Detective's Long Memory Brings Bad-Check Arrest
Suspect Denies Charge:
Detective's Long Memory Brings Bad-Check Arrest
Because of the long memory of Detective Lt. George Stauch of the Police Department, Robert Jacobs, a 20-year-old University student, faces trial on a check forgery charge.
Jacobs denies writing any bad checks.
In May, 1947, a fraudulent $15 check signed by a “Robert Katz'" and drawn on the Ann Arbor Bank was passed on that bank.
It was one of a group of a dozen bad checks still not cleared up. Some of them, Lt. Stauch thought, were passed by the same check forger and so he never stopped trying to find who had written the check.
'Insufficient Funds’
Two years later, in May of this year, Lt. Stauch received a telephone call from Tice's Men’s Clothing Store, 1107 S. University Ave.
A check signed by a student named Robert Jacobs had been returned from the Ann Arbor Bank marked "insufficient funds.”
Lt. Stauch went to the store make a routine investigation.
While examining the Jacobs check, however, he found something that made his memory click—the figures and the name "Robert” on the check, he said, were written exactly the same way as he recalled the writing on the Katz check.
He went to the Ann Arbor Bank and compared the forged check with Jacobs' bank signature card. Again, he said, the two signatures tallied.
Arrested in Detroit
After more investigation, Lt. Stauch had Jacobs arrested in Detroit by Detroit police on June 15.
Yesterday Jacobs, who denies the forgery, was bound over to Circuit Court at the conclusion of his examination in Municipal Court on the charge of forging the Katz check.
During the examination, Lt. Stauch produced both the forged check and Jacobs’ bank card. He testified that Jacobs had admitted that the signature on the card was his.
A state police handwriting expert then testified that the two signatures were the same and Jacobs was bound over.
Jacobs was released on $1,500 bond by Municipal Judge Francis O’Brien.
Lt. Stauch is sending some of the other checks to the Justice Department in Washington for a comparison with Jacobs' handwriting.