Plymouth Mail Robbery
Encyclopedia
The Plymouth Mail Robbery, or what the press dubbed "The Great Plymouth Mail Truck Robbery" was, at the time of its occurrence, the largest cash
Cash
In common language cash refers to money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins.In bookkeeping and finance, cash refers to current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-immediately...

 heist of all time. On 14 August 1962, two gunmen stopped a U.S. Mail truck that was delivering $1.5 million dollars in small bills from Cape Cod
Cape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...

 to the Federal Reserve Bank
Federal Reserve Bank
The twelve Federal Reserve Banks form a major part of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. The twelve federal reserve banks together divide the nation into twelve Federal Reserve Districts, the twelve banking districts created by the Federal Reserve Act of...

 in Boston, Massachusetts. The hijacking occurred on Route 3 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The two robbers, dressed as police officers and brandishing submachine guns, tied up the driver of the truck and the guard and drove the truck themselves to places unknown, where the money was dropped off in several places. The truck and its two tied-up occupants were abandoned in Randolph, Massachusetts
Randolph, Massachusetts
The Town of Randolph is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 32,112. Randolph adopted a new charter effective January 2010 providing for a council-manager form of government instead of the traditional town meeting...

 alongside Route 128.

For five years the United States Postal Inspectors, as well as the FBI intensively combed New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 for leads in the robbery, but were frustrated at the lack of evidence. Authorities even at one time offered a $100,000 cash reward for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for the caper, even going so far as to deem any suspect killed in his apprehension to be deemed "convicted" for purposes of the reward. The combination of media, law enforcement, and popular interest in this record-breaking robbery combined for an atmosphere of near-hysteria in the Boston area throughout the early and middle 1960's. Not a few completely uninvolved people were accused of being involved in the heist, with the media loudly proclaiming their guilt even with no evidence or facts to support its claims..

With the five-year federal statute of limitations
Statute of limitations
A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...

 approaching with no real leads to solve the robbery, the Postal Inspectorate and the Department of Justice stepped up a campaign of near-total surveillance
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...

and harassment of all known armed robbers in the Boston area in a frantic effort to obtain clues about the robber's identities. Shortly before the statute of limitations was to expire, a federal grand jury indicted four men and one woman as the perpetrators of this robbery. One of the defendants disappeared right before trial and was never found. The other defendants were acquitted at trial.

To this day the haul of $1.5 million dollars in cash remains undiscovered by the authorities.
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