Witness Marguerite Smith saw the event as she was picking up her son from the school, but assumed it was a family matter and decided not to interfere.
[7] The boy had been paid 25 cents by a member of the kidnapping party to deliver the message, which demanded $15,000 for June's safe return.
Very soon, local law enforcement became involved with the case, setting up blockades around Tucson and scouring the area for clues.
The case attracted a great amount of media attention and the press dubbed it "the greatest manhunt ever staged in the West.
[5] On May 7, chief criminal deputy Oliver White announced that June had been found and would be returned to her parents within twenty four hours.
This followed the supposed sighting of June in the company of a couple headed for the US–Mexican border and White's subsequent trip to Sonora, Mexico.
A team that included Carlos Robles, Pima County Attorney Clarence Houston, and several highway patrolmen searched the area for two hours before discovering a small metal box, sunk three feet into the ground and disguised with some shrubbery.
[12] A dance hall proprietor named Oscar 'Buster' Robson was initially charged because of similarities between his handwriting and the "Z" ransom notes.
[3] There were allegations that the kidnapping had been an inside job masterminded by a disgruntled relative in Mexico,[6] or by an immediate member of the Robles family,[3] but no evidence could be found to support either of these theories.
[14] A year and five days after June was recovered, an unnamed dying man came forward with more evidence, implicating three people, and J. Edgar Hoover announced that the case had been solved.
[1] She died of complications of Parkinson's disease at age 87 in Tucson on September 2, 2014 with her family placing a paid death notice in the Arizona Daily Star newspaper under her married name, June Birt, on September 5, 2014[18] David Leighton, a columnist with the Arizona Daily Star, who at the time was working on an article related to her wealthy grandfather Bernabe Robles, learned of her death, but was asked by a family member not to publish information related to her passing in his story that was published on September 8, 2014[19] As a result of this omission, everyone except family and close friends were unaware of her death until three years later when The New York Times learned of her passing away and published an obituary on October 31, 2017.