A real tour de force. This is what the burglars achieved by attacking the Brives-Charensac dairy, on the night of Thursday December 3 to Friday December 4, 1964. Without being detected, they managed to unseal a safe of 500 kg and moving it up one floor to load it into a car and flee with its contents.
The affair begins between midnight and 3 a.m. The thugs broke into the premises of the company, located along avenue Charles-Dupuy. Accessing the floor, they manage to seize the safe and load it onto a “hand truck”. The team is then launched up the stairs. But the trunk is heavy. Very heavy. Too heavy. The devil does not resist and rushes down the stairs with his load, reducing some of the steps to smithereens.
Whatever. The burglars persist and end up loading the trunk into their car: a commercial Peugeot 403 stolen a few hours earlier from a postal employee, while it was parked along Boulevard Président-Bertrand in Puy-en-Velay.
20,000 new francs in the safe
Alerted by the managers of the dairy, the Puy-en-Velay gendarmes have few clues to launch their investigation. In view of the damage (nearly 20,000 new francs), they request the support of the Clermont-Ferrand judicial police.
And for several days, the investigators must resolve to follow a treasure hunt to hope to catch the burglars, who are also suspected of being the perpetrators of another heist committed a few days earlier in a factory in Yssingeaux.
The investigation resumed on the evening of Sunday December 6, 1964… far from Brives-Charensac. In the Chabassole forest, between Pradelles and Saint-Paul-de-Tartas, two inhabitants of the Plateau discover, abandoned in the middle of the forest, the 203rd stolen and the gutted safe.
A discovery which was a real coincidence: having gone skiing in the morning in Ardèche, the two discoverers had encountered significant snowdrifts near the Auberge de Peyrebeille and had turned back, deciding to carry out their hike in the forest which borders the road.
Small change scattered in the snow of Pradelles
Once again, the investigators can only note the facts: the safe was ripped open with a mass which was also found in the snow. The burglars seemed only to be interested in the large bills: they left the small change there, scattered on the floor.
As for the 203, it was returned to its owner but suffered the blow from this crazy trip: metal sheets were twisted under the weight of the trunk and the rear seat was missing.
A plan drawn on the road
The bench precisely. This is the latest twist in this affair. She was found the following Wednesday on an abandoned road along the RN88, at La Pépinière, just outside Puy-en-Velay. Informed of this find, the investigators went to the site again.
“Nearby, on the disused roadway, a plan had been roughly drawn using a white stone. » The dairy's plan in anticipation of the heist? Certainly. In any case, this will be the last clue left by the thugs before they vanish into thin air.
