When the sheriff of Pinal County told a room full of Hidden Valley homeowners (and one InMaricopa reporter) that his deputies had nabbed a suspected tractor thief south of city limits, we had to find out more. 

Back on May 8, deputies responded to a home on Barnes Road where a 78-year-old woman reported her tractor had been stolen. She told the deputies she had last seen the green machine April 19. 

“They thought their mechanic [had] come and took the tractor,” Republican Sheriff Ross Teeple said, describing the case during the Arizona Republican Assembly’s Northwest Pinal County Chapter meeting at Maricopa’s IHOP Tuesday night.  “They found out the mechanic didn’t have the tractor, so that’s when they reported it stolen. “ 

A friend of the 911 caller made their own call to PCSO dispatchers May 19, saying they met with someone who was trying to sell that very tractor on Craigslist in Casa Grande. 

This online seller, who had reportedly acquired the tractor by bartering away a box truck, gave deputies the identity of his partner in what had seemed like an innocuous trade: Hidden Valley resident William Nolan Jr., 50. 

“So, they drove over to the suspect’s house, and they knocked on the door, and his father admitted that his son stole the tractor,” Teeple said Tuesday.  

Nolan, a nearby resident of Branding Iron Road, was arrested on charges related to stealing the tractor and was booked into the Pinal County jail May 8.  

Court records show Nolan faces felony charges of burglary and trafficking stolen property. Facing a presumptive sentence of seven and a half years in prison if convicted, he is out on bail, according to the records.