-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
272 pps � out-of-print/one edition
--[7]--
7.
Going Public
Some thirty reporters, radio and TV newsmen, and cameramen representing the
local media, plus a small contingent from papers in New Mexico, gathered
December 19 at the Phoenix Press Club when I went public with my findings in
the Bolles case.
Max's family was there, as well as committee members, and, I suspected,
several Phoenix undercover cops.
I considered this press conference an important part of my job. Indeed, a
major reason the Dunlap Committee had retained me was to obtain media
coverage. Dunlap's friends never doubted that whatever I found would point
away from Max, but the developments I had reported were astounding and
rekindled hopes long dormant.
The turnout pleased me. It was vital the media show up and not just read a
press release, because on display were affidavits, statements, and police
reports of unimpeachable authenticity they needed to examine. I hoped the
presence of AP and UPI reporters meant nationwide coverage.
But what would be the tenor of that coverage? Not many of the newsmen present
would want to deal with a new can of worms in the Bolles case. They had
invested too much time and too many words supporting the police version of
the murder.
While committee member Harold Bone held forth on stage introducing me as "a
noted criminal consultant," I stood in the wings arranging my papers one last
time. Suddenly someone told me I had a phone call.
"I'm busy," I said. "Get a number."
"The caller says it's urgent. An emergency."
Urgent I could blow off. Emergency I'd better find out about.
"This Lake Headley?"
"Yes."
"Jordan Green here. I'm one of Max Dunlap's attorneys."
"I know who you are, Mr. Green." He had worked with Savoy at the trial.
"I don't want you to hold that press conference."
"You're too late, Mr. Green. The camera lights have come on. I don't have
time to talk to you."
"Then I'll make this simple: if you go ahead with the press conference, I'll
sue your ass off."
"I'll be just as clear. Max and Jim signed authorizations for me to conduct
this news conference, and I don't give a fuck what you do."
I hung up and headed for the dais.
Later, Max Dunlap, delighted by one "up" day after a seeming eon of downers,
asked Green what provoked the lawsuit threat. Green said he didn't think the
timing was right. The timing wasn't right? In a convoluted way, Green had a
point: the correct time to release this information would have been during
the trial, preventing a lot of misery for Robison and Dunlap.
I opened my presentation with a letter dated October 29, 1976, from the
Maricopa County prosecutor to the chief of the Phoenix police department. It
said in part, "There is still a lingering doubt in my mind as to the
political implications which may be motivating the attorney general's
decision" to take the case away from local prosecutors and place it with the
attorney general.
There were questions implicit in that letter, most of them indeed political:
What did motivate Attorney General Bruce Babbitt, now Governor Bruce Babbitt,
to handle the prosecution? The opportunity to make a national name for
himself?
This certainly would be political. Or to make sure the probe didn't touch
important Arizonans possibly involved in the murder? Which also could be
called political, among other things.
The replaced prosecutor also wrote, "Furthermore, if the attorney general
prosecutes the Adamson case in Maricopa County after standing up in court and
stating that the defendant could not get a fair trial because of adverse
publicity generated during the months prior to the trial, then it is my legal
opinion that there is a great possibility of reversal."
Adamson had simply slid into his cozy plea bargain, but Dunlap and Robison,
much vilified, were tried in Maricopa County where-associated with Adamson by
his own kiss-of-death testimony�they stood little or no chance, given the
lack of a solid defense investigation.
My audience sat stonefaced. Could the PA not be loud enough? I wondered. Or
maybe their antennae weren't tuned in to me yet. Whatever, this should wake
them up: I pointed to police reports showing that John Adamson and Neal
Roberts took and failed police-administered polygraph examinations. This
information was never released to the press. By contrast, when Max Dunlap, a
man never convicted for so much as a traffic violation, failed a polygraph,
the Arizona Republic prominently featured the story. (Max, unnerved at the
time, later did pass the polygraph.) What police officer or prosecutor, I
asked, withheld the Adamson and Roberts polygraph results, while releasing
Dunlap's?
The prosecution truly didn't want to hear what came next: Robison had been
offered immunity, money, relocation, and immediate release from death row if
he corroborated Adamson's story of Kemper Marley contracting the murder. In
short, the state now wanted to execute a man to whom they offered immunity.
I called attention to affidavit after affidavit (which reporters could read,
touch, take home) shoring up my observation that with absolute blind faith in
John Harvey Adamson's version-and after an ensuing year-long investigation by
the Arizona attorney general's office-the FBI and the Phoenix police
department failed to establish any evidence substantiating Adamson's
accusations against Marley.
I had a lot to cover. I talked about the three vehicles reported stolen on
the day of the bombing from the immunized Neal Roberts, information withheld
from the defense (and which would still have been unavailable had I not gone
into the police computer via my Los Angeles friend).
Again I discerned no reaction from reporters, sitting on the other side of
the podium as expressionless as a gathering of zombies at high noon.
I introduced a sworn statement from Rosalie Bolles, the slain reporter's
widow, stating that her husband, contrary to what the Republic said, pursued
investigative work, including the Funk/ Emprise connection, right up to the
time of the bombing.
After producing articles Bolles wrote for the Gallup Independent, I
challenged those in attendance to call John Zollinger in New Mexico if they
still believed the Republic's claims.
The Betty Funk Richardson police report and the Hank Landry statement
detailing Neal Roberts's "loud and clear" remark were entered into evidence
in my tribunal.
I told them about James McVay, who said Adamson had confessed to him that he
framed Dunlap.
Closing what I considered a calm, coherent, well-documented presentation, I
opened the floor to questions. Immediately I learned that what I'd mistaken
for woolgathering had been a grimly silent collecting of ammo to shoot me
down. The reporters were irate all right, but not at the outrages committed
by the police and prosecution.
"Isn't it true you're being paid by the Dunlap Committee?" the first
questioner asked, as if I hadn't made the point at the start of my
presentation.
"Yes," I said. I didn't point out that my expenses already exceeded my salary.
"How can you claim to be impartial, when you're working for the Dunlap
Committee?".
... "The evidence is impartial. It speaks for itself, and I urge you to read
it."
"What makes you think you can do a better job than the police?
"If the police, with all their resources, had conducted an objective
investigation, I don't for an instant imagine I could have competed with
them. A few others and myself are operating on a shoestring. But to answer
your question, you have a large amount of hard evidence in front of you
pointing away from Robison and Dunlap and directly at others."
"Why are you so hostile to the police?"
Good grief. "I'm not; I've been a policeman. Now you have the evidence.
Please. Study it. If you concentrate on only one thing, let it be the remark
Neal Roberts made, three days before the attack on Don Bolles, your brother,
that the reason for using dynamite was to send a message 'loud and clear.' "
"I don't understand the importance you attach to those stolen vehicles."
A reporter, and he didn't understand this?
"It's an inconceivable coincidence for three vehicles to be stolen from the
back of a principal suspect's residence on the day of a high-profile murder."
Of course Assistant Attorney General William Schafer had said he didn't
understand either. Asked why the information hadn't been included in the
discovery, Schafer had said, "Auto theft is a separate crime. We worked a
homicide." A preposterous remark. Thus, I suppose, a speeding car, racing
away from a just-committed bank robbery would, according to Schafer, be a
matter for Traffic to investigate.
The questions kept coming, none of them (except when Devereux introduced
queries to emphasize a salient point) indicating a thirst for enlightenment.
For example: "The Arizona Republic has said all along that Bolles only worked
the legislature. Why should we believe you instead of the newspaper?"
"I'm not asking you to believe me about anything. I don't expect you to. I
want you to check everything yourselves. Do what I did. Read Bolles's
articles I gave you. Call John Zollinger at the Gallup Independent."
"You're accusing the Arizona Republic of lying?"
"I'm telling you what happened. I'm asking you to join me in a search for
truth. If Don Bolles were here, he would."
Committee members began pitching in, trying to lighten the mood so
information could be exchanged, but the venom in that room was palpable. I
was practically begging them to look at the evidence. Uncomfortable as a
supplicant, I pleaded, "Don't you care? Don't you want to find out who killed
Don Bolles?"
I even brought up Rosalie Bolles's name again, quoting the respected widow
about how right up to the end her husband worked on investigative pieces, and
how numerous threats warning him off the Funk/Emprise investigation were
received shortly before the bombing. "We remember Don Bolles gave us three
clues to identify his killers. Mafia. Emprise. Adamson. The police forgot the
Mafia and Emprise part, but we shouldn't. And there was a fourth phrase
Bolles used. 'They finally got me.' Think about it. 'Finally.' Bolles was
telling us he'd been expecting this. He'd been expecting it because of those
threats relating to Funk and Emprise, whom he'd been investigating for years."
This didn't move the media, either. Their attitude seemed to project: So what?
I began to realize that these reporters were resisting because of an
inescapable implication in my presentation: Look, guys, you did a sloppy job,
and you know it. No one threw this verbal barb, of course, or gave even the
slightest innuendo. But they had to know, and they flailed at me instead of
examining themselves.
"Why haven't the police done all this work?" one of the disbelievers asked.
"They either did, and covered up, or they didn't because of tunnel vision
caused by pressure to solve the murder. That's it. They either did or they
didn't."
I suspected the former.
The nastiness continued to the finish, and when it ended I wondered if even
one mind had been opened. I closed the press conference with a call for the
U.S. attorney general's office to join the Dunlap Committee in our ongoing
investigation into the murder. A U.S. attorney, I pointed out, could impanel
a federal grand jury with the power of subpoena and might less likely be
swayed by local politics.
I felt better when Harold Bone shook my hand and Lauri, Dunlap hugged me. "I
can't thank you enough, Mr. Headley," Laurie said. "You don't know how much
this means to my family." She started to cry.
"Well, thank you. I'm glad you feel that way."
"This is the first time since all this began that anyone said something nice
about my father."
A vehicle followed my rented car for the next two days as I made my rounds.
Through contacts established with several Phoenix police officers unhappy at
what they viewed as a department coverup of the Bolles case, I learned the
brass deemed me worthy of surveillance. The tailing would become a constant
fact of life.
As Christmas approached, I felt a sentimental urge to trade sun, sand, and
palm trees for the more traditional Currier and Ives snowdrifts of my home
state Indiana. Chestnuts wouldn't taste right from an open fire in Phoenix,
nor would Jack Frost nip at my toes in the desert. And a break would do me
good after five nonstop weeks on the case. Besides, my staying couldn't
accomplish much during the holidays what with lawyers, judges, courts, and
others I needed to visit out on semivacations.
But no matter how justified a brief hop to the Midwest, a guilty conscience
kept attacking with thoughts of Max and Jim spending another Christmas behind
bars.
I did want to stay in Phoenix long enough to hear the U.S. attorney's
reaction to my proposal that he join in the investigation, and to see
firsthand the kind of media coverage the press conference generated.
It generated plenty, leading off virtually every local TV newscast. A mixed
bag: the reporting generally graded out as unfriendly, but points were
stressed here and there to a public that up to then had considered the matter
closed. Most important, we stirred up something, demonstrated that at least a
handful of people didn't buy the official version. Maybe someone would come
forward with important new revelations.
The newspaper articles hit the street the next day. Except for the Scottsdale
Daily Progress, none of the stories was particularly favorable. The worst
appeared in the Phoenix Gazette, written by Pat Sabo, which used code words
to tell readers I shouldn't be believed.
The lead paragraph read: "A self-styled investigative journalist claims new
evidence has surfaced in the murder of newsman Don Bolles and he called for
the case to be reopened."
I could tell where this story headed without going any further.
"Self-styled"? Sabo could have checked with Playboy, from whom I had received
several assignments, or with any of a halfdozen other magazines. Would She
begin an article about Bruce Babbitt by calling him the self-styled attorney
general?
"Claims new evidence has surfaced"? I handed Ms. Sabo the evidence.
Sabo continued in the same vein in her second paragraph: "Lake W. Headley,
who said he is a licensed private investigator in Los Angeles, outlined the
alleged new evidence Tuesday at a press conference called by the Justice for
Max Dunlap Committee."
Said I'm a licensed private investigator? She could have verified my
credentials with a call to California. And if she wondered about my
competence, she might have asked Vince Bugliosi, Manson prosecutor and Helter
Skelter author who, however generous with his praise, called me "the best
p.i. in the world."
Alleged new evidence? Again, I handed it to her. ("Alleged" is probably the
most oft-used code word in the hands of a biased reporter.)
And so the article continued, in the sister newspaper to the one Bolles
worked for, filled with "Headley claimed" and "Headley alleged."
One thing I "claimed," police reports about Neal Roberts's stolen vehicles,
Sabo dismissed by writing, "Former Phoenix Police Detective Jon Sellers, who
is now a special investigator for the state attorney general's office
assigned to the Bolles case, denied that any information of significance was
withheld from the defense."
Ridiculous. The stolen vehicle reports were withheld. Case closed. (And there
would be a lot more, a veritable Niagara of information I had yet to
discover.)
U.S. Attorney Morton Sitver, thanks to pressure from Jonathan Marshall
(Sitver might dismiss me, but he could not so easily dismiss an important
publisher), responded rather quickly-the next day, in fact-to the suggestion
he become involved in the Bolles investigation. "It depends on exactly what
they are requesting," Sitver said. "At first blush, it doesn't seem a matter
we would have jurisdiction over, but we could look at what they are claiming."
Good. And I didn't think jurisdiction should be a problem. The FBI, after
all, had involved itself from the beginning. Sitver said he would look at our
evidence, and I had an eyeful to show him.
So with mixed emotions, I decided to go back home to Indiana for the
holidays. I knew Devereux, Naomi, and Tern Lee would keep digging in Phoenix,
and besides, I had a rather glamorous Bolles connected appointment to keep
before reaching Goshen.
pps. 71-79
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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