100 years ago: Serial burglar narrowly avoids discovery by household’s children

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for June 3, 1911:

“While two laughing, romping children scampered about the room playing ‘burglar,’ the house-breaker who has been terrorizing the Lawrence residence district for three weeks, stood cramped in a closet of the same room for twenty minutes last night. So close did the children play to where he stood concealed, that several times they stopped in affright at what they believed was a man breathing, only to conclude that they were mistaken and to go on playing. The burglar was in the home of C. B. Harmon, 1127 Vermont, having entered a second story window shortly before nine o’clock. He was interrupted in his ransacking by the arrival of the children… With a childish wonder and credulity, which must have amused the listening housebreaker, the children talked of the bold man who robbed houses with such intrepid daring, and improvised a new game in which the police connived with the robber and purposely let him escape. It was an unconscious satire on the ineffectiveness of the police in the present instance which must have wondrously tickled the concealed burglar…. After their departure, he calmly continued his search of the second floor for valuables.”