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.





