-Caveat Lector- An excerpt from: Loud and Clear Lake Headly and William Hoffman©1990 Henry Holt and Company 115 W. 18th St. New York, NY 10011 ISBN 0-8050-1138-2 --[4]-- 4. Creating Havoc George Vlassis lives in Encanto Park in a large, comfortable, Spanish-style house with a two-car garage full of model boats he built. He and his wife, Nancy, who was his high school sweetheart, keep a full-size pool table in the living room and have ten cats they dearly love. George and I played both ways as guards for the Goshen High School football team, on a line featuring center Doug Weaver, now athletic director at Michigan State, and Ken LaRue, business manager for the Los Angeles Raiders. George spent summers as a gandy dancer for the New York Central Railroad, and I worked in my dad's grocery store. We had just finished a late dinner and sat reminiscing about our Indiana childhoods. He talked about my father, many years police chief in Goshen, a strong but gentle man nicknamed Modoc, after an elephant in the Ringling Brothers Circus. His strength, legendary in Goshen, usually made physical force unnecessary: I don't think he ever had to fire his gun. As a boy, Modoc had had to forfeit his grab for the brass ring, a football scholarship to Notre Dame offered during Knute Rockne's recruitment of the legendary Four Horsemen, to work and support his mother and six siblings. George talked about my dad; I talked about his. Peter Vlassis, an industrious Greek immigrant and a bar owner who never drank, always had an abundance of Cokes and sandwiches for George and the kids he brought around to the rear of the saloon. I admired George and his father. The adult George, in fact, represented my idea of success. A good father and provider, he prospered by helping people. As general counsel to the Navajo Nation, he enjoyed unmatched respect from tribal members, becoming a virtual father confessor to any one of them with a problem large or small. George helped right many wrongs inflicted upon the Navajos. He'd been instrumental in negotiating a contract with Peabody Coal—which previously paid the tribe a paltry five cents per ton for coal mined on the reservation—whereby the Indians became equal partners. A sizable chunk of the electrical power for Los Angeles came from energy generated on the massive Navajo reservation, and George secured them a cut of this income, too. Much as I enjoyed talking to my fellow Hoosier, he, not I, was working the tight schedule that made relaxed conversation almost impossible. George knew the real purpose for my visit, and it wasn't long before he asked my first impressions of the case. His eyebrows lifted when I told him about the Betty Funk Richardson interview with the police. "The Funks are a wealthy and powerful family in Phoenix," George said, and certainly he stood in a position to know. A Phoenix insider, Vlassis knew as much about the city and its people as anyone. But he was also a cautious man, normally the most discreet and circumspect of individuals. George would, I believed, open up to me. I told him I couldn't buy the motive for the murder, that Bolles was killed because of articles he wrote about Marley. "Still," I said, "Bolles's own paper said he was washed up as an investigative journalist, that they'd had to reassign him to the legislature." "That's a false claim by the Arizona Republic," said George. "Bolles interviewed me not long before his death about a plane crash on the reservation, the one in which three Navajo council members died. I found Bolles rather abrasive, not someone you'd invite to dinner, but very determined and effective. When he came around asking questions, people got antsy. He kept digging and digging until he reached the truth, and there was plenty to sniff out. Lots of back-room deals." "Like what?" "Traditionally, land fraud. Lake, this is no exaggeration. In the last decade, land fraud has escalated to the number two industry in Arizona, second only to tourism. Remember, we're the fastest-growing state in America, and Phoenix is the fastest-growing city. We had a hundred and six thousand residents in 1950, one point two million now, all flocking to the Grand Canyon State for its great climate and natural beauty. But some of it isn't so appealing. More would-be homesteaders have been saddled with worthless Arizona desert than with Florida swampland." "What about politics? If Robison and Dunlap are innocent, politics must have had something to do with putting them away." "The good-old-boy system originated in Arizona, which in many ways is still part of the frontier. We have the laxest gun laws in the country, restricted only by a requirement that you don't conceal your weapon. As for political power, it's wielded by Barry Goldwater and a half-dozen families, not the least of them the Funks." "Tell me about Goldwater." "He's from an old-line family himself, as are the others who run the show here. From personal experience I can assure you Goldwater doesn't like Peter MacDonald [the Navajo chairman]. That's why I'm sure the Arizona Republic had it wrong about Bolles, because I know he worked on Navajo stories right up to the time of the bombing." "Who should I see about that?" "Claude Keller. He's a lawyer I've done a few favors for, including putting him to work for the Navajos when nobody wanted to give him a job. Coincidentally, Keller moved into Neal Roberts's office a few days before Bolles got bombed." Now I recalled. It came from a police report, dated June 24, 1977, which I had read. According to the report, Claude Keller said he had seen Joe Patrick visiting with Neal Roberts on several occasions. Keller also said he sat in on a meeting between Patrick, Harry Noy, and Neal Roberts some time in May 1976, and at that time Patrick was involved in an anti-MacDonald campaign on the Navajo reservation, which he was doing for a politician. Keller told the investigator he wasn't sure, but he believed Patrick was working for Barry Goldwater. Roberts himself told Keller that he had frequent conversations with Senator Goldwater. "You should also talk to Keller about Neal Roberts," Vlassis continued, as if reading my mind. "And about how Roberts and Goldwater wanted MacDonald replaced as tribal chairman." I asked him to tell me what he knew about Roberts and Goldwater. "Goldwater considers himself a friend to the Navajos, and he's sold himself to Senate colleagues as the top expert in the country on Indian affairs. He's not close, not by a long shot, but he sincerely believes he is. Anyway, a long time ago, Goldwater invited MacDonald to a social affair the senator considered important, and MacDonald didn't show. Goldwater openly proclaimed this an affront—you come, no questions asked, when an old-line Arizonan summons—but a more weighty reason for his animosity is that MacDonald is a man he can't control. There's uranium, coal, oil, and gold on the Navajo reservation, a vast fortune. Goldwater planned to replace MacDonald with a person named Tony Lincoln, and his first step was to insinuate an old air force buddy of his, Joe Patrick, onto the reservation as an advisor, in reality a spy. You'll want to interview Patrick, and I can help you with him. But don't forget, Neal Roberts is part of this whole effort. And Adamson." "How's that?" "Roberts wanted my job. As you know, not much happens on the reservation that I don't hear about. I've made a lot of friends these last fourteen years, and a few enemies. The Navajos come to me with every conceivable problem, from financing a car to getting their kids into college, and I try to help them. I knew about the plot to oust MacDonald long before Bolles got killed, and so, I think, did Bolles. Roberts had arranged for Adamson to create havoc on the Navajo reservation. If Roberts and Adamson succeeded, Goldwater could say MacDonald had lost control of his people and arrange to replace him with Tony Lincoln. Lincoln intended to appoint Roberts to the post of general counsel, my job, enabling Goldwater's big business friends to cut sweeter deals for the Navajos' natural resources." "And you think Bolles knew about this?" "He either knew, or was in a position to find out. After the plane crash, Bolles interviewed me, Claude Keller, and Joe Patrick, plus a lot of people on the reservation. If Bolles prowled the vicinity of a story, he got it. He was a real badger." "What did you mean about Adamson 'creating havoc'?" "Those were Adamson's words, printed in the Arizona Republic. Roberts planned to send Adamson onto the reservation to blow up some things, including MacDonald's car, and the campaign began with the attempted dynamiting of the Indian Health Services building." This failed bombing in Phoenix, one of many. crimes for which Adamson received immunity, resulted in convictions for Robison (as in the later Bolles murder, fingered by Adamson because of his knowledge of explosives) and Roberts based solely on the con man's testimony. The convictions were later reversed. "That building," I said. "How does it connect with the reservation?" "There's a common misconception that the Navajos own the Indian Health Services building. In fact, Roberts partially owned it. If the bombing succeeded, it would work two ways: Roberts would collect the insurance, and the Navajos would receive the heat. Creating havoc also meant inciting civil disorder to make it appear MacDonald had lost control." "How did you find out all this?" "Shortly before the Bolles bombing, Roberts met in his office with Adamson, Tony Lincoln, and half-a-dozen tribal councilmen to discuss the plan." George smiled. "One of them is a good friend of mine." "What happened to the plan?" "Adamson chickened out. He didn't like the idea of driving around the reservation with dynamite in his car. Too risky, he said. So they chose the Indian Health Services building in Phoenix." Back in my room at the Westward Ho Hotel, I returned to my treasure trove of discovery documents and found another gold nugget: the police report of an interview with Mary Adamson, the killer's wife, conducted shortly after the bombing. Mary told the police she didn't know where her husband was but suggested they "look for him at the Apache junction dog track, because he works for Emprise." She would later deny making the statement, but the police officer, Harry Hawkins, said he was quite sure he had heard correctly. Before calling it quits at the end of a long day, I also skimmed through a book George Vlassis gave me just before I left his house-The Arizona Project: How a Team of Investigative Reporters Got Revenge on Deadline, by Michael F. Wendland, published in 1977. Wendland had been one of the so-called IRE team, the letters standing for Independent Reporters and Editors. Headed by Bob Greene, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner from the Long Island newspaper Newsday, this crew of thirtysix, professing shock at the murder of a comrade, came to Arizona with two goals. First, the team attempted to pay tribute to a slain colleague by finishing what he had started, by getting to the heart of the political corruption and organized crime in Arizona that had made Bolles's killers believe that murder was a logical response to a reporter's work. Second, by clearly demonstrating the solidarity of the American press, the team effort would reemphasize the old underworld adage: "You don't kill a reporter because it brings too much heat." Wendland ends The Arizona Project with the convictions of Robison and Dunlap, and the words: "The media had done their job. Arizona's ills had been exposed, and justice, though not yet complete, was slowly being done. It was the future that was the story now." Done their job? I wanted to vomit. Their self-proclaimed job involved finishing what Bolles started. How could they possibly accomplish this when they bought the Arizona Republic's line that Bolles wasn't doing anything of merit? How can you finish a job when you don't know what it is? In the course of doing my job, I would investigate these investigators and become increasingly disgusted as I learned that many members of the IRE team spent much of their time playing celebrity, claiming to be knights on white horses, and getting drunk and boasting to other patrons of the Adams Hotel bar. Of course much worse was the team's decision, right from the start, to leave the question of who killed Don Bolles up to the police. That subtitle of Wendland's book about getting revenge made me feel like laughing and crying at the same time. I had breakfast the next morning with Claude Keller at the Gaslight Restaurant. A tall, heavyset man, the crusty Keller said he would be happy to cooperate with any friend of George Vlassis. Keller had worked in Roberts's office right up to the time of the bombing. "Neal," said Keller, "had this redheaded English secretary, Eileen Roberts-no relation-who got Barry Coldwater on the phone. After Roberts talked to him, I heard him tell Eileen that Goldwater asked, 'How much is this going to cost me?'" "What tie did Goldwater have with Roberts?" I asked Keller. "The Navajo reservation. It stuck in Coldwater's craw that MacDonald, through George Vlassis, had a strong hand in Indian business deals with big corporations. They waged an on going war with Peabody Coal to increase the Navajo share, and Goldwater took static from the Peabody bosses." "Is any of this-what was going on between Goldwater and Roberts—a matter of general knowledge?" He smiled. "Depends on what you mean by 'general knowledge.' Hell, publicly Goldwater and Roberts deny even knowing each other. But there's one thing I'm sure of. Don Bolles was following the story very closely." "The Arizona Republic says Bolles only covered the legislature." "Nonsense. I knew Don. He wouldn't have accepted that humiliating beat without something on the back burner. He was hopelessly addicted to investigative reporting. I know he did articles for the Gallup Independent, a paper in New Mexico. Why don't you give their editorial office a call?" Leaving my car in a handy loading zone-which provided me not only with quick access to the Westward Ho but also a total of sixty parking tickets during the investigation—I phoned New Mexico and reached John Zollinger, publisher of the Gallup Independent. "Mr. Zollinger, my name is Lake Headley, and I'm looking into the Bolles murder for the Max Dunlap Committee for Justice. I'd like-" "Another investigator? Won't that thing ever go away?" "If I do my job right, maybe we can put it to rest. That's why I'm calling." "What can I do for you?" "I've been told your newspaper ran stories by Don Bolles about the Navajo reservation almost up to the time of his death." "Yes, we did." "What was his capacity?" "Free-lance journalist. He sent us good copy." "Did the Arizona Republic know Bolles was writing for you?" Zollinger became huffy, as if I had accused him of violating Fourth Estate ethics. "What kind of operation do you think we run here? Of course the Republic knew. I called his editor and received an okay. I can tell you, also, that Bolles was stringing for Newsweek." "The national magazine?" "The same. Bolles was a good journalist." Newsweek. An expose in that media powerhouse could plant fear in anyone. "What did he do for Newsweek?" I asked Zollinger. "I don't know, but I'm sure the Republic could tell you. Bolles wouldn't keep secrets from them. He was the most upfront person I ever knew, nothing devious about him." I thanked Zollinger, said good-bye, and released the phone receiver from an ever-tightening grip. There it was! Right out in the open. A revelation that left me more angry than satisfied. I grew' hot thinking about the ridiculously weak bill of goods the police had sold as Kemper Marley's motive, and the Arizona Republic's deliberate evasiveness about a reporter who gave that newspaper fourteen years of his life. Oops, I thought, glimpsing The Arizona Project on my night table, and let's not fall to stuff the IRE into this mental punching bag. Before returning to the parking ticket downstairs, I cooled off and made calls to Dunlap Committee members more familiar than I with the overall scope of the case. What I learned from them placed the Arizona Republic in an even more shadowy light: Bolles had written stories on Emprise, on the Funk family, and particularly on Bradley Funk, linking him to organized-crime control of Arizona dog tracks. Funk had sued, and as part of the lawsuit settlement, the Republic-which up to then had backed Bolles's well-documented storiespromised to take its star reporter off the investigation of the Funk/Emprise racing empire. But Bolles didn't stop, I learned in going back over the discovery papers. His widow, Rosalie, told the police that right up to the time of the bombing he pursued "the involvement of the Funk family into organized crime." She and Don, Rosalie said, "were greatly concerned" about the Funk investigation. Said the police report: "Mrs. Bolles explained that this particular investigation was a continuous one for her husband, and since the investigation started, they have received numerous threatening phone calls." In just a few days I had uncovered concrete inconsistencies that cried for further investigation, but the information didn't help if it remained locked in my head. I had to relay it to the public, and to do that I needed an ally in the media. I could forget the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette, the area's major papers, both hostile from the beginning to Dunlap and Robison, but Dunlap Committee members had mentioned the Scottsdale Daily Progress and its publisher, Jonathan Marshall, as potentially receptive to new revelations on the Bolles case. The more I thought about the Scottsdale paper, the more ideal it seemed. It served a rich, influential community, and its circulation extended to Paradise Valley, home of Barry Goldwater. I suspected the Progress also had readers on the Arizona Supreme Court, now considering the appeals. Committee members provided some background on Marshall. He came from a wealthy eastern family, with an industrialist father and a progressive mother with outspoken ecological views. The elder Marshall may have assessed his son as less than a shrewd financier, but Jonathan had exhibited an aptitude for journalism, so the family bought the Progress for him. Possessing a bit of his father's business acumen, combined with his mother's feisty outlook, Jonathan Marshall had done a good job with the newspaper. "Mr. Marshall," I said after introductions, sitting across from him at his working desk, "the Dunlap Committee is firmly convinced Max Dunlap had nothing to do with killing Don Bolles. I've interviewed Robison and Dunlap, and I have doubts about the guilt of either man." "What makes you say that? I've followed the case from its inception, and I believe Robison is guilty, though I admit grave reservations concerning Dunlap. The prosecution withheld evidence, I believe, specifically a statement from that secretaryEileen Roberts-about her boss Neal Roberts raising money for Adamson's defense. Also that one-legged gambler. And James McVay." Clearly, Marshall had done his homework. "Who is James McVay?" I asked. "You haven't come across him yet? McVay was in the Maricopa County jail with Adamson, after the arrest but before that disgraceful plea bargain. McVay said Adamson told him he was going to frame Dunlap. There's no question the entire story of this murder hasn't come out." "I agree." I intended to agree with Marshall about a lot of things, and to that end I needed to size him up rather quickly. Medium height, slender, balding, with his glasses askew in typical preoccupied professorial fashion, I judged him to be a practical intellectual, someone to whom a combination of reason, a cause, and potential profit would prove irresistible. The bottom line: Dunlap and Robison needed fair, nonbiased press attention. If I started out challenging Marshall's belief that the police did a thorough job, I could close a door I needed kept open. But I felt on safe ground shoveling dirt on rival newspapers. I approached the subject obliquely. "Let me say this, Mr. Marshall. The motive doesn't make sense, that Bolles got hit for previously written articles. I think he'd more likely be killed to stop a story." "What story? He covered the state legislature, hardly a beat brimming with cloak-and-dagger material." "That wasn't all he worked on." I looked at Marshall, waited for him to bite. "What do you mean? The Arizona Republic said he was strictly state legislature." "That may be true for the Republic, but he didn't work solely for them." "What are you talking about?" "I called John Zollinger at the Gallup Independent, and Bolles free-lanced for him on Navajo stories. He was also stringing for Newsweek magazine." "You sure about this?" "Yes." Marshall leaned back and thought. I waited. "I'm sure the Republic didn't know about this," he finally said. "Wrong, Mr. Marshall. They knew. Zollinger talked with Bolles's editor at the Republic. Zollinger was very sensitive about this point." Marshall let this perk. "Well, that means ... geesus, that means the Arizona Republic lied." Bingo. "Why would the newspaper lie?" he asked, more to himself than me. "I don't know the Republic's reason, but this is just one of several things I've stumbled onto that I want to share with you." With which I opened my little can of worms. Some of them he already knew. I told him about the Betty Funk Richardson interview with Detective Marcus Aurelius; here was a real motive, I emphasized, unlike the Kemper Marley story. I told him about Rosalie Bolles's concern about the ongoing investigation of Bradley Funk; Neal Roberts's "loud and clear" remark uttered several days before Bolles got bombed; and that the reporter might have been digging into the Navajo reservation story involving Roberts, Adamson, and possibly Barry Goldwater. I could have told him more, but he interrupted to show his business side. "Lake," he said, "I don't have time to retry the murder in this office. Frankly, I'm only interested in one thing." "What's that?" "As you probably realize, no one has ever interviewed James Robison. We got a scoop of sorts interviewing Dunlap, and I must say the man impressed me. So do his friends, the people who call me and assert his innocence. But Robison-nobody has talked to Robison. You claim you have access to him. Well, if you can arrange an interview, we might take a fresh look. Remember, Phoenix has been inundated with Bolles stories. People are sick of them. But something new-an interview with the silent man, Robison-could be good for us." I suspected Marshall played a hard-to-get game, and I should return in kind. "That's a pretty tall order, Mr. Marshall," I said. Actually, I figured it would be no sweat. Robison and Dunlap needed fair press coverage, and the Scottsdale Daily Progress fit the bill perfectly. By making an exclusive with Robison seem difficult to arrange, I might put Marshall in my debt. "I'll sure give it a try," I said, certain that Robison, if for no reason other than self-interest, would agree. But it turned out not so easy. Robison also had a demand: a guarantee of accurate quotes. Wonderful, I thought. How can I control what someone else writes? Ultimately, my own promise to be present all through the interview, plus the Progress's assurance that their piece would stick strictly to the truth (What else would any newspaper say?) persuaded the prisoner to proceed. "Robison's agreed to the interview," I said, back in the newspaper office a few days later. Marshall wore a tie-he always wore a tie-in combination with a tweed sport coat. "You sure? I guess you are." "That's what you wanted. Will you conduct the interview?" "No. I'll send a reporter named Don Devereux. He's an expert on the Bolles case. Don was a member of the IRE team. You'll like him." Marshall turned out to be correct, and then some, though at the time I couldn't imagine liking anyone who had been on the IRE team. "I'll have to accompany him to Florence," I said. "They won't let him in without me." "Okay. I think Devereux is here now. Let me get you two together." In his late thirties, slender, light brown hair with a graying beard, Devereux turned out to be one of the heroes of the Bolles investigation. And his wife, Naomi—a brilliant, good-looking, extremely well-educated lady who concocted crossword puzzles for The New York Times—would also play a key role in our murder inquiry. Don Devereux, I would learn, was a true investigative journalist, one of the best. He'd left his job at a Santa Fe paper to join the IRE team, outraged by the murder of Bolles. Extremely idealistic, his specialty had been uncovering the disgraceful conditions endured by migrant laborers in the Southwest. Quiet, though with a fire burning inside, especially when relating the plight of braceros Devereux didn't smoke or drink, and his devotion to Naomi and their four children was total. Obtaining riches didn't appear anywhere on the list of Don's priorities, and he possessed the admirable qualities of rigid honesty, integrity, and a workaholic's total attention to detail. During the course of our long relationship, he made me think that if Don Bolles could be said to have a successor in Arizona, he was named Don Devereux. pps. 45-58 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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