# East St. Louis Daily Journal, 19 June 1924, page 1: Plotted $3,000,000 Robbery Here

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/clippings/clip-east-st-louis-daily-journal-1924-06-19-p1/

A front page on the robbery of a mail train near Rondout, Illinois, reporting the Chicago police chief's statement that "Max Greenberg, former chief of Egan's rats, a well-known St. Louis band of gangsters, was the 'master mind' of the robbery."

Front page of the East St. Louis Daily Journal, Home Edition, Thursday evening, 19 June 1924, under the banner "Plotted $3,000,000 Robbery Here." Two stories carry it. A United Press dispatch datelined Chicago, June 19, runs under "Greenberg Directed Holdup From Local Resort, His Gang Rehearsed Robbery, Say Police." A local story at the right runs under "Trace Route of Mail Thieves by Confession" and "M. Greenberg Was a Leader." Between them, a photograph shows "Postal Inspectors, Many of Whom Were Here Working on Clews in Mail Robbery," and a portrait is captioned "J. H. Wayne."

The United Press story, as read on the scan, says the robbery of "$3,000,000 worth of mail from a Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul train near Rondout, Ill., last week has been solved and all the participants are known, Morgan A. Collins, Chicago police chief, announced today. The robbery plot, Collins said, was planned in East St. Louis, Ill., and carried out by St. Louis and Chicago gunmen. Max Greenberg, former chief of Egan's rats, a well-known St. Louis band of gangsters, was the "master mind" of the robbery, he said." It says four of eight men were under arrest and four were sought, and gives a new estimate of the loot as $2,575,000. The local story says postal inspectors had laid a trap in East St. Louis for a division of the money and calls Greenberg an "East St. Louis and St. Louis gangster and gunman."

This page reports a police chief's statements within a week of the robbery. They are accusations, not findings. "Egan's rats" is the chief's phrase as the wire service printed it. The Rondout robbery was a separate matter from the [1923 Staunton mail robbery](/items/nara-285094043-us-v-colbeck-case-file/) for which the Colbeck defendants were tried, and no court record of a Rondout prosecution, or of any case against Greenberg, has been opened for this archive. The local story's decks also link Greenberg to an earlier killing in St. Louis; that is the paper's report of rumor and is not repeated here. The men named as under arrest are not named on this page.

## Sources

- Library of Congress, Chronicling America: https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn92053739/1924-06-19/ed-1/?sp=1