In September 1953 a man who had worked on Joseph G. Arbon's ranch in Arbon Valley during the harvest was arrested and charged with grand larceny. He was accused of taking his employer's pickup truck, a rifle and a movie camera. The Idaho State Journal of Pocatello reported the case twice, on September 15 and October 12, 1953. Those two short reports are all this site has found about it.
What the papers said
The hired man was Lee Bryan, 33. The September 15 report said he was one of Arbon's harvest hands that season. Everything named in the charge was Arbon's: his 1948 half-ton pickup, a 16-millimeter movie camera and a Winchester rifle. (The figures giving the rifle's caliber are too broken on the page to read with certainty.) It came out through a man who lived near Arbon: on Saturday, September 12, Bryan offered him some of the goods for sale, and the man reported it to the Power County sheriff's office. After an alert went out over the air, Pocatello police had Bryan in custody by that evening.
On Monday, September 14, Bryan came before Probate Judge J. W. Collings at American Falls, the county seat. By giving up a preliminary hearing, he sent his case straight on to district court. With the $1,000 bond the judge set left unpaid, Sheriff Rulon Neal returned Bryan to the Power County jail.
The October 12 report did not give the man's name. It told of a 33-year-old World War II veteran who had pleaded guilty to grand larceny. It dated the theft of the pickup, rifle and camera to September 12 and said all three were taken from Joseph Arbon, the Arbon Valley rancher he worked for. The age, the charge, the three items and the employer all match the September story, so he was almost certainly Bryan. Before passing sentence, District Judge W. C. Loofbourrow sent him on October 12 to State Hospital South at Blackfoot for an examination, and the paper said its findings would bear on the sentence.
What is not known
Neither report says where Bryan came from or how long he had worked in the valley. Neither says whether Arbon got his truck, rifle and camera back in good order. The pages read for this site do not report the sentence. The veteran detail comes only from the October report, which does not name him. The neighbor who went to the sheriff is not named either.
The rancher
In the September report the owner is Joseph G. Arbon, described as a farmer at Arbon. He was Joseph George Arbon, born at Arbon in 1907, the son of Joe Arbon, the valley's first bishop, and the grandson of George Dennis Arbon, for whom the valley was named. Joe G. and his wife, Edna Bailey Arbon, shared the ranch home with his parents for about ten years after their 1929 marriage, until the older couple bought a house in Pocatello. His family history on this site recalls that in the war years hired men to bring in the crop were hard to find, and that Edna learned to drive the tractor at harvest.
On this site: the family page Joseph George Arbon, his father's story in Two men of 1875: the deaths of Joe Arbon and William Allard, and the Arbon area page. A different case from the next year is told in A Stolen Pickup, a Death and the Valley Vigilantes, 1954.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, September 15, 1953, page 14. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Lee Bryan, 33, a farmhand, will answer a grand larceny charge in district court. His case was sent there at American Falls on Monday, September 14, 1953; he is accused of taking property from the Arbon Valley rancher who employed him.
Appearing before Probate Judge J. W. Collings, Bryan gave up his preliminary hearing. His bond was set at $1,000, and when it went unpaid Sheriff Rulon Neal took him back to the Power County jail.
Joseph G. Arbon, a farmer at Arbon who had hired Bryan for the harvest, owned all three items named in the charge: a 1948 half-ton pickup truck, a 16-millimeter movie camera and a Winchester rifle.
Bryan's undoing was an offer he made on Saturday, September 12, to a man living near Arbon, whom he tried to interest in buying some of Arbon's belongings. The man told the sheriff's office, an alert was broadcast, and Pocatello police had Bryan under arrest that evening.
Also on Monday, Judge Collings fined two companies whose loads had been stopped at a portable checking station, one too heavy and the other too wide.