Some crimes announce themselves with a bang. The A.D. Payne case announced itself with two. One on a residential street on a Friday morning in June 1930, and one in a jail cell sixty-four days later. What happened in between is one of the strangest and most disturbing episodes in Amarillo’s history.
On June 27, 1930, Alfred Day Payne was at work, going through the motions at his law office in downtown Amarillo. He was tense with anticipation. Not far across town, at the Payne family’s brick bungalow on Fountain Terrace, the lawyer’s wife, Exa Johnson Payne, set out on an errand. Several children were playing in the yard. She summoned her own, A.D. Payne Jr., a freckled boy of 11.
The two of them settled into the family’s late-model Durant coupe. Exa drove east, then turned northward to Line Avenue, and east again toward downtown.
A dense smoke roiled from beneath the seat. Exa pumped the accelerator, probably thinking the smoke would clear up at a higher speed. They had passed Mississippi Street, seven blocks from home, when the car exploded.
Doors, fenders and glass flew through the air. The boy was flung nearly 40 feet onto a lawn. The Durant sped on another 100 feet and crashed into a garage, pushing a car within through a wall. Burning fragments of clothing spiraled in the air.
In her dining room 20 feet from the explosion, the concussion threw Mrs. Jesse Smith to the floor. Her son had gone outside, and when she saw a blood-covered boy lying nearby, she assumed the worst. She collapsed in shock when her own son came running toward the house.
Sirens wailed for Exa Johnson Payne, 34, and A.D. Payne Jr.
The father, A.D. Payne, heard the sirens from his eighth-floor office at the Oliver-Eakle Building—now the Barfield Hotel—on Polk Street. His 9-year-old daughter, Bobbie Jean, had walked downtown with him. His 13-year-old daughter, Ladell, had remained at home to prepare lunch.
Moments later, Payne was informed that his wife had been killed by the blast. His son was in critical condition at Northwest Texas Hospital. At the scene, Payne regarded the mangled remains, then examined the wreckage to see if the gasoline tank had exploded. It had not, but the cap was missing. Policemen became suspicious of Payne immediately.
Chief of Detectives M.M. Scott discovered that Payne had carried on a flirtation with a former stenographer, and that the attorney had lately purchased $18,000 in double-indemnity life insurance on his wife and son.
Origin Story
Alfred Day Payne was born in Williamson County in 1892 but came to the Panhandle to attend West Texas State Normal College in Canyon. He met Austin resident Exa Johnson in 1914, and they married the following year. Both taught in Canyon’s public schools.
Before obtaining his law degree, Payne had become superintendent of schools. In 1926, the Paynes moved to Amarillo, where he made an unsuccessful bid for state representative. In 1929 he announced his candidacy for district judge, only to withdraw. In court, Payne seemed tireless and assured, but when idle he indulged in nervous habits—biting his fingernails or tugging at his face.
June 28 to Aug. 3, 1930
Questioned by the police, Payne guessed that neighborhood children might have hidden dynamite in the car, anticipating Independence Day. The police recalled that Payne had complained about anonymous threats. Payne insisted, “I could not associate even an enemy with such a terrible affair, but … the explosive was meant for me.”
Gene Howe, publisher of the Amarillo Globe-News, came to Payne’s defense in his newspaper column, “The Tactless Texan,” ordinarily an outlet for Howe’s boisterous sense of humor. Howe offered a reward of $500 for the capture of the murderer. Payne added $5,000 to that, and J.E. Young contributed another $250.
Payne asked for a thorough investigation by Howe’s newsroom. “I am innocent. If the newspaper plunges into the case and prints everything, I will be vindicated.”
Howe promised an all-out investigation, and telephoned A.B. MacDonald of the Kansas City Star—in Howe’s estimation, the best crime reporter in the nation—and arranged for him to visit Amarillo.
MacDonald, hard-faced and brusque, started by calling upon Payne at home. “I must question you as to all the women you have known.” As Payne listed his successive secretaries, his tempo hastened at mention of Verona Thompson. MacDonald demanded a description.
“Very plain and ordinary,” Payne answered. Then he began a glowing description of his current secretary, Mabel Bush.
Payne’s children entered, and MacDonald spoke with them momentarily. Abruptly, he turned to Howe. “Let’s go.” MacDonald would later explain to Howe, “There’s something wrong. There’s a woman, of course. He talks too much about how he loved his wife. … Did you notice the children? They acted relieved that someone else was in the house. … He has them coached.”
MacDonald was impatient to meet Thompson. The “plain and ordinary” stenographer, per Payne, proved to be an attractive blonde. Howe’s pleasant manner put her at ease. Not so with MacDonald’s gruff presence.
“How about those trips over the Panhandle?” MacDonald demanded. “You might as well tell the truth…”
“Yes,” Thompson replied, stammering. She told of Payne’s attempts to seduce her. She feared that Payne had murdered his own wife out of love for her. Then MacDonald overplayed his hand with a question about overnight traveling. Thompson realized she had been conned and became silent.
Aug. 5-10, 1930
Thompson appeared before District Attorney Edward W. Thomerson and dictated a 12-page statement of her dealings with Payne. She admitted she had “petted” with him on occasion, assuming estrangement from his wife. She sought other employment, but Payne lured her back. The lustful overtures persisted. Their last outing had occurred only days before the car-bomb murder; she had noticed a burlap sack in his car, a type used to contain chicken feed.
Mayor Ernest O. Thompson (no kin to Verona) dispatched Patrolman John Snider to Payne’s office. The arrest lacked the niceties of a warrant, lest Payne have time to destroy evidence. Payne’s clothing yielded several pieces of incriminating evidence, including an official-looking form so worded as to deflect suspicion from Payne.
Then, with Thompson in attendance, the assembled authorities confronted Payne with her statement. The lawyer’s face took on a jaundiced hue. No sooner had he said, “I have no statement,” than several policemen arrived with word of a lynch mob gathering outside. Payne was hastened to safety at Stinnett, site of the best-fortified jail in the Panhandle.
He professed innocence en route but spoke of suicidal intentions.
Payne prefaced a confession. “I realize it is the hot chair for me, and the sooner, the better. … I’m just mean, and not crazy.”
A local newspaper reporter, Calvin N. Melton, attempted an interview but found Payne staring at him with, as Melton wrote, “the look of a trapped rat.”
At 2 p.m. Aug. 7, Payne began dictating more than 20,000 words as a confession. He seemed jovial, sometimes laughing at his schemes. He termed himself “the most fiendish individual that ever played a part in … criminal procedure.” He eulogized Exa Payne as the ideal helpmate. Overwhelmed, he said, by business and household demands, he had begun embezzling from clients. Suicidal intentions evolved into a plot to “remove” his wife, lest she learn of his disgrace. Months passed, with various methods considered, before Payne formulated the infernal method.
He expressed dismay that Junior Payne was not killed. “I just feel that he was going to be enough like me … in the same sort of circumstances.”
At about 4 a.m., Payne signed the 55th and final page. Newsmen found him calm and unruffled.
“That was the most terrible crime ever committed,” Payne announced.
“Did you think you had committed the perfect crime?” asked a reporter.
“No, but I didn’t expect to be apprehended so soon.”
Lawyer James Cade visited Payne, his former partner, and left in an unnerved condition. Payne had sworn Cade to secrecy, but Payne did announce that he had rejected Cade’s insistence upon an insanity plea.
Payne declared, “I am going to end it all and join my wife.” He asked for some books, including a small volume containing Oscar Wilde’s narrative poem, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” The poem tells of a man’s imprisonment for the murder of his wife.
No need to waste the foolish tear
Or heave the windy sigh…
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.
In the Amarillo Globe, Howe termed Payne’s confession “a heinous alibi … that his lawyers will attempt to present … as evidence of insanity.” Howe added, “There is no Heaven for anyone if there is no Hell for A.D. Payne.”
Aug. 9-30, 1930
District Attorney Thomerson sought a prompt execution. Payne wrote to Howe and MacDonald, raging against their investigative manipulations and inviting them to watch him take the jolt. The prisoner was brought to Amarillo, where open cell doors allowed the inmates to prowl an enclosed catwalk.
Cellmates noticed that Payne had removed none of his clothing since his arrival. Just before midnight on Aug. 30, Payne called to one prisoner, R.L. Conder Jr., that he had “something hidden … this way of ending things.”
Payne drew from his trousers a bottle about three inches long and little thicker than a pencil. A fuse protruded.
“Hell, man!” Conder said.
Payne chuckled. “I won’t hurt you.” He lit a bummed cigarette and reached into his undershirt. The building shook with a deafening blast.
Payne’s body lurched upwards, struck the ceiling, then plunged. His burning corpse remained grotesquely suspended from the bars.
The couple’s surviving children were taken in by various kinfolks. Thompson, scandalized, changed her name and moved away.
At length, lawyer Cade revealed what Payne had told him in Stinnett. “I don’t care to live … knowing during my better moments what I am like most of the time.”
