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Home John Spirko The Case Elgin Post Office Robbed Elgin Post Office Robbed
Thursday, 04 October 2007
AUGUST 9, 1982
Postmistress Missing; May Be Kidnap Victim
A robbery and apparent abduction is being investigated by detectives from the Sheriff's Department this morning in Elgin.
Sheriff Jerry Brittsan reported at 1:50 a.m. this morning that the cash drawer and safe at the U.S. Post Office in Elgin were cleaned out around 8:30 a.m. today.
Postmistress Jane Mottinger of Ohio City is missing at this time and it is being presumed by authorities that she has been abducted by the thief.
Sheriff Brittsan stated that local authorites are looking for a man seen in the area at the time of robbery in his late forties or early fifties, wearing glasses, with dark hair streaked with gray.
Further description puts him at approximately 6-foot-3 and around 235 pounds, wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt and blue pants.
He is driving a tan-over-brown Chevrolet Monte Carlo and was headed south at the time he was observed by local residents. Investigators from the Lima office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were on the scene this morning, with members of a U.S. Postal Service investigation team scheduled to arrive around noon.
Sheriff's Department deputies are involved in the preliminary information gathering at the robbery scene but the actual investigation will then be taken over by postal authorities. An intensive search from the air and the ground involving the department's K-9 unit, private pilots and reserve deputies is going on in the county to find clues to the whearabouts of Mrs. Mottinger. Sheriff's departments in Mercer, Auglaize and Allen counties have also been alerted by authorities and are on the alert for anyone resembling the suspect traveling in those counties. No estimate of the amount of money taken has been given at this time.