-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
The Arizona Project
Michael Wendland©1977
ISBN 0-8362-0728-9
Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc.
6700 Squibb Rd.
Misson Kansas 66202
276 pps. - first edition - out-of-print
New revised edition - available amazon.com
Paperback, 304pp.
ISBN: 0945165021
Blue Sky Press, Incorporated
June 1988
--[1]--
Acknowledgments
In March and early April, 1977, newspapers across the country printed a
series of investigative reports based on an unprecedented group effort in
journalism, the banding together of some thirty-six reporters and editors
from almost as many different news agencies for a single story. That the
story was actually concerned with a number of areas made no difference. In
the end, twenty-three major articles, most of them with accompanying
sidebars, were produced. The incident that prompted this unique gathering was
the June 1976 assassination by bombing of Phoenix newspaper reporter Don
Bolles. And the purpose of the joint media response was twofold. 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." Like any major news story, the newspaper series that resulted from the
Arizona project has been controversial.
I am a reporter for the Detroit News. From the beginning of the project on
October 4, 1976, to February 1, 1977, when the active reporting ended, I was
a part of the team of journalists working in Arizona. While only a handful of
us were able to spend full time on the project, the others stayed as long as
they could, usually a minimum of two, weeks. Several members devoted vacation
time to the project and paid their own way.
I decided to write this book upon my return to Detroit, after the project was
completed. For what I saw and was a part of in Arizona was the Free Press of
America at its finest. The thirty-five other journalists and the fifteen
researchers, volunteers, and secretarial workers who assisted the team were
as diverse as the nation. Six were from the Arizona media, the others from
all parts of the country. They were young and old, from news agencies large
and small, liberal and conservative. And at all times they worked together
smoothly and professionally, putting in sixteen-hour days, seven days a week.
When we left Arizona, we left still friends.
This book would not have been possible without the help and encouragement of
a great many people. In writing it, I have relied on personal notes,
observations, and conversations during my stay in Arizona. In addition, my
fellow team members have been most cooperative in helping me fill in the
holes. Many of them have kindly given me access to their personal diaries,
notes, memoranda, tape recordings, and files.
To the entire team, particularly project leaders Bob Greene and Dick Cady, I
express my respect and admiration. Deserving of special acknowledgment for
the assistance he has provided me with this book is Ron Koziol, who is not
only a hell of a reporter but the best friend anyone could ask for. Others
whose friendship, time, energy, advice, and sympathy helped me greatly
include Nina Bondarook, George Weisz, John Rawlinson, Alex Drehsler, Harry
Jones, Dave Offer, Dick Levitan, Dave Overton, Tom Renner, and Ross Becker.
Special thanks, for assigning me to the Arizona team and offering me
editorial guidance and support, to the Detroit News and particularly Martin
Hayden, Burt Stoddard, Ben Burns, Bill Lutz, and Bob Lubeck.
To Jim Andrews, my publisher, and Philip Nobile, my patient editor, go my
sincere appreciation and thanks for their guidance, criticism, and support.
Finally, to my wife, Jennifer, who supervised three demanding children alone
for four months and then struggled with my terrible handwriting in typing
this manuscript, I express my love and gratitude and promise that there won't
be another Arizona project.
At least not for a while, anyway.
=====
Cast of
Characters
THE IRE TEAM
LOWELL BERGMAN, free-lance reporter, Berkeley, California
DON DEVEREUX and STEVE GOLDIN, free-lance reporters, Santa Fe, New
Mexico
ALEX DREHSLER and JOHN RAWLINSON, Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
JACK DRISCOLL, Boston Globe
ROBERT GREENE, Tom RENNER and TONY ANSOLIA, Newsday, Long Is-land, New York
BILL HUME, Albuquerque Journal
SUSAN IRBY, Gulfport (Mississippi) Daily Herald
HARRY JONES and DICK JOHNSON, Kansas City Star
RON KOZIOL, Chicago Tribune
LARRY KRAFTOWITZ, Jack Anderson Associates, Washington, D. C.
DOUG KRAMER, Elyria (Ohio) Chronicle
DICK LEVITAN, WEEI Radio, Boston
DICK LYNEIS, Riverside (California) Press-Enterprise
JACK McFARREN, Reno (Nevada) Newspapers, Inc.
BILL MONTELBANO, Miami Herald
DAN NOYES, Urban Policy Institute, Los Angeles
DAVID OFFER, Milwaukee Journal
DAVE OVERTON, KGUN-TV, Tucson
MYRTA PULLIAM and DICK CADY, Indianapolis Star
ED ROONEY and PHIL O'CONNOR, Chicago Daily News
MIKE SATCHELL, Washington Star
RAY SCHRICK, Wenatchee (Washington) World
BOB TEUSCHER, St. Louis Globe-Democrat
NORM UDEVITZ, Denver Post
JERRY UHRHAMMER, Eugene (Oregon) Register-Guard
BOB WEAVER, San Jose (California) Mercury
GEORGE WEISZ and Ross BECKER, investigative researchers, Tucson
MICHAEL WENDLAND, Detroit News
STEVE WICK and DAVID FREED, Colorado Springs Sun
JACK WIMER, Tulsa Tribune
JOHN WINTERS, Arizona Republic, Phoenix
OTHER CHARACTERS
JOHN ADAMSON, the confessed killer of Don Bolles
Louis "FAT LOUIE- AMUSO, Phoenix underworld character
HERBERT APPLEGATE, restaurateur, Phoenix
BRUCE BABBITT, attorney general, Arizona
MOISE BERGER, former county attorney, Maricopa County, Arizona
WILLIE BIOFF, a. k. a. William Nelson, convicted pimp and labor racketeer;
major contributor to Barry Goldwater's initial Senate campaign
DON BOLLES, Arizona Republic
JOSEPH "JOE BANANAS" BONANNO, Tucson Mafia boss
RAUL CASTRO, governor, Arizona
WALTER CRAIG, chief U.S. District Judge, Phoenix, former president,
American Bar Association
MOE DALITZ, Las Vegas gambling czar
PAUL DEAN, Arizona Republic
EDWARD "ACEY" DUCI, Phoenix nightclub proprietor and underworld
figure
JACK DUGGAN, Phoenix gambler
MAX DUNLAP, building contractor, Lake Havasu City, Arizona
BOB EARLY, Arizona Republic
BARRY GOLDWATER, senior U.S. Senator, Arizona
ROBERT W. GOLDWATER, banking, investments, citrus, Phoenix
Gus GREENBAUM, Phoenix-Las Vegas gambler and underworld figure,
friend of Barry Goldwater's
DONALD HARRIS, interim county attorney, Maricopa County, Arizona
JACK HAYS, justice, Arizona Supreme Court
CHUCK KELLY, Arizona Republic
PAUL LAPRADE, Superior Court Judge, Maricopa County, Arizona
PETER "HORSEFACE" LICAVOLI (PETER LICAVOLI, SR.), longtime hood-lum, former
boss of Detroit Purple Gang, Tucson Mafia figure
HERBERT LIEB, night club owner, Phoenix
KEMPER MARLEY, rancher, owner of liquor distributorship, Tucson
JOSEPH F. MARTORI, restaurants, citrus, investments, Phoenix
JOSEPH MONTOYA, U.S. Senator, New Mexico
HARRY ROSENZWEIG, jewelry store owner, investments, Phoenix
ANTHONY SERRA, convicted Arizona land swindler
BENJAMIN "BUGSY" SIEGEL, Las Vegas racketeer
SAM STEIGER, U.S. Representative, Third District, Arizona
J. FRED TALLEY, real estate commissioner, Arizona
NED WARREN, SR., the czar of the Arizona land fraud racket
DEL WEBB, real estate developer, Phoenix
pps. ix-xii
=====
The Death of a Reporter
June 2, 1976—Max M. Klass, a forty- nine-year-old attorney, sat in his
second-floor office in the Mahoney Building. A Democratic candidate for
Congress from Arizona's Third District in the coming fall election, Klass had
spent most of the morning going over campaign material with his staff. At
11:35, he was trying to catch up on legal work before his wife drove into
town for their weekly luncheon date. Klass was dictating a routine auto
accident claim into his desktop recording machine when it happened: "I've
received reports from the doctors, which I enclose under cover of this
letter. The property claim is in the amount of $1,205.25, together with $400
for each of the two girls for a total amount of $2,005.25. Paragraph. If we
are unable to resolve this rather simple matter, I suspect that the next
stage would be for me to file a—"
The sound of the blast stopped Klass short. He shut off the machine and spun
around in his chair, wondering whether the floor-to-ceiling window behind his
desk had broken. It had sounded like a sonic boom, but it was much too loud.
It had actually jarred him from his seat. Klass stood up and pulled open the
heavy draperies.
Directly below his window, he saw someone crouched low beside a late-model
pickup truck. The man was looking toward the Clarendon House. Klass followed
his gaze, spotting a thick plume of white smoke reaching skyward from the
south side of the hotel.
"Quick, Shirley, call the fire department. There's been an explosion at the
Clarendon, " he shouted to his secretary, bursting out of his office.
Klass ran outside, stopping at the back door of his office building for
another look.
"Help—Help me," a thin, high-pitched voice wailed from the direction of the
hotel.
Klass strained his ears. Again he heard it, realizing that the explosion had
come from a car, not the Clarendon.
"Help me—Help—"
He trotted toward the sound, almost tripping several times over hubcaps,
tires, and chunks of metal torn loose by the blast from dozens of cars in the
parking lot. Other people from nearby offices raced across the pavement from
all directions, only to suddenly turn around on seeing the bombed car, their
faces ashen, their eyes terrified.
The first thing Klass noticed was the blood-thick and bright—dripping into a
widening pool beneath the car. His stomach reeled. A man sprawled half out of
the driver's side, his torso face down on the asphalt, his legs draped at a
grotesque angle across the seat and onto the floor of the car. The injured
man was conscious, though obviously in deep shock. His glazed eyes darted
frantically back and forth and his shoulders heaved, as if he was trying to
push himself upright.
Lonnie Reed, a young refrigerator serviceman who had been installing an air
conditioner nearby, stood over the bleeding driver of the bombed car.
"Take it easy, fella, a doctor will be here in a minute," soothed Reed, who
had once worked as a hospital orderly.
Bending over, he took off his belt and looped it around the driver's right
leg, attempting to fashion a tourniquet to halt the gushing blood.
Incredulously, he looked up at Klass.
"Oh my God! There's nothing left to get a hold on."
Klass had no belt. He looked desperately up to the second-floor balcony of
the Clarendon. The explosion had blown out every window on the south side of
the hotel and a dozen or so guests stood amidst the broken glass outside
their rooms.
"Somebody, please," Klass shouted, "throw down some towels." For a moment,
the hotel guests just stared back. "Please, quick, some towels. Throw down
some towels."
Someone did and Klass had started to put the towel on the bleeding leg of Don
Bolles when there was a tug on his shirtsleeve.
The reporter had managed to twist around and raise himself up on an elbow. He
was tightly clutching Klass's shirt and staring intensely into the attorney's
eyes.
"Adamson," he said through clenched teeth, his face contorted in shock and
pain. "Adamson."
Klass was sure of the name. Bolles pronounced it clearly. But the rest of the
message was not so distinguishable-either "Adamson sent me" or "Adamson set
me."
With that, Bolles fell back, lapsing into unconsciousness. Sirens suddenly
filled the air as an ambulance and two fire trucks screamed into the
Clarendon parking lot. Klass and Reed stepped aside. A softball-sized chunk
of what was unmistakably human flesh, lying ten feet from the twisted
wreckage, caught the attorney's eye. He swallowed a wave of nausea and looked
away, the smell of blood and smoke engulfing him.
Once more, briefly, as paramedics from the Phoenix Fire Department worked
over him, Don Bolles regained consciousness.
"They finally got me," he said. "Emprise—the Mafia-John Adamson-Find him."
Klass couldn't take it anymore. As the experts began administering an IV and
labored to stop the bleeding, Klass wheeled around and ran back to his
office. As he neared the back entrance, his wife pulled her car into a
parking spot not far from his own car. In a voice tight with emotion, the
attorney tried to tell her of the injured man.
It was Mrs. Klass who discovered the white overalls lying in a heap next to
the trash container at the rear of Klass's office building. She thought they
belonged to a painter. Somehow, she hadn't understood Klass's description of
the bombing and thought the ambulance was for a painter who had accidentally
fallen from the Mahoney Building. The attorney again explained what had
happened. Then he remembered the pickup truck he had seen parked below his
window immediately after the explosion. Could the man he saw crouched next to
the truck have anything to do with the bombing? He walked over to the trash
container and examined the overalls. They looked almost new, with just a
trace of grease in one spot. With them was a white sheet that also looked new.
Klass found a police officer and told him of the pickup truck and the
overalls. After filling out a witness report, he rejoined his wife. He no
longer felt like lunch.
"Who was it, Max?" his wife asked of the injured man.
"I don't know, some bum I guess. Probably someone who just got out of jail."
Don Bolles was in excellent spirits on the morning of June 2. It was his
wedding anniversary. And it was Wednesday, downhill to the weekend. That
morning he had a routine hearing at the Capitol. And once he drove over to
the Clarendon House to talk with this Adamson fellow, the day would pass
quickly. There would be a good lunch at the Phoenix Press Club with friends.
Back at the office, it wouldn't take long to rough out his notes from the
hearing into story form for the Thursday editions. If he was lucky, he'd be
home by four. That would give him some time with the kids before he and
Rosalie went out to celebrate the eighth year of their marriage with dinner
and a movie.
A tall, bespectacled man who wore his fair hair in an out-of-style pompadour,
Bolles looked forward to seeing the movie All the President's Men. Despite
the fine reviews, he wondered whether Hollywood had oversimplified his
profession just as it did with police shows.
Don Bolles didn't particularly like the term "investigative reporter, " even
though that job description fit his work for the past decade. Since reporters
have nothing to report without first investigating, he felt the adjective was
redundant and hoped that 1976's sudden infatuation with "investigative
reporters," evidenced by the Watergate film and a host of shallow television
shows, wouldn't cheapen the public image of his profession. For he was proud
of his job.
Considering the Eastern dominance of the media, he hadn't done too badly.
While his newspaper, the Arizona Republic, was almost unknown nationally,
Bolles was not. Just the week before, he had been invited to fly to the
Midwest to speak to an important group of reporters and editors. Bolles was
miffed when the Republic refused to pay his expenses, but the invitation
pleased him immensely. While the general public did not know his name, his
peers did. His style was not great; nobody confused his prose with H. L.
Mencken's. But he could dig. He knew his craft.
Don Bolles was born to newspapering. His father was an editor for the
Associated Press and he grew up hearing newspaper stories. In 1953, after
serving with the army in Korea, he followed his father and landed a job with
AP, learning the business in the East and the South as a sports reporter and
rewrite man. In 1962, he came to Phoenix from New Jersey and joined the staff
of the Republic, a conservative newspaper owned by the Pulliam family. It
didn't take Bolles long to become the star of the paper. Less than a year on
the job, he exposed the Arizona Department of Public Safety-the state's
highway patrol-which maintained a secret slush fund used to entertain state
legislators. Next, he focused in on the Arizona State Tax and Corporation
Commissions, writing page one banner stories of bribery and kickbacks that
eventually led to indictments against two tax commissioners and to a Pulitzer
Prize nomination. In 1967, he turned his attention to land fraud, Arizona's
number one industry, uncovering a swindle involving more than a thousand
people across the nation.
Bolles was the first to link an ex-con named Ned Warren, Sr., to the state's
billion-dollar land swindle, documenting how Warren, in secret associations
with some of Arizona's most prominent businessmen, had scammed millions of
dollars from Easterners who thought they were buying a retirement home rather
than a chunk of barren desert.
By 1970, Bolles was enmeshed in the tangled world of the Emprise Corporation,
a many-tentacled sports concession firm based in Buffalo which was closely
linked to organized crime in a number of states. Bolles's reporting stopped
the firm from taking over horse and dog racing in Arizona after Bolles
discovered, and wrote stories about, the taps Emprise had placed on his
telephone in an effort to learn his sources. Bolles became such an expert on
Emprise that he was flown to Washington, D.C., to testify on the firm before
a Senate investigating committee. His Emprise work introduced him to the ways
by which organized crime takes over legitimate businesses. Months of careful
record checking gave Bolles a list of nearly 200 known Mafia members or
associates who had recently settled in Arizona. With another Republic
reporter, he wrote a series called "The Newcomers" which named the mobsters
and their new business associations in Arizona.
All of this Don Bolles shared with reporters across the country. In a craft
crowded with huge egos and ruled by fierce competition, Don Bolles's
generosity was rare. When checking into a mobster from Chicago or Detroit or
New York, Bolles was quick to get on the telephone and urge colleagues from
those cities to join him. He did not hog glory. He felt too strongly about
what he was doing.
But paranoia got to him in the end. He tired of attaching a piece of Scotch
tape to the hood of his car to make sure that no one tampered with his
engine, a routine practice when working on particularly sensitive stories. He
became frustrated with the pious platitudes of politicians who vowed action
on his stories but never did a thing. He began drinking too much and told his
friends that the only things he believed in anymore were "God and children."
He blamed his malaise on a policy of "official gutlessness in town," and said
he had had his fill of muckraking because "no one cares. " His first marriage
broke up. He was a burnt-out case.
The business does that to good reporters. It's nothing new. After a while, it
just isn't worth it. The twenty-four-hour-a-day pressure; the worry of
million-dollar libel suits; the late-night anonymous telephone threats; the
anger that comes when no one cares; indifferent, timid editors; the
difficulty in making a twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year salary support two
families-all this eventually overwhelmed Don Bolles. He had done his part.
So, in September of 1975, as he entered middle age, Don Bolles asked to be
taken off the investigative beat.
His life began to come together again. Transferred to the legislative bureau
in the state capital, he adjusted to the beat of a new drum, working a basic
ten-to-six day. The job finally took a back seat to his wife and seven
children. Six-year-old Diane, who was born deaf, was his and Rosalie's. Four
of the kids came from his first marriage and two were Rosalie's by a previous
marriage. He started playing tennis and jogging, trimming his
six-foot-two-inch frame into the muscled leanness of his youth. Friends said
he was happier than he had been in a long time. In early 1976, he turned over
his extensive files on the Mafia and organized crime to John Winters, another
Republic staffer.
Bolles came up with a couple of pretty good pieces on the legislative beat.
Most notably, he forced the resignation of millionaire rancher Kemper Marley
from the state racing commission. When Arizona Governor Raul Castro nominated
Marley for the position in March, Bolles searched the records and found that
Marley had been Castro's largest single campaign contributor in 1974. Bolles
pressed further, discovering that back in the forties Marley had been
charged, though later acquitted, of grand theft while serving as a highway
commissioner. Marley had allegedly taken a truck engine owned by the state. A
few years later, Marley was appointed a member of the Arizona State Fair
Commission, where, Bolles learned, he had been accused of financial
mismanagement and flagrant nepotism.
Eight days after the seventy-year-old Marley took his racing commission seat
in 1976, the controversy unleashed by Bolles's stories prompted the
legislature to force Marley's resignation.
But that was March. It had been mostly routine stories ever since. And
Bolles, while generally happy with his more relaxed job, was just a trifle
bored.
That's probably why he jumped so fast at the call from John Adamson.
Actually, the first call came Thursday morning, May 27, from Dick Ryan, a
court stenographer whom Bolles had met several years before while covering
trials in the Maricopa County courthouse. During the last week of May, Ryan
telephoned Bolles to say that he knew a man named John Adamson, who claimed
to have information linking Arizona Congressman Sam Steiger and the Emprise
Corporation to land fraud. Ryan said he didn't know Adamson well, but that
Adamson had asked him to get in touch with Bolles and pass on the news tip.
This sketchy information was intriguing. Rumors abounded that Arizona
congressmen and senators were mixed up in the land fraud industry. But
Emprise, whose organized crime associations were involved mostly with sports
concessions, didn't make sense. Neither did a connection between Steiger and
Emprise. During his investigation of Emprise, Bolles had received strong
support from Steiger, who actively fought against the moves by Emprise to
infiltrate the state's racing industry. The congressman had often spoonfed
Bolles major news tips on the Emprise scandal. Still, Bolles listened to
Ryan. The reporter had learned long ago never to dismiss a tip just because
it didn't make sense. He told Ryan that, sure, he'd be interested in talking
to this Adamson fellow.
Adamson himself called Bolles shortly afterwards. He repeated the information
relayed by Ryan, adding two more prominent political names: Arizona Senator
and 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, and wealthy
Phoenix jeweler and former state GOP boss Harry Rosenzweig. Adamson refused
to be more specific over the telephone. A meeting was set up for The Island
restaurant at four-thirty that afternoon.
Adamson was a tall, swarthy man, a chunky two-hundred-pounder, who wore dark
prescription sunglasses and claimed to have documentation of the charges. The
two talked for about fifteen minutes. Bolles tried to zero in on just what
Adamson had but got nowhere. All Adamson would say was that he could prove
the land fraud connections and that he had an informant, from San Diego, to
whom he would introduce the reporter and who had further proof. The meeting
broke up with Adamson promising to turn over the informant and the
documentation. Bolles told him to call when he had it, then left for home.
His daughter was graduating from the eighth grade that night, he explained to
the brooding Adamson.
On Tuesday, June 1, Adamson telephoned Bolles to say that he had the proof
and that the San Diego informant was also willing to meet Bolles. Another
meeting was arranged, this one for the next morning at a downtown hotel. On
the desktop calendar at his office in the Capitol press room Bolles wrote:
"John Adamson ... Lobby at 11: 25 . . . Clarendon House . . . 4th and
Clarendon."
The morning of June 2 was routine, except that it was his anniversary.
Rosalie was glowing when Bolles, wearing white shoes and a new blue leisure
suit, kissed her goodbye at nine o'clock that morning. Earlier, just after
breakfast, she had given him a new billfold as a present. She, too, was
looking forward to the movie.
At the Capitol, Bolles covered a dull legislative hearing on a proposed
automobile emissions control bill. He left the office about eleven-fifteen,
telling his boss, Capitol Bureau Chief Bernie Wynn, that he was going to meet
a news source downtown and then planned to go over to the Phoenix Press Club
to attend a luncheon of the journalism society, Sigma Delta Chi. Bolles was
to chair a meeting of the Ethics Committee at the SDX meeting. Afterwards, he
said, he would return to the press room and write his story on the auto
emissions bill. Bolles told Wynn he hoped to get home early that afternoon
since it was his wedding anniversary.
The reporter arrived about eleven twenty-five, parked the white 1976 Datsun
he had purchased the month before at the southern end of the building in the
second row of the parking lot, and entered the hotel lobby. He waited about
ten minutes and then heard his name being paged by the desk clerk. Bolles
took the call from the house phone. It was Adamson explaining that the
meeting was off because the informant from San Diego had chickened out.
Bolles didn't really care. What the hell, the information had been less than
specific right from the start. It was no big deal. Just another wild-goose
chase. Every reporter is used to such inconveniences. Bolles thanked Adamson
for calling, gave him directions to his office in the state Capitol, and told
him to phone if the informant changed his mind.
Nodding to the desk clerk, Bolles left the hotel for his car in the parking
lot. He had just enough time to make the luncheon.
Max Klass didn't learn who the victim really was for several hours. And when
he did, he would feel like crying. He had guessed to his wife that the
bleeding man in the bombed car was a bum. Later Klass found out it was
Bolles. Max Klass and Don Bolles were friends. When Klass had first become
active in local politics, running for mayor in Glendale, a position he held
for ten years, Bolles wrote several news stories about him. Later, as Bolles
did crime reporting, they often ran into each other in the superior court
building where Klass was representing clients. Klass hoped Bolles had
recognized him when he tried to help that morning. He wanted Bolles to know
he cared.
It was a busy morning in the city room of the Republic. The Phoenix Police
Department was expected to go on strike shortly after noon, and a half-dozen
reporters had just finished a meeting with city editor Bob Early, a burly
native of the Midwest whose father, Robert P. Early, was managing editor of
the Indianapolis Star, another Pulliam-owned paper. Early assigned the
reporters to cover various angles of the planned police strike and sat down
at his desk. Jim Dooley, the Republic's picture editor, walked over to tell
him what he had just heard over the police monitor.
"Something about a bombing," Dooley said. "Over at the Clarendon House. "
Early didn't waste any time. Only eight months before, a hoodlum named Louis
Bombacino had been blown to bits when a plastic explosive detonated beneath
the rear axle of his Lincoln Continental in Tempe, the normally quiet
suburban Phoenix city that is the home of Arizona State University.
Bombacino, 52, had been living there with his wife and teenaged son under an
assumed name provided by the FBI after his 1968 testimony helped send a
half-dozen high-level Chicago mobsters to the penitentiary. The blast that
killed Bombacino was so strong that it hurled portions of his car a quarter
of a mile away.
Early had the city desk contact Jack West, the reporter at police
headquarters covering the planned strike. He was told to go immediately to
the Clarendon House. Similarly, Roy Cosway, a photographer, was dispatched
from the Republic office. West called in on his arrival, passing on the
license number of the small white import that had been blown apart in the
explosion.
"But listen to this," he said, almost as a footnote. "The cops think the guy
was a reporter."
The city desk called the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles, asking for a
license-plate check on the bombed car. The department would call back.
Reporters began clustering around the city desk almost the minute Dooley
relayed the message he heard over the police radio. When another West call
firmed up the rumor that the victim of the blast had been a reporter—a press
parking sticker was on the windshield of the bombed car-they broke into a
babble of confused conversation.
"Where's Sitter? Where's Sitter?" someone shouted.
Al Sitter had taken Don Bolles's place as the paper's top investigative
reporter. In recent months, he had been hammering hard at land fraud,
organized crime, and the political and business connections that make both
possible. Sitter drove a white Toyota.
But almost at that moment, Sitter walked into the city room. "You're not
dead," Early shouted, clapping him on the back. Then the phone rang and
Early, as he answered it, remembered that Don Bolles also drove a white
import. It was DMV. The registration on the car was to Don Bolles.
Early hung up the telephone and slammed the desk. "Jesus Christ!" he shouted.
The reporters looked up. Again he slammed the desk. "Jesus Christ!" Then he
told them who had been in the car.
Obscenities filled the newsroom. Wastebaskets were kicked. Reporter Paul
Dean, one of Bolles's closest friends and best man at Don and Rosalie's
wedding, flung his pen at the wall.
"What the hell was he working on?" asked Early. No one knew.
The outburst didn't last long. Within five minutes, twenty reporters and
photographers were working on the story, tracing Bolles's last activities,
going through his notes in the press room of the state Capitol and at his
desk in the city room, standing by the hospital, interviewing witnesses in
the parking lot of the Clarendon House, and trying to figure out just who
would want Don Bolles dead and why.
Someone from the Republic called Rosalie Bolles at home, told her that Don
had been hurt, was on his way to St. Joseph's Hospital and to sit tight, that
she'd be picked up by a staffer and taken to the hospital. Rosalie Bolles
waited twenty minutes. Then, thinking that her husband had been injured in an
automobile accident, she couldn't wait any longer. Using the second car that
Don had bought a few years before, she drove herself to the hospital. She
identified herself in the emergency room to a nurse and was ushered to a
waiting room. Five minutes later, she was told only that her husband was hurt
and was being rushed into surgery, that his injuries were serious. A jumble
of thoughts ran through her mind. It was their anniversary. There would be no
quiet dinner and movie. Forty-five minutes after her arrival at the hospital,
she learned that a bomb had gone off beneath her husband.
Bolles had lost more than twenty pints of blood in the Clarendon parking lot.
He was in surgery for almost six hours. His legs had suffered the most
extensive damage. The right one was beyond hope and was amputated above the
knee. The left leg was not much better, though doctors decided to wait and
hope that it could be saved. The loss of blood and the severity of the
injuries had driven him into deep shock. Massive internal injuries were
suspected.
It didn't take long for reporters from the Republic, joined by newspeople
from their afternoon sister paper, the Phoenix Gazette, to come up with a
suspect: John Harvey Adamson.
Reporters take notes. They have to. And Don Bolles, besides twice fingering
Adamson as he lay suffering in his bombed Datsun outside the hotel, left
adequate documentation on exactly whom he thought he was meeting at the
Clarendon. He had also talked to other reporters about the man. Good news
sources seldom fall so easily off a tree and land in a reporter's lap. Yet
Adamson, professing to have detailed information about some of the state's
most powerful political leaders, had done just that. Bolles sensed a sham
from the start. He told Bernie Wynn and other reporters after his initial
in-person meeting with Adamson the week before that he saw the makings of a
political smear. The 1976 elections were just beginning to heat up. It was
too coincidental that Adamson, whom Bolles had never even heard of before,
would suddenly call him up with information of fraud and political chicanery
unless there was an ulterior motive. Bolles had been off the investigative
beat for more than seven months. Why was Adamson calling him now? Still, one
never could rule out godsends. Maybe Adamson was a fraud, trying to string
the reporter along, to get him to make a few telephone calls and thereby
start the winds of political gossip. But maybe he really had something, too.
Bolles had to find out. The second meeting would tell him.
Within an hour after the bombing, as Don Bolles was just entering surgery at
St. Joseph's, John Adamson was the subject of a statewide police APB. By
midafternoon, reporters for the Republic had a full description of him.
He was a classic sleaze. At thirty-two, Adamson was a heavy vodka drinker and
user of Valium. The closest he had come to business success was a brief
period when he ran an auto tow-away firm specializing in hauling off cars
that were illegally parked and then charging the owner fifty dollars to get
them back. He was a braggart and name-dropper who rubbed elbows with
minor-league lawyers and real estate people who hung out in a string of
look-alike cocktail lounges off Central Avenue. Of late, he claimed to be a
breeder of racing dogs. In bars like the Ivanhoe, the Phone Booth, and
Smuggler's Inn, Adamson was the guy to see if you wanted a good deal on
turquoise jewelry, "hot" Mexican silver, or a new leisure suit. Just don't
ask for a sales receipt.
The police knew him as a suspected fence, burglar, and arsonist who wasn't
above performing some strong-arm stuff for a gambler in need of collecting
from a reluctant loser. He was wanted even before the Bolles bombing, on a
year-old warrant charging him with defrauding an innkeeper by leaving a
Scottsdale motel without paying his bill. It was a minor charge, really. But
at least it was a charge that would allow him to be held until something
stronger came up.
As it turned out, he wasn't held long. Adamson turned himself in on the old
warrant the day after the bombing, posted $ 100 bond, and, within an hour,
was drinking vodka in the Ivanhoe, loudly bragging that he had nothing to
worry about.
Republic reporters followed Adamson to the lounge and reported in detail how
he sent his white shoes out to be cleaned and made and received several
telephone calls. He left briefly to go next door to a manicurist and have his
nails done. When Adamson left the bar, a half-dozen reporters in three cars
tried to tail him. Adamson, wildly turning comers and careening through
shopping-center parking lots, shook his pursuers-nearly causing a "Keystone
Cops"-like smashup in the process. ,
Over the next week, reporters began tracing Adamson's movements, especially
during the twenty-four hours following the bombing. What they found made
screaming headlines each day. The evening of the bombing, Adamson fled the
city on a specially chartered airplane to Lake Havasu City, a resort
community on the Colorado River in the northwest corner of the state. The
airplane had been chartered by Neal Roberts, a forty-five-year-old prominent
Phoenix attorney.
Roberts was also a dog breeder, a raiser of springer spaniels. That's how he
said he got to know Adamson, whom he described to reporters as "a colorful
... Damon Runyon-type character" who was really a "gentleman" and a " . . .
humorous, pleasant guy." Roberts was vague about why he had paid for
Adamson's brief flight but said his friend was in fear of his life. He also
said he had been with Adamson the morning of the bombing, that Adamson had
seemed nonchalant and happy before leaving at about ten-fifteen. Roberts
intimated that he had a lot more to say but was not at liberty to go into any
details at the present. But then he drew still another person into the
picture: Max Dunlap, a well-known contractor and land developer from Lake
Havasu City.
Dunlap, according to Roberts, was also an Adamson buddy. And shortly after
Roberts arranged the flight for a suddenly fearful Adamson, Dunlap visited
Roberts's office with a request-to set up a $25,000 defense fund. Roberts
said Dunlap was silent as to his reason for getting involved, saying only
that he "owed Adamson. " Several days before the bombing, Dunlap had
telephoned him, related Roberts, saying what a great guy Adamson was and how,
should he ever find himself in trouble, the two of them should come to his
aid. At the time Roberts had thought Dunlap was being overly sentimental. But
then, the day after the bombing, there was Max Dunlap again, this time
setting up a John Adamson defense fund-when so far, Adamson's only legal
problem was an outstanding misdemeanor charge.
Roberts, lean and silver-haired, bearing a strong resemblance to Texas's John
Connally, stopped talking to reporters then.
But the newspaper stories on Roberts's statement and Dunlap's involvement
soon connected Kemper Marley to the Bolles bombing. For Marley, the aging
millionaire rancher and political kingmaker who, because of Don Bolles's
stories, had been forced to resign from the state racing commission three
months before, was almost a father figure to the forty- seven-year- old
Dunlap.
Roberts fueled the fire even more. In a statement to police in which he
fearfully sought immunity in the Bolles case in exchange for his cooperation,
Roberts hinted that the Bolles killing may have been Marley's idea of
"frontier justice," aimed at getting even for the damage done his pride by
Bolles's reporting and his subsequent resignation from the racing agency. The
Republic got hold of the statement and promptly bannered it.
On June 8, doctors amputated Don Bolles's remaining leg and his right arm in
a frantic effort to halt the raging infection that coursed through the
reporter's body. Four days later later he died. Bolles's doctor, William
Dozer, said, "He put up the most courageous, heroic fight I have ever seen
any person put up for his life. "
Almost immediately, Adamson was arrested. He was drinking in the Ivanhoe when
the police came for him. This time, the charge was murder.
At his preliminary hearing, the evidence was overwhelming. In his apartment
police had found an instructional book on bomb making called The Anarchist's
Cook Book, wire, tape, and magnets of the type used to fasten six sticks of
dynamite on the undercarriage of Don Bolles's Datsun. Testifying against
Adamson was his sometimes mistress, Gail Owens, who told how she had gone to
San Diego with Adamson shortly before the bombing and witnessed him
purchasing a radio-control transmitting device. The dynamite beneath Bolles's
car had been detonated by such a unit. Next, Robert Lettiere, Adamson's
dog-breeding business partner and a convicted felon, testified that he had
accompanied Adamson to a Datsun dealership in nearby Scottsdale where Adamson
inspected the underside of a car similar to Bolles's. Adamson had also driven
through the parking lot at the Arizona Republic to get an idea where Bolles
parked his car, said Lettiere. Finally, Lettiere revealed that Adamson had
bragged after the bombing about how well he had done in planting the dynamite
and how he wasn't worried about his future because he had strong support from
politically powerful people. Lettiere also mentioned that Adamson told him
that if he ever bombed another car, he'd make sure it wasn't a Datsun,
because Bolles had survived the initial blast. "That was a hell of a charge I
built under that car. I can't understand how the man lived."
Adamson was bound over to stand trial in Maricopa County Superior Court on a
charge of first-degree murder. There was no bond.
Beyond reasonable doubt John Harvey Adamson was Bolles's assassin. But he had
not acted on his own. Someone had hired him. The question was who? And,
perhaps even more important, why?
Numerous other questions emerged as the reporters from the Re-public
began delving deeper into the case. Was Bolles killed as a direct result of
his investigations? Was his death meant to serve as an example to the media,
to discourage reporters from sticking their noses into the mob's affairs? Don
Bolles had made a lot of enemies. Yet, with only a few long-ago exceptions,
the mob had avoided retaliation against reporters. And Don Bolles hadn't been
' working on anything particularly sensational for months. Or had he?
Bolles kept a file for future stories in his desk at the Capitol press room.
In his neat, precise handwriting, he left a note in the top of the file
indicating that Senator Barry Goldwater and Congressman Sam Steiger' had
written letters used to tout a virtually worthless land development. Bolles
had jotted down that the letters had supposedly been written at the direct
request of Ned Warren, Sr., the so-called godfather of Arizona's land fraud
industry, who then used the letters to convince buyers-mostly U.S. servicemen
stationed in the Far East-that the land was a good investment. Goldwater,
known for his arch- conservative politics and outspoken defense of a strong
military, was a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force. His
endorsement of the Warren project would be a powerful sales tool.
Both Goldwater's and Steiger's names had been mentioned by Adamson in luring
Bolles to his death.
Paul Dean, Bolles's best friend at the paper, was convinced the bombing was a
direct result of an ongoing Bolles investigation. "I think Don got hit
because he was a phone call or a couple of interviews away from blowing the
lid off this state," he said a few weeks after the bombing. "Don was the kind
of reporter who didn't give up. He's the kind of reporter who could put such
a story together. And the other side knew it."
As June wore on and the stifling heat of the desert began to engulf the city,
the reporter friends of Don Bolles felt the same depression and frustration
that had caused him to drop out of the fight. There was so much that needed
to be done. While Adamson was in jail and the police were narrowing in on his
coconspirators, the Republic staffers assigned to keeping the Bolles story on
page one knew they were only tackling a part of the problem. His death-by a
bomb at high noon in the very heart of the city-was obviously meant to
accomplish much more than just an end to the snooping of a nosy reporter.
Bolles was killed by people who considered murder a logical reaction to
troublesome inquiries.
That was what was so chilling about his death.
Whatever it was about the state of Arizona that had so corrupted Bolles's
killers, that had made land fraud the state's biggest business, that allowed
200 recognized leaders and underlings of organized crime to find exile there,
that prompted politicians and businessmen to look the other way—that was the
real story.
pps. 1-15
-----
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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