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Old Safe – All 3,000 Pounds Of It – Dug Up On North Side

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WBBM Newsradio/Steve Miller

It's a mystery: Who owned an old safe found buried beneath the parking lot of a synagogue at Broadway and Grace, and what's in it?

A couple of weeks ago, crews were working in the parking lot of Anshe Emet synagogue. They were putting a new sewer line in.


"All of a sudden I heard all this commotion - they found something - what is it?" mason construction foreman Bill Schroeder recalled Wednesday. "They didn't know what it was. They pulled it up. Big hunk of steel. Turned out to be a cannonball safe."

A cannonball safe is a round safe that looks like a diver's helmet.

It weighs about 3,000 pounds.

The head of security for the synagogue, Matthew Tobias, said there was an attempt to drill into it. That did not succeed.

"It was a very, very good safe."

WBBM: Meaning?

"Meaning, it was designed not to be opened by anybody but the individual with the combination, which we didn't have."

WBBM: I heard a couple of drill bits were broken?

"Yes."

Tobias says the synagogue hasn't decided when or who'll take another crack at it.