March 12, 1959 NY Times)A one-armed man and two accomplices held up a Queens loan office yesterday and escaped with $10,000.
At 9:50am the three men, brandishing pistols, stepped through the door of the Metropolitan Savings and Loan Association, 75-20 Metropolitan Avenue, Middle Village, Queens. One of the men had no right arm. He gripped a pistol in his left hand.
The office was almost empty at the time.“Everybody keep quiet,” the one-armed man commanded. “This is a hold-up. Keep quiet or we’ll kill you.”
The one customer, Mrs. Ida Finken, 40 years old, and her daughter, Clare, 3, were ordered into a back room, along with the three tellers and the manager. The one-armed man kept them covered in the back room. “Keep your backs facing me,” he commanded.
In the meantime his confederates scooped up the loose cash in the tellers’ cages. This operation took less than five minutes.
“Give us a few minutes to get away or someone’s going to get killed,” the one-armed man shouted as he slammed the door to the back room behind him.
By the time those in the back room emerged, the three hold-up men had vanished. The wire of a telephone had been cut but a second telephone was not touched.
The one-armed man was described as five feet five inches tall, about 40 years old, stocky, dark complexioned and wearing a tan trench coat. The second was described as five feet nine inches tall, about 40 years old, weighing 140 pounds, wearing a blue topcoat and a peaked cap. The third was six foot three inches tall and wore an overcoat and a peaked hat.