Our Clarke
Explore/Organization
Organization

Lanham's Grocery (Boyce)

A grocery store in Boyce where, according to the Winchester Evening Star, Philip Cunningham ran in to write down a getaway car's license number during the April 1, 1965 bank robbery.

What the sources support

The Winchester Evening Star's April 2, 1965 sidebar by Doug O’Connell reported that Philip Cunningham, on seeing two men leave the Boyce branch of the Bank of Clarke County carrying a paper bag, followed them on foot to a blue-and-white Rambler station wagon, then ran into Lanham's Grocery to write down its license number before returning to the bank; the report and the license number were telephoned to state police headquarters in Culpeper.

✓ Supported by a source
See the source and its limits
✓ Supported by a sourceAn account exists

The Winchester Evening Star's April 2, 1965 sidebar by Doug O’Connell reported that Philip Cunningham, on seeing two men leave the Boyce branch of the Bank of Clarke County carrying a paper bag, followed them on foot to a blue-and-white Rambler station wagon, then ran into Lanham's Grocery to write down its license number before returning to the bank; the report and the license number were telephoned to state police headquarters in Culpeper.

What the source supports

That the newspaper attributes the pencil-and-plate account to Cunningham and reports it was relayed to state police at Culpeper.

Uncertainty

Cunningham's account as retold by a Star reporter, not a verbatim transcript or sworn statement; the newspaper itself treats his account as his own retelling. No police log or dispatch record has been read for this claim.

Source

Reporting

Evidence role: supports. O'Connell's sidebar, Cunningham's account of the pursuit, the pencil and the call to Culpeper.

Doug O’Connell, “Customer Races for Pencil After Seeing Getaway Car,” Winchester Evening Star, April 2, 1965, page 1

Doug O’Connell, Winchester Evening Star · 1965-04-02 (publication)

Locator: Page 1, sidebar “Customer Races for Pencil After Seeing Getaway Car”

Checked: Catalog index only. Original image not independently inspected.

Open source

Source family: winchester-evening-star-1965-boyce-robbery. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.

AI-assisted integration (Claude Sonnet 5) from a researched narrative and a claim-to-source map; the newspaper pages were not independently re-read for this integration. · 2026-09-29. How this project checks its sources

Know something about this place or record? Help fill a gap. It stays private until it is reviewed.

Keep exploring

Related stories

Civic life & gathering✓ Supported

A pencil at Lanham's: the Boyce bank robbery of 1965

On April 1, 1965, two armed men robbed the Boyce branch of the Bank of Clarke County. A customer's pencil-written license number, relayed to state police, led a trooper to stop the getaway car within the half hour. The account that follows is built entirely from the Winchester Evening Star's contemporary reporting and one conflicting reprint on the money recovered; a fourth defendant's final result is not established in the reports reviewed for this account.

What the evidence says Eight Winchester Evening Star issues from April through September 1965, plus one modern reprint of a ninth, conflicting April 8, 1965 account. None of the nine items was read directly by the editors who wrote this account.

  • 4 min read
  • 9 sources
Follow the story

Search

Searches the released collection only.