The Great Plymouth Mail Truck Robbery
One of the biggest cash heists in history remains unsolved to this day.
On August 14 1962, a mail truck set off from Plymouth in Massachusetts to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. It had made its regular rounds to collect money from smaller branch post offices in Cape Cod, and the journey that pleasant summer’s evening should have been a straightforward one.
The truck never reached its destination, though. Instead, it became part of what would be the then-largest cash heist in US history.
Remarkably, the incident referred to by the press as the Great Plymouth Mail Truck Robbery remains an unsolved mystery to this day. Here, we’ll take a closer look.
Stopped by ‘police’
It was around eight o’clock in the evening when truck driver Patrick Schena and his guard William Barrett were making their way along the highway that links Cape Cod to the rest of Massachusetts and eventually the city of Boston.
They were carrying surplus cash, registered mail and receipts from some of the Cape’s post offices, and the trip had so far been run-of-the-mill. But when they reached the historic coastal town of Plymouth, Barrett spotted a police officer flagging them down.
