A Heavy Question - MOTU

I have never been able to find anything more than the quote I am going to give you. This one has always struck me as one odd incident. All I've been able to find is the exact quote, nothing more, nothing less.

A Heavy Question- At the end of a day's work in 1974, workers for the Dowling Construction Company of Indianapolis left a 5 ton steel wrecking ball hanging from a crane 200 feet above the ground. When they came back the next morning the ball was gone. Police and all concerned were baffled, and the ball was never found.

www.unsolvedmysteries.com...

Is it real? How come nothing has ever been printed online about this? No one ever looked, or tried to look? Nothing, as far as I could see, in 35 years?

Seriously, how does a five ton steel ball, hanging 200 feet above the ground, go missing?

I know it's not the biggest of mysteries, but it's always intrigued me since I read it in the Time Life book Mysteries of the Unexplained.

Anyone?

I thought this might be the right forum but if the Mods so desire, move it. I don't care.

i would say that metaphysically it would have had a need to shift from one form to another, or dissapeared because of the potentially harmful damage it might do in the future, in someway it involved a metaphysical happening. purposes unknown

star, and flag for getting in the action!

Um. in a nutshell, I don't see anything to odd should this really have happened.

I owned an Electrical design, construction, and maintenance company, and let me tell'ya scrap of any kind brings a pretty penny.

Keys to equipment are a dime a dozen, and are universal per equipment brand. I have caterpillar key, john deere key, case key, etc.

Each key I guarantee will start just about anything of their respective brands. Equipment theft used to be big business before the days of GPS, but it really hasn't slowed down much since.

Long story shorter I feel confident the crane in question had a common nature, or brand specific key. Someone simply got in it, started it, and lowered the ball onto either a pickup, or larger truck..... yes even a pickup....... I've hauled some fairly amazing stuff in them.

Back in the 70's through the early 90's scrap yards required no ID. So, whoever stole it simply went at best to the next city over, to a scrap yard. They used to pay in cash.

So, for a couple hours work of stealing they probably made 200, or 300 bucks back in the 70's

Electrical Service Conductors are another hot item to steal. It really freaks a business, or building owner to show up the next day to no power because 10K worth of service conductor was stolen..........the issue there is the police know where to start looking; usually only an electrician has the no how to get away with that safely.

Thanks, Sancho. Sometimes I can be real dense.

I never , ever thought of just lowering it down to the ground. I guess that's just too easy for my mind to have comprehended that.

One would think, though, that the recycling company would have known something was hinky. It's a freaking 5 ton ball, FFS! Not something that gets recycled everyday.

Your scenario does make sense and is probably the most likely. They probably had friends at the recycling center and no one wanted to get busted, so they went along with it. Money does rule everything and a five ton ball would make a couple of bucks.

It is either the work of clever, skilled pranksters with ninja training, or thieves with the same kind of abilities

As pointed out above, it is probably relatively easy to steal it. But, I'd think somebody would've seen or heard them start up the crane, lower it, remove the wrecking ball, and then make off with it. But, it never does say if the crane was raised back up in the same position they left it in, just without the wrecking ball. If it was just thieves trying to make some quick money, then I doubt they would've taken the time to do this. So if the crane was lowered when the wrecking ball was discovered missing, then I'd lean towards thieves. If it was 200 feet in the air, exactly how they left it, except without the wrecking ball, I'd lean more towards pranksters. Also, it doesn't really say if the construction site was in a remote area, suburb, or populated urban area. So, if it was somewhere where there weren't a lot of people, then it's relatively explainable. But if it was in a heavily populated area, then that is pretty impressive. Whoever stole it would be pretty good if that's the case.

reply to post by LetTheTruthBeTold


Good points.

I have wondered over the years about the veracity of this story. Once I got around to looking for it on the net a couple of years ago, all I could find is the same as in my OP, verbatim. Nothing more, nothing less. I even tried to find a newspaper article or such from the time but to no avail. I think I came across a article in a paper years ago but I had to pay to see it. I think, that was a while ago.

Maybe I should search some more, but I doubt I would find anything.

I had a heck of a time just finding this article. Seems that my initial Google searches came up with nothing, I had to search for while, hour, half-hour or so to find that. Had to find the right words to use.

Originally posted by TheLoony
I have never been able to find anything more than the quote I am going to give you. This one has always struck me as one odd incident. All I've been able to find is the exact quote, nothing more, nothing less.

A Heavy Question- At the end of a day's work in 1974, workers for the Dowling Construction Company of Indianapolis left a 5 ton steel wrecking ball hanging from a crane 200 feet above the ground. When they came back the next morning the ball was gone. Police and all concerned were baffled, and the ball was never found.

www.unsolvedmysteries.com...

Is it real? How come nothing has ever been printed online about this? No one ever looked, or tried to look? Nothing, as far as I could see, in 35 years?

Seriously, how does a five ton steel ball, hanging 200 feet above the ground, go missing?

I know it's not the biggest of mysteries, but it's always intrigued me since I read it in the Time Life book Mysteries of the Unexplained.

Anyone?

I thought this might be the right forum but if the Mods so desire, move it. I don't care.

That was the last ball that America had left, it lost its first in 1945 after an outrageous display of stupidity with a nuclear bomb, its a bit like the mysteries of people losing there balls at times. You wake up one day and you just dont have the balls to go on anymore.



I had to say that sorry, it was just a joke if anyone is somehow offended.

Interesting story, I had never heard of it before.