Eyewitness 1927: Bethel Park Brinks robber included man who'd kill cop
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Paul Jawarski admitted to multiple murders before his execution in 1929.
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Bandits used stolen black powder to blow up a 60-foot section of what is now Brightwood Road in Bethel Park in March 1927.
An initial explosion overturned a Brinks armored car carrying a mine payroll. A second blast followed almost instantaneously, "cutting a gaping hole in the road into which the guard car plunged," according to a March 12 story in The Pittsburgh Press. While drivers and passengers in both vehicles were knocked senseless, no one was killed.
The crime, which happened around noon on March 11, is often described as the nation's first armored-car robbery.
"It was black powder rather than dynamite that was used to undermine the road," the newspaper reported the evening after the dual blasts. Police said about 500 pounds of explosives had been stolen a few days earlier from a supply house at Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Co.'s Mine No. 3 in Mollenauer, a neighborhood in Bethel Park that began as a "company town" where coal company workers lived.
The explosions and robbery took place near the intersection of Brightwood and Library roads.
As soon as both vehicles were disabled by the blasts, "the bandits poured from their ambush and were emptying the car of the payroll," the Press reported. "[H.W.] Tarr, driver of the money car, was the first of the men to come to his senses, but one of the bandits had him covered, ordering him to remain silent."
"With their loot gathered, the bandits dashed for two automobiles and disappeared through the culvert under the Montour railroad [tracks]." Gang members fled with $104,205 -- equal to at least $1.3 million in modern currency.
Police from several counties took up the search for suspects, who several days later were tracked to a farmhouse outside Bentleyville.
The men charged in the robbery included Paul Jawarski, the leader of a criminal gang known as the "Flatheads." His name also is spelled "Jaworski" in some reports.
First Published October 30, 2011 12:00 am
