$9.60 and a Dusty Clue: The Roadside Robbery of Paul & Barbara Crandall

While I was searching through old Arizona newspaper archives recently, I stumbled upon something that was entirely unexpected. Mixed in among some stories of local elections, farm reports, and wartime updates from 1941 was a small string of headlines that stopped me in my tracks. The names were instantly familiar to me, Paul and Barbara Crandall, my great-grandparents. As I read the clippings, a wild story unfolded: a brazen and cinematic crime that felt like something pulled straight from an old Western. I had never heard it before, and somehow, this chapter of family history had escaped the usual retellings, buried in these columns from decades ago until now, coming to light and put together.

On a quiet Sunday evening in the Arizona desert, on February 16, 1941, Paul and Barbara Crandall were driving along Baseline Road just south of Mesa. The sun had already dipped beyond the horizon, and the day was giving way to the dry, familiar chill of the February desert night. Their drive was likely ordinary, perhaps a quick trip to visit family, or some other routine trip. But as they neared the intersection with the Gilbert Highway, the routine gave way to something far more sinister.

A car pulled in front of them abruptly, forcing them to the side of the road and two men stepped out. One of them, a guy named Mark Edwin Payne, who was just 21 years old, leveled a shotgun at the Crandalls. The other, John Bolden Thompson, aged 32, stepped forward and demanded their money and that they throw their valuables out of the window to them. The couple handed over what they had. The robbers’ haul? A whopping $9.60. Thompson grabbed it, turned back to their car, and fled into the dark.

As the robbers sped away, Barbara Crandall memorized their license plate number. A small detail, yet in a moment like this, it was everything. As the dust from their car began to settle, she bent down and wrote the plate number into the dirt of the roadside.

Within the hour, Paul was standing beside two Mesa police officers, Guy Phelps and Joe Leavitt. The officers knew the area and its troublemakers, but the real breakthrough came from Barbara’s dusty clue. Using the clue, the officers located the suspects in a Mesa cafe, only about a quarter-mile west of that Gilbert Highway intersection with Baseline road, likely eating as if they hadn’t just pulled a shotgun and committed armed robbery.

Both men were arrested on the spot and when questioned, they admitted to doing it. They were charged with armed robbery in the East Phoenix Justice Court. Days later, on February 19th, they waived their hearings, and their bond was set at $1,000 each, a steep price in 1941.

Just over a week after the crime, on February 25, both men stood before the judge and entered guilty pleas, and on March 4, 1941, the sentencing came down from Arizona Superior Judge Arthur T. LaPrade. “Prison terms of five to seven years were imposed… for perpetrating a robbery which recalled those of stagecoaches in the early days of Arizona”, wrote the Arizona Republic.

The news reported the final outcome the following day under the headline: “Four Taken to Florence.” John B. Thompson and Mark E. Payne were loaded into a prison transport alongside other convicted men and taken to serve out their sentences at Florence State Prison for the armed robbery.

In talking with my dad about the discovery, especially the neat fact that Barbara played the key role in solving the case, he replied with “of course Granny solved the crime!” That was just who she was: sharp, fearless, and utterly undaunted. The kind of woman who, when faced with a shotgun in the dark, didn’t panic or freeze, but instead memorized a license plate and scratched it into the dust.