“Subject was engaged in the mining of chrome in the mountains of Northern California. I located his mining partner in Chicago, and I spent considerable time with him. There was another man who lived in a location that, in reaching the area of the mine, it was necessary to drive past his residence.
“Subject was using explosives on a daily basis. He was setting charges in the late afternoon, then getting in his car and driving away. The charges would explode later in the evening. The next day subject and his partner would return to the area and process the ore for shipment.
“The man who lived near the mining site decided to time the length of time from the hour the subject left the area until the charge exploded. I have not yet been able to find the exact timing, but it was a massive shock to me when he said ‘6 hours.’ You may remember that 90944 departed San Francisco airport at 11:31 AM. It is known that whatever happened to it occurred at 5:27 PM. This is about as close to 6 hours as anyone would be able to compare.
“A Pan Am employee who was part of the boarding party when 944 left San Francisco remembered subject and described his attitude as ‘taciturn.’ He also remembered him carrying a valise when he boarded the plane.
“In the past 40 years I have talked with a few people including two lawyers, but this story is so vastly incredible no one believes it happened. They just shake their heads at me and say nothing. No one believes it.
“I am a religious-thinking person. I believe there is a God, a hereafter and a person who sits at the right hand of God. I have been driven for years to do something about this. Maybe what I am doing now will suffice.”
At the time, I had no idea what a tangled web I was about to try to unweave. The postmistress’s name? I learned that she was Jessie Payne.
And her husband? Earle Payne, an explosives expert just like crash suspect William Harrison Payne.
As it turns out there were dozens of Paynes in Siskiyou County—none of them related to the sabotage suspect. It took me more than a year to unravel who was who and what their connections were, and as was too often the case in the search for my father’s killer, many of the key people had long since died.
The March 1999 letter was the last I ever heard from Russell Stiles; seven months later, he died.
For years I begged and pleaded with Margaret Stiles Storm, daughter of investigator Stiles, to allow me to see the file he had begun to share with me before he died. Mrs. Storm, her father’s caretaker in the final years of his life, was familiar with his communications with me, and I reached out to her again in a March 2007 letter:
“The last letter I have from Mr. Stiles is dated March 21, 1999. After more than twenty years of letters back and forth he was finally beginning to share with me details of his investigation into the crash of Pan American Romance of the Skies which took my father’s life.
“His last sentence to me was this: ‘I have been driven for years to do something about this. Maybe what I am doing now will suffice.’
“That is the last I ever heard.
“My plea now is that you will finally allow me to look at his notes and records of this investigation to help close that chapter of my life-long investigation into the crash of my father’s plane. I have spent many years looking into this crash, and one big hole remains: what did Mr. Stiles discover?
“I would be more than willing to fly to Colorado and review the notes and records in your home, if that is your desire. Please give my request thoughtful consideration.”
No reply.
I tried to reach her when I was in Colorado later that year. Again, nothing. Years later she responded to an email and told me that her father’s notes were not easily accessible and were somewhere in his personal belongings, which she had not yet had time to go through. I told her I understood how difficult that must be for her and volunteered to fly to Colorado and help her.
Again, no reply.
A few years later, I tried another approach. After learning that she was an amateur historian and active in historical research in Colorado, I tried to convince her of the importance of solving the mystery from a historical perspective.
That may have been what did the trick.
On September 7, 2015—nearly fifteen years after Stiles had begun sharing information with me—an envelope containing an eighteen-page summary of his investigation arrived in the mail. Stiles himself had provided much more than a summary to his superiors at Western Life and ultimately to the FBI, but a summary was better than nothing, and I was delighted to have it.
“This is all I know about the subject; maybe it will be beneficial to you,” Mrs. Storm stated in a brief cover note. “God bless.”
The summary provided enough evidence, albeit much of it circumstantial and full of unusual coincidences, to point the finger away from purser Crosthwaite—and squarely back at former Navy frogman Payne.
The first pages of the report detailed how Payne had obtained, unsolicited, the life-insurance policy that the company had refused to pay until ordered to do so by a judge. He went into great detail about Payne’s insistence that the policy be written as soon as possible, and how he was forced to change his travel plans during his late-October 1957 visit with his mother so that the required insurance company physical could be conducted the following day in Manteca. This was less than two weeks before the final flight of Romance of the Skies.
Interesting, but hardly the bombshell I had been hoping for.
Next, the summary provided biographical information about Payne—something I had been desperately seeking for years. It confirmed that he had a brother, David, a mechanic in Fresno, and that his father had died early in his life. That somewhat explained why Payne and his mother had ended up in Sparks, Nevada, where she married Charles Edgar Wilcox, an automobile repairman who later became a card dealer at The Palace casino. Payne grew up in Sparks, joined the Navy shortly after high school, and served without distinction for twenty-one years, until his retirement.
“During the time that he was in the Navy, he was in various classifications which included the following: barber; metals man; machinist’s mate; and during the early part of World War II was a Frogman.”
Frogman. That was further confirmation of Payne’s claims to friends and family that he had years of experience in the Navy with explosives. Newspaper accounts at the time of the crash repeatedly referred to Payne as a “former Navy frogman and demolitions expert,” a statement that his widow had confirmed to reporters.
Early Navy frogmen—the forerunners of today’s Navy SEALs—were trained in, among other things, swimming underwater, clearing beach landing areas of enemy mines and obstructions, and planting explosives on enemy ships.
I had determined years earlier that Payne had been assigned to the submarine base at Pearl Harbor in 1940 and had worked on tenders that serviced and supplied subs throughout the war and into the Korean War era. He also had been stationed at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, north of San Francisco, where numerous submarines and sub tenders had been constructed and repaired during World War II. There was no formal job title of frogman in the early days of World War II, and it is entirely possible that Payne was one of a number of sailors who had become frogmen simply because of their proficiency at swimming and their proximity to submarines.
Stiles outlined Payne’s finances and how he had arranged the purchase of the Roxbury Lodge:
“Mr. Payne had a Navy retirement pension of $160 a month. His wife owned a small house in Manteca, California, which was valued at approximately $5,000. The Roxbury Lodge of Scott Bar was purchased with a $5,000 down payment in July of 1955. The $5,000 was partly savings and partly money that belonged to Mrs. Payne. The agreement concerning this lodge was that $10,000 would be paid in six months, and in a year $15,000 would be paid. At the end of the six-month period following the date of purchase it was necessary for Mr. Payne to borrow $10,000 from his mother, which we are advised was approximately her life savings, and at the end of the year it was necessary that Mr. Pa
yne borrow $15,000 to complete payment. The $15,000 was borrowed from Mr. L. R. Zimmerman of Stockton, California. Payments on this loan were to be made at the rate of $250 a month. Mr. Zimmerman was given a Deed of Trust to the Roxbury Lodge of Scott Bar, California.”
Stiles’s report confirmed what I had learned years earlier about how Payne came up with enough money to buy the lodge, and also that he had not been making enough money to keep it afloat and to make his mortgage payments. The information about Zimmerman, however, was new. I needed to learn more about this man and why he would lend Payne that much money in a risky business venture that clearly was failing.
The fifty-three-year-old Leonard Raymond Zimmerman was a very wealthy man when he bailed Payne out of financial trouble in July 1956. Part owner of a seven-acre shipyard in the Stockton Deepwater Channel on Banner Island and partner in a steel supply and construction company, Zimmerman made a fortune during World War II through lucrative contracts with the Army and the Navy to construct floating crane barges, landing crafts, coastal freighters, sub tenders, and steel tugboats.
It is likely that Payne became acquainted with Zimmerman while serving out his final years in the Navy in the Stockton area or when he worked for a short time as a coremaker at Augustine Brass Casting, less than three miles from Zimmerman’s shipbuilding company. Somehow, he was able to convince the businessman to loan him the money when he and Harriet ran into financial difficulty and couldn’t make the mortgage payments to the Brown brothers. Zimmerman may have seen this as an opportunity to own a resort lodge at significantly less than value if Payne defaulted on the note—and Payne was in arrears at the time of the disappearance of Romance of the Skies.
Zimmerman had told arson investigator Guisnesss that he was ready to foreclose on the note and take over the lodge when the plane went down—another possible reason for Payne to sabotage the plane either by suicide-murder or a straight-out murder-for-insurance fraud.
Again, the summary was interesting, but so far provided no compelling information that might add to the case against Payne.
And that was about to change - dramatically.
Stiles provided insight into not only Payne’s personality and character, but also his failing finances, as well as tantalizing clues about Payne’s activities in the days and weeks before the plane went down.
Stiles reported that Payne was known to drink “occasionally to excess,” but was not a habitual drinker. When the Paynes bought the lodge they also acquired its valuable California state liquor license, which Payne decided to exploit to maximum effect:
“Liquor of all kinds was sold by the drink in this lodge. The area around Scott Bar, California, is largely one of mining operations and lumbering operations. Among this class of people, at least in this area, there appeared to be a great deal of drinking, and this lodge was very accessible to the people who used liquor. Mr. Payne was subjected to some criticism for his lack of control on the use of liquor in this business. His interests seemed to be only in selling liquor and benefiting financially to the fullest extent,” Stiles stated.
Payne began to ignore the wealthy fishermen and hunters who had kept the lodge afloat for many years, concentrating instead on his bar business, which tended to drive out the higher-class clients. The bar was easier to manage; it was all cash and didn’t require advertising, reservation handling, or the upkeep of accommodations.
Stiles further stated that during his investigation he paid careful attention to Payne’s character and personality.
“People who knew Mr. Payne well described him as the youngest in the family and a ‘mama’s boy.’ He was extremely fond of his mother and had a very definite attachment to his mother which seemed to some who were interviewed as being a stronger attachment than to his wife.”
That special mother-son bond was important to know about, because later in his investigation Stiles would come to believe that Payne’s mother lied to him when questioned about the circumstances leading up to the crash.
“Very close questioning of many people with whom this man was associated in various localities seemed to indicate that he was the type of man who, under pressure, would take on a complete change in personality.”
Stiles then introduced the names of three men whose relationships with both Payne and his wife raised intriguing questions: Earle Payne, William Rob, and John D. Sherman, all of whom would emerge as important figures as I continued my investigation in the years ahead.
“Earle Payne, who knew the applicant perhaps better than anyone interviewed, was very close regarding any information which he would give. It was felt that he actually misrepresented and misstated facts on many points, but he did make one very pertinent statement as follows: ‘Mic (William Harrison Payne) was the kind of guy that had a complete change of personality when the going got tough.’ On numerous occasions it was known that people would call at Roxbury Lodge to see him and he would send his children or his wife to tell them he was not in or not available. There appeared on many occasions to be no specific reason for this action, only that it just happened to be his mood at that particular time not to wish to see anyone. . . . this action did not appear to be concentrated on any one or two individuals. It might be a very close friend one day, on another day it might merely be a salesman or businessman who called to see him, and on a whim, Payne would merely refuse to see them.”
OK, so Stiles had established that Payne was moody or may have had some kind of mild personality disorder, but what about the investigator’s statement about Earle Payne lying to him? Why would he do that? Who was Earle Payne anyway? Was he a relative, a friend, or business associate? What exactly was his relationship with suspect Payne and why was he so “guarded” in giving answers to the investigator? Could he have been hiding something pertinent to the crash or perhaps even have been involved himself in some way?
Those questions were unanswered in the Stiles report, but I was able to answer the easiest of them with some additional research.
No, Earle Payne was not a relative. Although the Paynes of Siskiyou County (and there are many of them) had lived in the area since before California became a state, I could find no proof of any blood connection between the men. I did find it a strange coincidence, though, to learn that all of the Siskiyou County Paynes had original family ties to Missouri, just like William Harrison Payne.
Although they had no proven family connection, Earle and William Payne were neighbors on Scott River Road and had several other important things in common: both were experts in explosives and shared an interest in mining and a fondness for heavy equipment—and for Harriet Payne.
Stiles made a point of stating that Payne was jealous and short-tempered, so much so in fact that at least once he had used a high-powered rifle to shoot at a man (presumably Earle Payne) because he was jealous of him and for some reason believed Earle had eyes for his wife, Harriet.
On another occasion he took shots at a different man for no apparent reason.
“On one occasion, Mr. Payne became extremely angered without provocation at a man by the name of William Rob, who is a mining promoter in this area. He snatched up a rifle and shot at Mr. Rob three times with the intent to actually hit him,” the report stated.
“Mr. Rob was interviewed during the investigation and states that there was absolutely no provocation for an attack of this kind,” Stiles noted.
For some reason, neither Rob nor Earle Payne filed police reports. Were they trying to keep something under wraps, so that law enforcement would not find out about it?
Stiles discovered several other strange statements and incidents involving Payne and what seemed to be a penchant for violence rather than discussion when things didn’t go his way.
“In discussing his trip to Honolulu, he was known to have made this statement: that if he was unable to collect some money from his debtors there, he would use dynamite and ‘blow them up.’”
He actually had used dynamite at least once to make his point.
&nb
sp; “On one occasion he was known to have charged logging truckers a trip fee to haul logs over a small corner of his land. The road over which the logging truckers were transporting their logs was known to be a county road. The matter was reported to the county attorney, and Mr. Payne was ordered to cease charging fees for their use of this road. He became so angered that he, by using explosives, blew a large hole in the middle of the road. It was necessary that the county repair this damage so that the road could be used,” according to Stiles.
Another time he was known to have used a heavy Caterpillar tractor that damaged some of the county’s asphalt roads. He was warned not to do that again, but Payne ignored the warning and not long afterward damaged another road, to the tune of about $1,000. When law enforcement authorities arrived, two Payne accomplices fled the area. They were never identified.
That was enough for the county attorney to act. He filed a complaint against Payne in Siskiyou County Court, and a judge ordered Payne to pay damages and a $450 fine. Payne never appeared in court himself but hired an attorney who filed an appeal that was still pending at the time of the crash.
Payne and violence seemed to go hand in hand.
Years later I discovered that when Payne had shot at William Rob, the mining promoter had been in the company of forty-eight-year-old Dorothea Reddy Moroney, labeled the “Chrome Queen” by Time magazine for her huge financial success in mining chrome, which she sold to the US government during World War II. Chrome was extremely scarce during the war and was essential in the manufacture of armored plates, shells, and machine tools, all critical for the US war efforts.
By 1956-1957, when the Paynes were operating Roxbury Lodge, the wealthy and already legendary Moroney was mining chrome and other precious metals all around Scott Bar and was familiar with both Paynes, especially William.
The report then pointed me in the direction of someone whom Stiles had hinted to me about nearly forty years earlier, and raised even more questions that needed to be answered.
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