The following appeared in the Rock County Herald on November 3, 1922:
BURGLARS PAY VISIT TO STATE BANK OF STEEN
Gain Entrance Through Window and Ransack Safety Deposit Boxes—Obtain Less Than $300
The Steen State bank was burglarized early Saturday morning. About $150 in bonds and War Savings stamps, and from $15 to $20 in pennies, besides certificates of deposit and other valuables which they found in the safety deposit boxes were secured. Church money, amounting to about $75, which had been left in the vault for temporary safe-keeping, also disappeared.
It is believed that the robbery was committed at two or three o’clock in the morning, but it was not discovered until the following day when the cashier of the bank, A. H. Stell, came to open the building. The gang had stolen their tools from the railroad section house, and gained entrance to the bank by breaking through a side window. The combinations of both the inner and outer doors of the vault were blown off, and the safety deposit boxes pillaged in a way that left them nothing more than a worthless heap of scrap metal. The robbers took the precaution of piling a number of sacks of earth around doors to deaden the sound of the explosion. The money safe had not been tampered with, the $20 in pennies mentioned above having been left outside of the safe.
Because of the fact that the safety deposit boxes had been rifled, it has been impossible to ascertain the accurate amount of the loss, for some of the customers had kept various valuables in their boxes, and these were also taken.
Donations to the Rock County Historical Society can be sent to the Rock County Historical Society, P.O. Box 741, Luverne, MN 56156.
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