The Nation: One for the Books

Chicago was the setting for another sort of dubious achievement last week: the largest cash theft in American history. Until then the all-time record belonged to the perpetrators of the 1962 Plymouth, Mass., mail-truck robbery, who stole $1.55 million in cash, and of the 1950 Brink's holdup in Boston, where $1.2 million of the $2.78 million haul was in cash. The profitable target in Chicago was the fortress-like facility of Purolator Security, Inc., one of the nation's largest armored-car and guard-service companies.

Over the weekend its vault bulged with an estimated $25 million in cash, including $1.3 million from nearby Hawthorne race...