The Girl in the Iron Box: How an Arizona Kidnapping Stumped Hoover's FBI

by Paul Cool, June Robles (Contributor)

Hardcover

Published April 1, 2019

About the author

I earned BA and JD degrees at the University of San Francisco and formerly served as a Captain in the US Army Reserve. Salt Warriors is my first book."

Reviews

[Perri]

This is a riveting tale of a little-known (and still unsolved) kidnapping case in 1930s Arizona. Author Paul Cool does an exhausting dive into the complexities of the case, parsing through the hundreds of players and leads in a way that the FBI and local law enforcement were never able to accomplish, while also examining how J Edgar Hoover's ego and inner-bureau politics complicated the on-the-ground investigation. For the rest of her life, June Robles never spoke of her kidnapping publicly, and many of the documents Cool uses haven't been looked at in 80 years. Sadly, he passed away shortly after writing this, but this book is a testament to the power of historians to unearth and revive long-forgotten topics worthy of a second look.

[Rhonda Mihalic]

Jumped around. Needed a better editor. Lacked intrigue. Was bummed to be so disappointed in it. I think part of it is that this books tells a true-crime story and how it impacted / intersected with the newly formed and flawed FBI — and I read it not long after reading another book that could be described the same way: Killers of the Flower Moon. This book didn’t come close to the quality or intrigue of the latter and may have underwhelmed me more due to comparison.

[TENN2ARIZ]

A great read about a poorly investigated Tucson kidnapping that exposed a number of Hoover biases.