Tales From a Repo Industry Pioneer – 1949

It was 75 years ago that one of the co-founders of the repossession industries first association, Ray Barnes, had tales of his storied career published by the press. In their era, Ray, and his legendary wife Lorna Lou, were the closest thing to celebrities that the repossession industry had ever had.

Ray’s career started in Los Angeles California about 1929 at the height of the Great Depression. “The Highway Hawkshaws” (an old term for a detective), as their later New York neighbors referred to them, met in Hollywood, California in 1930. Idaho native twenty-year old Lorna Lou Critchfield was working as a schoolteacher and twenty-seven-year-old Ray Barnes was a World War I Navy veteran turned restaurant manager turned insurance adjuster, turned finance adjuster.

Tales From a Repo Industry Pioneer – 1949 — Ray and Lorna Lou Barnes – Click to enlarge

Their four-month courtship was one where, as Lorna put it in a 1952 newspaper interview; “I can’t remember one date when he didn’t ask me to go into some place to ask questions. I wasn’t sure if he dated me because he like me or because I came back with the right answers.”

Soon after their marriage, the Barnes moved to New York where Lorna’s skip tracing skills earned her national notoriety. Lorna’s experience in the repossession industry did not end at skip-tracing. Lorna was skilled with break ins and towing and frequently involved in some dubious recoveries.

In one she found a hatchet murder victim in the trunk that almost led her quit. In another, she led FBI agents to a set of stolen secret B-29 blueprints hidden in a vehicle that became the grounds for espionage investigations.

Tales From the Field

In 1949, an article titled “We Stole 10,000 Cars”, appeared in the Washington DC Evening Star. NAAFA founder Ray Barnes, shared several “war stories” from the repossession field. According to the writer, smooth faced Barnes sported a pair of scars, one on the chin from a borrower in Boston and another from a wrench in Cleveland that came with a fractured skull. In the article, Barnes shared information that much of the usually secretive industry, would probably have preferred he had kept quiet.

This included tactics employed by him and others of the era. Barnes claimed to often use a device known as a “Phantom Tow Bar”. This device is described as a thin, strong steel rod so inconspicuous that the car towed appeared to be following without a driver. He mentions an occasion of having to employ a forked stick and a canvas bag to capture a rattlesnake kept in a target vehicle to thwart his efforts.

Of course, the snake being personal property, he had to store and return it to its owner is safe condition. Ray spoke of having to return property as odd as a stuffed owl, a mink coat, and a cheese sandwich. On another situation, Ray had attempted to return a pair of rubber boots to their owner in Pomona, California where things got out of hand.

The borrower owned an almond orchard and had not noticed the vehicle missing when Ray arrived. Handing the boots over as the man was sharpening a long pruning blade, Ray advised the man of the repossession. Ray remarked at being caught off guard by the man’s lack of emotion and silence, which was suddenly broken by a swing of the blade to his head. Having missed, the man’s anger grew, and he stood poised to take another swing, but not before Barnes drew his revolver and shot the man in the leg.

Ray claimed to have once recovered ten vehicles financed by notorious members of the Brooklyn based mafia enforcement gang, “Murder Inc.” After recovering several of the vehicles, Barnes claimed the death threats began coming in. By then, Murder Inc. was already on the police radar and they moved in on them, possibly saving Barnes’ life.

During both his early years in California and his later “Barnes Detective Agency” years in New York, Ray spent extensive time on the road. At that time, he claimed to make $35 to $250 per recovery ($378 to $2,700 in 2021 value.) These news stories by Ray and Lorna Lou carried on for decades.

How these were received within the young industry is unknown, but these seemingly dime store novel accounts, are some of the best and earliest accounts of the lives and tactics of repossession agents and skip tracers from the era. – Washington DC Evening Star – (Washington DC) – September 18, 1949

Barnes’ statement on repossession fees is fairly consistent with that of an Oakland, California agency owner, Charles Clark of National Auto Recovery Bureau (NARB) from a March 20, 1949, tell all posted in the Star Press of Muncie Indiana, where it is stated “His fee ranges from $10 to $500 depending on the amount of effort involved.

Unexpectedly, on February 13, 1956, Ray L. Barnes, husband of Lorna Lou Critchfield Barnes and cofounder and ex-president of the Allied Finance Adjusters passed away of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three in their hometown of Flushing, New York.

Ray and Lorna had no children and spent much of their free time on their 30-foot cruiser christened the “Lorna Lou” moored at the Bayside Yacht Club, where Ray was the Club Commodore and Lorna later served as a Chairperson.

Ray may have passed, but Lorna Lou was far from done with the repo industry. But that’s another story in itself.