Robbery, Inc. - Mission Impossible

Credit: Marietta Daily Journal

Robbery, Inc. dives deeper into the mechanics of one of the most ambitious and audacious bank heists in Georgia history. In this episode, host Madison Elizabeth Hogan unpacks how three men tunneled under one of Marietta’s busiest streets for two months, undetected, to blow through reinforced concrete and into the Cobb Exchange Bank vault. With archival police reports and first-hand recollections, you are transported back to April 1974, when a sleepy town awoke to the news of a Mission: Impossible-style break-in that stunned police and sparked national headlines.

Despite early reports downplaying the heist as a comedic failure, new revelations paint a very different picture. Witnesses describe strange neighbors, late-night activity, and the now-infamous handwritten sign announcing a beauty salon that never opened. Police discovered a tunnel lined with shoring lumber, outfitted with a makeshift ventilation system and buzzers for coordination...and a vault floor pierced by dynamite. By episode’s end, the so-called amateur thieves are revealed to be far more sophisticated than initially believed, and investigators are closing in.

Caption

From the Tuesday, April 23, 1974, Marietta Daily Journal. Pictured are the doors to the offices where burglars started tunneling under Roswell Street to Cobb Exchange Bank. The burglars opened the bank’s safety deposit vault rather than a beauty salon.

Credit: Calvin Cruce - Marietta Daily Journal

Three men spent months tunneling beneath a busy Marietta street to blow through a bank vault floor undetected. What was initially dismissed as a comical failure soon revealed itself to be a meticulously planned heist with a much larger haul, with a trail of clues pointing to a criminal mastermind.