The Arizona Historical Society is proud to announce the release of a new book about the 1934 abduction of June Robles in Tucson, AZ. The Girl in the Iron Box: How an Arizona Kidnapping Stumped Hoover’s FBI is a historical true-crime drama by author Paul Cool that weaves the story of the nineteen-day search for her that ended with June being found alive in the Tucson desert.

David Turpie, Vice President of Exhibitions and Publications shared, “The Arizona Historical Society is proud to have published this excellent new book by historian Paul Cool. After years of in-depth research, Cool knew the story of the June Robles abduction and the FBI’s search for the perpetrators better than anyone. His lively writing style makes the ins and outs of the case accessible to modern-day readers. This book will interest not just Arizona history buffs but anyone interested in a gripping true-crime story from the 1930s.”

At 3 o’clock in the afternoon of April 25, 1934, six-year-old June Robles stepped inside a Ford sedan on her way home from school and disappeared from the streets of Tucson, Arizona. With the Lindbergh kidnapping fresh in the minds of Depression-era Americans, the kidnapping sent shock waves across the country and through the sleepy desert community. After nineteen frantic days and nights, June Robles was discovered alive, buried in an iron box beneath the hot desert sand. Second only to the Lindbergh case, June Robles’s disappearance was the most notorious child abduction of the 1930s, setting in motion a massive manhunt in Tucson and around the country. It was the first major case that ambitious FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s agents could not solve. Based on extensive research in newspapers, interviews, and FBI files, Paul Cool recreates in absorbing detail the search for the missing girl, the massive local and national manhunt for her kidnappers, and Hoover’s obsessive involvement in the case.

An independent historian, the late Paul Cool was the author of Salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande (Texas A&M University Press, 2008) and numerous articles on crime and justice in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands.

To purchase a copy, visit the Arizona Historical Society website,

https://arizonahistoricalsociety.org/publications/ or contact the AHS Publications office by calling 520-617-1163 or emailing publications@azhs.gov .