just outside, a spade that didn't belong to him lying on the ground — the tool the burglars had used to pry the window open, he guessed. But the child's cry that had awakened John probably alarmed the burglars as well, and they left the house richer than they had found it — "a spade ahead," as John said. He phoned in his report to "Central," and now Marshal Fred Rose joined Officer Guyer in the search.

Around 5:00 a.m., another call came in, this time from John and Mary McDaniel. They had just awakened in their Devonshire Street home to the horrifying realization that burglars had been in the very room where they were sleeping. A suit of John's was missing, with its watch and chain and about $1.20 in its pockets; the other contents of its pockets — papers, keys, a pair of tweezers, a screwdriver — were scattered about the floor. The thieves had probably entered through the cellar, which in turn led them into the bedroom; and apparently John and Mary were heavy sleepers.

Officer Guyer and Marshal Rose had spent a frustrating night, always behind the quick-footed burglars, but now dawn was approaching and the crime spree was over. The culprits had gotten away — for the moment, anyway; there remained the hope that they might be stupid enough to wear the stolen clothes and thus be recognized.

Later that day Paul Newman reported a visit to his garage the previous evening by two mysterious young men. They stopped in to have a tire on their Empire car fixed, but they had no money to pay for it. They gave him the White Garage in Valparaiso as their reference for credit; Paul preferred something tangible — say, a watch and chain. The young men refused that deal, and left the garage driving east on a flat tire. Sometime later, a couple of Hobartites returning from Crown Point noticed a strange car parked just south of the Unitarian Church.

On hearing Paul's report, Marshal Rose called the White Garage in Valpo to found out if anyone there recognized the names the young men had given, or the description of their car. Nobody did. A call to the Secretary of State to check out the car's license plate number (Paul Newman had made a note of it) proved it registered to George Boyd, who lived in western Ross Township. Evidently the two young men were car thieves, traveling under fake names, which made them the best suspects in all the burglaries that night. The task remaining was to find out who they really were and track them down.


Sources:
♦ "Additional Local News." Hobart Gazette 14 Apr. 1916.
♦ "Homes Visited by Thieves." Hobart Gazette 7 Apr. 1916.
♦ "May Have Been the Robbers." Hobart Gazette 14 Apr. 1916.