Private Eye on Seattle Tours was featured on Evening Magazine on June 2011



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Jake

JAKE, Owner of Private Eye Tours

SNIFFING OUT SEATTLE’S UNDERWORLD HAUNTS


Windsor Olson’s Private Eye excursions concentrate on murder and mayhem in the Emerald City’s past


THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, August 21-28, 1997 by J. Kingston Pierce


Seattle --It was an audacious heist. While most Seattle residents were happily celebrating George Washington’s birthday with a three-day weekend on mid-February 1954, and while local lawmen were occupied at their annual policeman’s ball, thieves calmly blocked off both ends of an alley at 1st Avenue and Cherry Streets and set about breaking into the Pioneer Safety Vaults Building.

They entered in the back, then cut through a steel door from the business office. Using picks and sledge hammers, the crooks attacked a 20 centimetre thick brick wall and finally used acetylene torches to overcome a steel wall separating them from 1,640 safety-deposit boxes. "Many of them [were] stuffed with cash, gold brought down from Alaska, jewels, negotiable bonds, and various ill-gotten gains hidden there by crooked policemen." Explains Windsor Olson, a semi-retired private detective who has recently begun conducting offbeat - and periodically macabre - tours of Seattle’s criminal past. "In those days," he says, "this city had one of the most corrupt police departments around."

Olson describes this bit of larceny, which must have taken from six to eight hours, as bigger than the Boston Brinks robbery of 1950, which has been called the crime of the century. "Just over $1 million disappeared from Brinks; official estimates are $100,000 to $400,000 worth of goods was taken from Pioneer Vaults, but I’ve heard estimates as high as $2 million," says Olson. "It’s hard to know the truth, since most of what was taken was ‘dirty’ money, and only one guy ever came forward to make a claim if the loot was returned. But the case was never solved. No one was arrested."

This is just a ‘flavor’ taken from the Georgia Straight article; there is much more! To take a Private Eye on Seattle Tour, contact Jake at (206) 365-3739. The cost of the tour is $28.