-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 --[24]-- --"They wove a tangled web. Once the decision was made to protect the powerful, all that remained was a sordid vendetta against the innocent."-- Om K ----- 24 Covering Ass Through the Eighties LAS VEGAS, NEVADA. AUGUST 1989 I was reviewing manuscript pages of this book when the telephone rang. "Lake, old buddy! How have you been?" "Do I know you?" "Oh, yeah. I'm George Weisz, an investigator with the Arizona attorney general's office. We met while you were here working the Bolles case. What have you been doing?" "Same thing as always. I'm a private investigator." "Well, we're working on the Bolles murder..." Jesus. The reporter had been dead thirteen years, two months. "That's great," I said, almost choking. "How you coming with it?" "We'd like to ask you some questions. I've been going over the material you sent to the attorney general and the U.S. attorney. And we know you made a lot of tapes with Robison. We'd like, as part of our investigation, to get together with you and listen to those tapes. We can come to Vegas, or if you'll be in Phoenix soon, we can meet here." "I'll tell you what you do. Call my attorney, George Vlassis, and set up an appointment through him. We can talk in his office. I'll fly down when I get the word from Vlassis." "Let's make an appointment while I've got you on the phone." In a hurry, huh? I thought. Now I remembered Weisz. Like Schafer, Corbin, and the rest, he'd ignored everything we provided his office. "I can't make an appointment," I said. "I don't know my lawyer's schedule. Give him a call." I hung up, sure that Vlassis wouldn't allow me to answer their questions. Wise had nerve, I'd give him that. Still investigating? Now, in 1989, they wanted to talk to me? I wondered if the real reason for the call was to find out how the book treated them. Or, more ominous, since they wanted to listen to tapes, if they fantasized about retrying Jim. I had prepared myself to hear "more arrests are expected" spilling out of Weisz's mouth. Though I kept my pledge to stay away from active involvement in the Bolles case, I closely followed its many twists and turns throughout the 1980s. Cover Your Ass—Robison's description of the police/prosecution motive for ineptitude and worse—became more pronounced, laughable and, ultimately, ludicrous. Here are some examples from the time after we left Phoenix. o Phoenix organized-crime police officers, after first purging their files on Emprise to remove any reference to John Adamson, created a new, sanitized Emprise file to mollify the curious. o By hiding the index cards needed to locate the files, police made it impossible to study their dossiers on Adamson, Barry Goldwater, Bradley Funk, and others. o The police shredded all surveillance reports relating to the murder of Bolles. o Organized-crime officers kept all the information they gathered on the Bolles murder in a secret file not listed in any official record. Once five inches thick, it shrank to virtually nothing after its existence became publicly known. o Phoenix police still didn't bother to interview Nicole DiVincenzo, who said he had been offered a contract to kill Bolles (which he turned down), and later a contract on John Adamson's life, even though DiVincenzo was in the Phoenix jail on another charge. The Phoenix weekly New Times concluded, in an issue printed on the tenth anniversary of the Bolles bombing: "The Phoenix police department deliberately sabotaged its investigation into the murder of Don Bolles." The saddest part of all is that, except for residents of Arizona who have lived with the case, most Americans have only sketchy knowledge of the tragedy. Many, if they know of Robison and Dunlap at all, believe they got off on a legal technicality—a terrible injustice to these men, who unfairly suffered for so long and conceivably could still be tried again by the same state that railroaded them in the first place. Almost as bad, Corbin and Schafer, viewed from a distance, have emerged as heroes in the eyes of some writers for "standing up" to John Adamson and prosecuting him to the fullest extent of the law after he made those outrageous demands in exchange for his testimony. Cover Your Ass. Here's Attorney General Bruce Babbitt in 1977, after his office convicted Dunlap and Robison: "The convictions reaffirm the fact that the [Phoenix police] department is one of the outstanding law enforcement agencies, not only in this state, but in the nation." And here's Governor Bruce Babbitt in 1986, after the destruction of almost everything he claimed to be true in the Bolles case: "Police work in this city and this state has come a long way since 1976. We were not in a modern law enforcement situation. At the time, we had not made the evolution into complete police work." Complete police work? Robison had been right. Even incomplete police work didn't encompass purging files, creating phony new files, and shredding documents. Corbin and Schafer did indeed go after Adamson. In 1980, the con man was tried and quickly convicted of first-degree murder, receiving the death sentence. Adamson had expected the sentence, betting everything on an appeal that said he'd been subjected to double jeopardy. In 1986, Adamson missed winning his desperate gamble by an eyelash. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, held that double jeopardy wasn't applicable and that Adamson must die. Still, it wasn't over. In 1988 a federal appeals court ruled that Arizona's death penalty law was unconstitutional. The state appealed, and there the matter stands, with the lives of Adamson and several dozen others hanging in the balance. Max Dunlap nicely picked up the pieces of his life. With the help of his loving family, he reestablished himself as an honest, successful businessman, traits there had never been cause to question. In July 1983, Max filed a $605 million lawsuit against the city of Phoenix, the Phoenix police department, and nine police officers. Mainly Max wanted the day in court that had been denied him. It took until 1987 to reach a court, where a mistrial was declared when it turned out several of the defendants had retained the same lawyer. Clearly, what was good for one defendant might not be helpful to another, but whose fault was this? Not Max's. The mistrial smelled to me like a deliberate stalling tactic. During the brief period the case did appear in court, Dunlap's lawyer, Murray Miller, charged that the authorities were still withholding vital evidence. It was worse than that. With the trial pending, the police destroyed additional files relating to the Bolles case, information evidently overlooked in the first waves of purging. Max's lawsuit was thrown out entirely on February 14, 1989, by Superior Court judge Robert Gottsfield, who ruled that under state law the lawsuit should have been filed within two years of the June 2, 1980, "temporary dismissal" of the murder charges. In other words, the statute of limitations had run out (judge Gottsfield held) despite an earlier ruling before the 1987 mistrial that held it had not. So once again Max was victimized, and guilty parties went unpunished. Said Murray Miller: "He wanted his day in court to show what police did to him to put him on death row. I think it's just a travesty for the Dunlap family not to have had their day in court." Jim Robison still resides at Arizona State Prison, serving a twentysix-year sentence for the assault he claims he didn't commit. Long ago he should have been granted parole, but some of the same people who framed him for murder cannot forgive him for assault. I have never heard of any first-time offender serving this much time for assault. The average time a convicted murderer serves is half the number of years Jim has been locked up. Thanks largely to the efforts of attorney Victor Aranow, who faced a prosecution eager to see his client pay for that twentydollar hash sale, Michael JoDon, in my opinion the most important witness of all in the Bolles case, received a suspended sentence. Robert Corbin remains as attorney general of Arizona, assisted by William Schafer III. I wonder if they are there forever, permanent sentinels, guarding against some replacement who might in the name of justice demand what has always been needed: the convening of a grand jury with the power to force answers. Bradley Funk died December 31, 1989, of a heart attack. In its tenth anniversary review of the Bolles case, New Times had headlined an article about him: "He Was the Perfect Suspect ... and the Cops Ignored Him." Neat Roberts practices law in Phoenix. Terri Lee and I were married December 27, 1982, in Las Vegas, with Lake III serving as best man, and my other sons, Anthony and Rod, in attendance. We moved to Vegas permanently the next month. Terri is okay now, as good as ever physically and mentally, with only those scars on her back and arm to remind her of our investigation of the Bolles murder. She wanted to work as a p.i., and that's one wish I was able to grant her. Terri, surprisingly, views our work in Phoenix in a more positive light than I do. "We did good," she says, referring to the conviction reversals. She keeps hoping the real killers will be prosecuted. But I have arrived at the point where I don't care if they solve the Bolles homicide. I know who did it, but Bradley Funk is dead and I can't drive myself crazy agonizing over the fact that he and others responsible haven't been or likely ever will be punished. pps. 260-265 ===== Epilogue I didn't think anything Attorney General Robert Corbin could stoop to would surprise me, but I underestimated this politician. The action he took on November 27, 1989, was not just surprising; it was sickening: he recharged Jim Robison in the Bolles murder. A grand jury didn't recharge Robison. I don't believe Corbin could have gotten a grand jury to do it. Instead, he used George Weisz-he of the "Lake, old buddy" greeting-to file a "complaint," which this prosecutor contended was all that he needed. Since the charges against Robison (and Dunlap, for that matter) had never been dropped—a Sword of Damocles dangling over their heads-they could be reinstated whenever the attorney general chose. He chose a time propitious for himself. Corbin faced a stiff reelection challenge in the Republican primary from David Eisenstein and Grant Woods and, if he survived that, from the winner of the Democratic Party primary-expected to be prominent Phoenix lawyer Georgia Staton. All the candidates let it be known that Corbin's total lack of progress in the most important case he ever handled-the Bolles murder-would be a major campaign issue. Thus, when Corbin recharged Robison, many observers felt it represented a desperate gamble to establish that he genuinely sought justice for Don Bolles and merited reelection. These observers probably underestimated Corbin, as I had. As this is being written, it appears Corbin is about to launch a run for the Governor's seat. And what about George Weisz? He had relinquished a safe seat in the Arizona legislature to work for Corbin, a self-imposed demotion, a seemingly inexplicable career move. But maybe not. Will Weisz try to ride a Robison prosecution to the attorney general's post? I learned what Weisz wanted when he called me earlier: tape recordings I had made with Robison. I received several subpoenas—one to a grand jury looking into the matter (it didn't indict) and another to a preliminary hearing-but refused to turn over the tapes. I believed strongly that I had both a defense investigator/client privilege and a journalist/source privilege with Robison. For a few days it appeared I might go to jail, but the judge compromised and said I could hand the tapes over to Robison's lawyer, Tom Henze. I did so, since it was agreeable to Jim. Don Devereux wrote in The IRE Journal, Winter 1990 issue: Old notions are obviously hard to give up. After years of promising a new look at the June 1976 bombslaying of Phoenix reporter Don Bolles, Arizona Attorney General Robert Corbin finally has taken some action. But it certainly would be premature to celebrate. All that he has done so far is to re-charge Jim Robison in the crime. The action just taken on November 27 was not a product of last month's sudden flurry of state grand jury interest in the Bolles case. Rather, it came in the form of a brief "complaint" signed by state attorney general's office investigator George Weisz.... Rumors suggesting such a possibility have been circulating for weeks. Although it may not have been unexpected, it nevertheless is a disappointing development for those of us still hoping for a real breakthrough in the case. I find it very doubtful, in fact, that Robison is guilty of the Bolles homicide. There are other much more plausible candidates out there. Until 1979 I had assumed that Robison indeed was the killer as officially alleged. Yet, after spending many hours with him in repeated interviews—perhaps the only journalist to do so—and examining other evidence, I gradually changed that opinion. Corbin's decision to go after Robison again not only may be terribly unfair to him. It also may force the state's investigation back along a familiar, time-wasting path that leads to the same old deadend.... Corbin has denied any political considerations in either his actions or their timing. It is a curious coincidence, however, that he selected the exact same day to re-charge Robison which Woods had scheduled to announce his candidacy for the state attorney general's job. The renewal of the charge against Robison left me shaking my head for days, then I reverted to the old fire horse role and took a look at what Corbin had. He had nothing—zero—that he hadn't had in 1980 when the supreme court overturned the convictions. No new evidence at all. Two witnesses were presented at the preliminary hearing that bound Robison over to a new murder trial: convicted landfraud swindler Howard Woodall and building executive Larry Welton, currently serving time in a federal prison for fraud. Each said Robison had "confessed" to him. Neither would say, nor would Corbin, what he was receiving in return for testimony. Both these witnesses were known to Corbin before Robison originally was tried in 1977, but were so suspect he used only Woodall—in a minor role—during the original trial. Books could be written about jailhouse snitches and how they attempt to buy their way out of serious sentences with perjured testimony. Perhaps a sign of Corbin's incompetence, and worse, was that in the many years—nearly ten—since the supreme court overturned the conviction, he hadn't come up with anybody new. I found it damnable that Robison, an old man now at sixty-seven, had to go through this ordeal again. Forget that it was unconstitutional: the Sixth Amendment promise of a "speedy" trial surely applied here, and by waiting almost ten years, Corbin made a mockery of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which guarantee "due process." Things would have been less outrageous had Corbin waited eight, or even nine. But two key witnesses, potential defendants, died shortly after Robison was re-charged. One of these, Corbin should have known, was about to pass away: Monte Kobey, whom Michael JoDon said he heard discussing the Bolles bombing before it took place, died in December 1989, after a long bout with AIDS. More important and damaging to Robison, Bradley Funk died of a heart attack on December 30, 1989. A living Bradley Funk would have posed a big obstacle to the conviction Corbin hopes to obtain against Jim Robison. The attorney general may even have breathed a sigh of relief, given another problem he has: a $55,000 campaign contribution he accepted from Charles Keating—head of Lincoln Savings and Loan, which became the largest S&L bankruptcy in history—for a campaign in which Corbin ran unopposed. Corbin, incidentally, while persecuting Robison, never went after Keating's banking empire, though it was his job to keep tabs on it. When asked if he intended to return the $55,000, Corbin said, "I never promised him anything and have never done anything for him. And I'm just hardheaded enough to think that if you give something back to the man, then it looks like you did something wrong." E. J. Montini wrote in the Arizona Republic, February 16, 1990, "If Corbin runs for governor, however, he'll need a war chest. And Arizona law says that money collected during one campaign can be carried over to the next. Meaning that Corbin could, if he wanted to, take Keating's $50,000 [sic] and run for governor." Tom Fitzpatrick in New Times wrote a revealing article about what he witnessed at Bradley Funk's funeral: Sometimes, you can tell something about a man by who shows up at his funeral.... This was a furtive, secretive bunch at the Funk funeral. Their cars were showy and their necks and wrists were covered with gold jewelry. Their clothes were flashy. There was a Rolls Royce Corniche with the license plates "PRESH." There were a half dozen Mercedes-Benz four-door jobs and a scattering of BMWs and a trio of the newest darling yuppie vehicle, the jeep Wagoneer. They were monied types, these funeral-goers, the kind who clearly reveled in demonstrating their bank accounts. The fleshy, overdressed men and the women in their pancake make-up and fur coats were here to say good-bye to Funk. Funk died of a heart attack while attempting to negotiate his glittering Jaguar into a Biltmore-area parking space. His death puts us just one step farther from ever solving the case. I would like to believe Attorney General Corbin is sincere about this new grand jury he has formed to study the Bolles matter. But I can't believe anything Corbin says. To him and his ilk, the Bolles case is kept on hand to be trotted out when there's need for some good ink. To my way of thinking, Corbin could do himself a lot more good if he would pay Charles Keating back the $55,000 from the last campaign. Corbin accepted the money even though he was running without opposition. If Corbin performed that one simple act. Perhaps then, I wouldn't feel it necessary to keep ask-ing why Corbin, with all the vast resources of his office, never lifted a hand against Keating. Doesn't that bother anyone else? "Despite Funk's involvement with both Bolles and Adamson," Fitzpatrick pointed out, "Funk never was questioned by police.... Add to this the fact that just before the bombing, Bolles told friends he was heading to San Diego where he hoped to uncover charges of child molesting made in a sealed deposition by Funk's former wife." And add so many other things that pointed to Bradley Funk, like his sudden flight to that rehab center, like his showing William Wright the type of device used to blow Bolles up, like ... What's the use? Funk is dead, and it's well known that juries don't like to hear a defense attorney implicate a deceased individual, who can no longer defend himself, in a murder. I'd like to think Corbin doesn't have a chance to convict Jim Robison, but who knows? He convicted him before. Corbin says he won't use John Adamson, but. like Tom Fitzpatrick, I don't believe anything Corbin says. Here's what worries me most: that the jurors judging Robison won't hear all the facts about the Bolles case. I spent an afternoon in front of that grand jury, mainly presenting them with the highlights this book contains, and they knew virtually none of them. They didn't know about Neal Roberts's three "stolen" vehicles, his "loud and clear" remark, the role of Gail Owens, nothing. Many of the grand jurors evinced genuine shock at what I told them. But what if a judge rules all this irrelevant? What if all the jurors hear is the testimony of those two convicts? Perhaps I'm too pessimistic. Even if Corbin gets his conviction—against a poor working man, not the Phoenix elite who were truly behind the crime—it will surely again be thrown out on appeal: with the complete absence of new evidence, the more than ten years that will have elapsed before the trial do not fit anyone's definition of "speedy." Don Devereux has asked me to come to Phoenix, to go through it all over again. The last time they almost killed us, I think. But then I think of Jim Robison, an old man. God, I hate what Corbin, to advance his own career, has put him through. I talked to Jim at the pretrial evidentiary hearing where the judge held that the testimony of the two jailbird snitches was sufficient to bind him over for a jury trial. He said that before all this had happened he had been counting on the mandatory release date he had been given—July 4, 1991—from the draconian sentence he'd already served on that bogus assault charge. This had kept him strong, he said. Given him hope that part of his life still remained to be lived. He didn't go any farther, but I could see the concern in his eyes. I think he wonders, as I do, whether his nightmare will ever end. As I shook hands with Jim, I imagined what Max Dunlap must be thinking. If they convicted Jim, surely the prosecution would come after him next. The strategy was to go after the weakest first, the one with no friends, before taking the risk of tangling again with that army of Max's supporters and associates. They wove a tangled web. Once the decision was made to protect the powerful, all that remained was a sordid vendetta against the innocent. pps. 266-272 --fini-- 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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