-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 --[14]-- 14 A Twenty-Year Deal Saturday, January 15, began as a fairly quiet morning in the IRE suite. The reporters had begun work promptly at eight-thirty. A fairly standard routine had developed. After breakfast and before starting the staff meeting, someone would read aloud "Today's Chuckle," a normally humorless and stale one-liner that appeared every day on the front page of the morning Republic with "Today's Prayer." The chuckles never came, but the IRE reporters kept reading them anyway, mostly out of amazement that a modem metropolitan newspaper would continue to waste space in such a trite fashion. Then, just before getting down to work, the daily low temperature from Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Indianapolis during one of the century's coldest winters would be read off the weather page. All winter in Phoenix the weather had been monotonously but beautifully the same: cloudless skies and temperatures in the low seventies. It was one of the few fringe benefits of being away from home so long. One recent news story, however, had been of major interest to the reporters. The John Adamson murder trial had started in Tucson a few weeks before. Jury selection was still going on. Several dozen prospective jurors had been quizzed, but, because of extensive knowledge about the case, most had been rejected. That morning's Republic reported that Superior Court Judge Ben Birdsall had scheduled a rare Saturday session to speed up the process. Shortly before noon, as IRE reporters were reading their files and working on the final stages of their various investigations, the telephone rang. It was Chuck Kelly, the Republic staffer who had been covering the trial and a friend of most of the IRE reporters. "Adamson's confessed," he told Bob Greene. "He's admitted the whole thing. And he's named everyone else he was involved with." The first indication that there was a break in the case had come about nine that morning when the jury selection process was to be resumed. But instead of getting down to the long, tedious questioning, Judge Birdsall had apologized to the jury panel, noting that there would be a delay. At 11:00 A.M., Adamson, dressed in the same prescription sunglasses, print sport shirt, brown trousers, and white shoes he had worn each day for the past three weeks, entered the courtroom with sheriff's deputies and his attorney. He appeared neither overly serious nor nonchalant. Judge Birdsall came in a moment later and, in an emotionless monotone, announced to a hushed courtroom that a plea arrangement had been made between Adamson and the prosecution, that Adamson, originally charged with first-degree murder, wished to change his previous plea of not guilty, to guilty of a reduced charge of murder in the second degree. "Is this a voluntary plea?" asked Birdsall. "It is, Your Honor," said Adamson. "Now, I want you to tell this court just what you did in connection with the death of Don Bolles." Adamson's voice was firm. "On June 2, 1976, in the parking lot of the Clarendon Hotel, I placed a bomb containing dynamite under the car of Don Bolles to be detonated at a later time for the express purpose of killing him." "Did you bring the bomb yourself to the automobile?" "I did." "And, as I understand it, you placed it under the car?" continued the judge, studying a number of typewritten documents in front of him. "That's correct, Your Honor." "Did you do anything with reference to getting Mr. Bolles to the Clarendon Hotel on that date?" "I did, sir." "And what, if anything, did you have to do with reference to instructing anyone concerning the discharge of the bomb?" "I made a phone call to an individual and told him where Mr. Bolles would be at a specific time and to, where, where it was to be arranged that the bomb was to be detonated," said Adamson. "You said this to me, but I want to make sure that I understand you correctly," the judge continued, carefully choosing his words. "You procured the bomb. You took it to the car. You put it under the car. And you made arrangements to have it detonated, all with the specific intent to kill Mr. Bolles. Is that right?" "Yes, sir." Birdsall then went over all eighteen terms of the proposed plea agreement submitted for his approval. Basically, it guaranteed that Adamson would be freed from prison after serving twenty years. His sentence would be served in an out-of-state jail and would not be handed down officially until he testified fully and completely against all others who were involved in the murder. If Adamson should lie, or appeal his sentence, or try to be paroled from jail before the twenty years were up, the agreement would be null and void, and he could then be retried on a first-degree murder charge or resentenced to an even longer prison term. For forty minutes, Birdsall questioned Adamson, making certain that the agreement was voluntary and that the defendant fully understood the ramifications. But instead of approving it, the judge explained that he needed more information about Adamson himself. He scheduled a hearing for the following Wednesday, by which time he expected that the county probation department would have prepared a background report. To make sure, he ordered the report on his desk by Tuesday afternoon. Adamson was led off to jail and the jury was excused. There was no mention made of Adamson's coconspirators in the court proceeding. However, by midmorning, developments in Phoenix 180 miles to the north answered all of the reporters' questions. An affidavit given police by Adamson was officially filed in Maricopa County Superior Court to support the arrests of two other men-Max Dunlap and James Robison. It was Dunlap, said Adamson in the signed affidavit, who hired him to kill Bolles. And it was Robison, a short, fat plumber and longtime Adamson pal, who, he said, assisted him in blowing up the reporter's car. Adamson's sworn statement said that Dunlap told him that millionaire rancher Kemper Marley wanted Bolles dead because the reporter had given Marley "a bad time" when Marley was appointed to the Arizona Racing Commission the previous spring. The aging Marley had to resign the job because of a controversy created by news stories which detailed his questionable performances in past state political posts, stories which were written by Don Bolles. But Bolles was not the only man Adamson said he was asked to kill. There were three others. Two of them were relatively minor figures. Al "King Alfonso" Lizanetz, a former Marley public relations man who adopted the colorful nickname after claiming to have had a vision from God, had been sending out wild, rambling letters to reporters and politicians detailing alleged wrongdoings by his former employer. Lizanetz's name came as no surprise. Police had been tipped months before that Adamson was also going after "The King." "He's been writing a lot of bullshit about Marley," Adamson was known to have said to his drinking cronies shortly after the Bolles bombing. Another man on Dunlap's death list was Doug Damon, who had supposedly conned Marley out of $15,000 in a deal involving the purchase of stolen silver. Adamson said he never carried out the contract because Damon had skipped town with Marley's money. However, the fourth man Adamson was asked to kill, according to the affidavit, was very much a part of the current Phoenix scene. Adamson said Dunlap wanted him to murder state Attorney General Bruce Babbitt. The reason: "He [Dunlap] said the attorney general was investigating the liquor industry and if he could not be persuaded politically to halt it, then Kemper Marley wanted to get him killed." Kemper Marley's wealth stemmed from many areas. Land, cattle, oil, and water helped to make him a millionaire. But his main business was liquor. And his wholesale liquor, beer, and wine company, United Liquor Company, was a virtual monopoly in Arizona. It was also a part of an antitrust suit filed by Babbitt in 1975 that accused the Arizona Licensed Beverage Association of price fixing. Babbitt had named Marley's firm as a coconspirator. The case was still pending at the time Adamson said he was asked to kill Babbitt, and the attorney general showed no signs of abandoning it. Kemper Marley was so big that he allegedly ordered murder contracts in package deals. The total price for the killings negotiated through Dunlap was $50,000, Adamson said. By early afternoon, less than two hours after Adamson had admitted his role in the Bolles killing and promised to testify against the others who were involved in the plot, Dunlap and Robison were in the Maricopa County jail, held without bail on charges of first-degree murder. Police refused to comment on whether Marley was also an official suspect. "The investigation is continuing," said Bruce Babbitt. At the IRE office, the news of Adamson's sudden confession soon became the only activity of the half-dozen newsmen. The various IRE investigations were temporarily shelved as the reporters frantically pounded out Sunday stories on the dramatic turnabout for their own papers. For several of them, it was the first real story filed in weeks. The work they had been doing in Phoenix was all prepared in memorandum form, strictly for the files. Working under deadline again reminded them what the business was all about. Even Greene knocked out a piece for Newsday. "It feels good to be a reporter again," he beamed that night. "But come the morn, it's back to being a slave driver." Meanwhile there were still a few legal preliminaries to settle in Tucson before the Adamson confession could be legally accepted. James Muth, a Maricopa County deputy probation officer, was assigned by Birdsall to prepare a probation report on the defendant, a standard procedure ordered by judges as a guide in passing sentence. On Wednesday, January 19, Muth submitted his report, complaining to the judge that he was hampered by a lack of time and information and that he was not allowed to discuss the Bolles murder with the killer because of the terms of the plea agreement. The probation officer seemed upset that Adamson was getting off too easily: "Based on the defendant's admission of guilt in the present offense, and based on the apparent nature and sophistication of this offense-that it does not appear to be a crime of passion but one motivated by profit, that others with similar motivations are allegedly involved; that the elements of a good deal of time and effort and deception on the part of the defendant all appear to be present; and that the crime itself was indeed violent-the defendant appears to be a person possessing very little respect for the rights and dignity and life of others, and he is viewed by this writer to be a significant and serious threat to the community and to society in general." Adamson, who sat silent with his attorneys as Judge Birdsall read excerpts from the report, briefly turned around to study the courtroom spectators. Finding Muth, he stared at him for a few seconds. There was no expression on his face, just a sort of detached curiosity. Muth's report noted that Adamson's past history "suggests a pattern of sophisticated criminal activity that has become progressively more involved and violent, and hence one not easily changed because of its increasingly sophisticated nature." Adamson drank heavily, to the point where he suffered from an enlarged liver and possible cirrhosis, said the probation officer. He smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine. He had been divorced three times, twice from his first wife, and during 1976 had mostly lived off food stamps and his wife's earnings as a nurse. Muth also quoted Phoenix police detective Jon Sellers, the chief investigator of the Bolles murder, as saying that the plea bargaining agreement, while "a necessary and practical one," also disturbed him. For Adamson, Sellers said, was "a coldblooded killer," one he personally hoped "will never walk the streets again." Besides Muth's sketchy probation report, there was one other document, dated Monday, January 17. It was a letter to Judge Birdsall from Bolles's widow, Rosalie. All the pent-up emotions of long months of trying to rebuild a life for our family without a husband and father have come to the surface in the past two days. Sorting them out has been difficult but I have tried to face them honestly, without apology, and accept them for what they are. When Bruce Babbitt brought me the news of the plea arrangement with John Adamson, I'm sure you can understand the conflicting feelings which battered my thoughts. On the one hand, there was a sense of relief that, finally, progress may be made toward bringing to justice all those responsible for Don's death. But it was naturally tempered by the knowledge Adamson would not be punished to the full extent of the law. Don hated the necessity for plea bargaining, but he accepted it as a fact of judicial life. I take my guidance from him. In the last analysis, that bargain is a small price to pay for bringing to justice those whose callous calculation makes their own culpability even more awful than Adamson's. For without them, the children and I would still have Don. John Adamson is an adult, responsible for his own actions, and he has no pity from me. Perhaps someday my heart will find room for forgiveness, but right now, the scars are still too deep. I am grateful to Mr. Babbitt and his staff for their extraordinary job of ensuring he [Adamson] will pay a heavy penalty for his part in this tragedy, while at the same time offering a tangible hope that everyone involved will be brought to the bar of justice. But a full measure of vengeance against one man is far less important to us, and ultimately, to the entire community, than the assurance that these vicious people will never again be free to inflict on someone else the terrible loss which the children and I have known. Don's integrity and devotion to truth must be worth at least that. Judge Birdsall, clearly moved by Mrs. Bolles's letter, signed the plea bargain agreement. Officially, Adamson would be sentenced to forty-eight to fortynine years in prison, with a guarantee that he would be released on parole after twenty years and two months, dating from his arrest the previous June. The sentence would be served in an out-of-state prison, at the express wish of Adamson, who felt he would be murdered if jailed in Arizona. A few days later at the preliminary hearing for Dunlap and Robison, Adamson kept his word. The court proceeding was held in the Maricopa County Courthouse before Superior Judge Edward C. Rapp. "Tell me, Mr. Adamson," asked William Schafer III, the assistant attorney general who was trying the case, "what motive was there expressed for the killing by Mr. Dunlap?" Adamson's voice never wavered. He still wore the prescription sunglasses which hid his eyes and made it difficult to see who he was looking at. "That Don Bolles had given Kemper Marley a bad time in the past, particularly over the appointment to the racing commission, and that Marley wanted Bolles killed. He wanted him to be the first to die." Schaffer guided Adamson into the financial arrangements, how the $50,000 contract for the murders of Bolles, Lizanetz, and Babbitt was negotiated after Dunlap originally rejected Adamson's request for $15,000 to kill the reporter as "pretty high." "So we negotiated a package price for all three," said Adamson. "Where was this money to come from?" "Max indicated that he had a key to the vault with Marley and that the money would absolutely be no problem." The questioning moved into how Adamson enlisted the aid of Robison and how they shopped around together in various hobby shops in the Valley looking for remote control transmitters which could be employed to detonate the bomb. In late April, Adamson said, he traveled to San Diego with a girl friend and purchased a used device as instructed by Robison. For several weeks, the two experimented with the transmitter, testing it out at various locations with mock bombs. During this time period-from mid to late May-Adamson said he met frequently with Dunlap, who was impatient that Bolles be killed as soon as possible. "We've got to get this done-he's going to start on something in two weeks," Adamson quoted Dunlap as saying. It was Dunlap's idea that Adamson call Bolles under the pretense of having information about political figures and land fraud, Adamson said. A few nights later, Adamson said, he was in the Ivanhoe bar drinking when he heard Dick Ryan, a court stenographer, mention the reporter's name. At Adamson's urging, Ryan called Bolles and told him that he had a man who had information on land fraud and crooked politicians. Shortly afterwards, Adamson testified, he himself called and then met Bolles, using a fictional story about having an informant from San Diego who could link the state's political leaders to land swindles. The only reason for the meeting, said Adamson, was so that he would know what Bolles looked like. On June 1, Adamson said, he called Bolles and set up the phony meeting at the Clarendon. That same day, Adamson continued, Robison delivered a bomb they had prepared several weeks before. On the morning of the bombing, Adamson testified, he left home carrying a pair of overalls, a camouflage hat, and the dynamite. To set up an alibi, Adamson said he stopped by attorney Neal Roberts's office about 9:00 A.M. After a forty -five-minute meeting, Adamson left. On the way out, however, he said he unexpectedly ran into Max Dunlap, who also saw the attorney that morning. The two went outside to talk privately. "I told him to tell Mr. Smith to go to the bank, that Don Bolles would be at the Clarendon House at eleven-thirty and it would be over then," said Adamson. "Good," he quoted Dunlap as saying. Adamson said that "Mr. Smith" was a pseudonym they used for Kemper Marley. >From Roberts's office, Adamson said, he went to the Ivanhoe and drank cranberry juice until five minutes before eleven. He then drove the half-dozen blocks to the Clarendon parking lot where, after changing into the overalls, he met Robison. "I wonder if he will be here?" Adamson said Robison asked him. Adamson said he told his partner that he was sure the reporter would arrive. He said Robison then asked him if he had an alibi. "Yes, I'll be at the Ivanhoe," Adamson answered. While the two were talking, Bolles himself drove up, parking his Datsun in a space not more than a hundred and fifty feet away. Adamson said they watched t he tall, fair-haired reporter walk into the hotel. Adamson then went over and attached the bomb to the reporter's car, he said, while Robison drove his pickup truck to a spot across the parking lot, towards the rear of the Mahoney Building. Robison, armed with a pair of high-powered binoculars, would detonate the bomb with the model airplane transmitter as soon as the reporter got back in it, said Adamson. After getting out of his overalls, which he bundled up in a sheet and tossed near a trash barrel, he drove back to the Ivanhoe and called the hotel, having Bolles paged by the desk clerk. "I told him the individual from San Diego was hesitant, and didn't want to be exposed," Adamson testified. "I said I didn't have any more time to spend on it and I'm sure he didn't either." Bolles replied that if he should receive more information, he should bring it to Bolles's office in the state capitol, said Adamson. Between 11:35 and 11:40, Adamson said, the phone in the Ivanhoe rang. He said it was for him, from Robison. "Tell Mr. Smith to go to the bank," Adamson said he was told. "Is it done?" he asked. "Eyeball to eyeball," Adamson said Robison answered. About 2:00 in the afternoon, Adamson said, Dunlap came to see him in the Ivanhoe. Dunlap told him that it was best that they meet at that time because Bolles was still alive. Undoubtedly, the reporter had by then told police that Adamson was the man who lured him to the hotel. Adamson was sure to be under police surveillance by the end of the day. Dunlap didn't want to be linked with him, testified Adamson, so future face-to-face meetings would be difficult. "He did mention that the people in San Diego would be glad to hear that Don Bolles was not coming over there because he was supposed to go over there to investigate a bank," Adamson said. But Bolles's coworkers at the Republic knew of no such plans. At the afternoon meeting at the Ivanhoe, Adamson said, he and Dunlap worked out a plan whereby money for Adamson would be left at the office of Phoenix attorney Tom Foster, an Adamson friend. That night, on a charter flight arranged for him by Neal Roberts, who by then knew of Adamson's involvement in the Bolles bombing, Adamson said he and his wife left Phoenix. They went to Lake Havasu City, only to return the next morning after it became apparent that his name was already being circulated as the main suspect. On Friday, June 4, two days after the bombing, Adamson testified he telephoned Dunlap at home. Adamson called from the phone at the Ivanhoe. He was worried. Upon his return from Lake Havasu, police had immediately arrested him on an outstanding warrant for defrauding an innkeeper. A half-dozen newspaper reporters were following him. Bolles was still alive. Adamson said Dunlap urged him to stay calm, assuring him that, if Adamson wanted to, he could be spirited out of the country aboard a twin-engine airplane. "He said that Kemper and the governor had a thing down there in Mexico and they could get me out of the country immediately if I wanted to go," testified Adamson. Dunlap told Adamson not to worry, that even if he was convicted of the attack on Bolles, he would only serve five years, said Adamson. During the time he was in jail, all he had to do was to keep quiet. Dunlap would send his wife $400 a month, Adamson said he was promised. Adamson's mention of "the governor" set the press gallery afire. They scrambled out of the courtroom during a break in the proceedings to update the stories. Arizona Governor Raul Castro was a friend of Kemper Marley's. Marley had been the largest single contributor to Castro's campaign, kicking in more than twenty thousand dollars. And Castro was the man who had appointed Marley to the State Racing Commission the previous spring, the appointment which Don Bolles wrote about in dissecting Marley's background. But Adamson was vague. He admitted that he could not say for certain just who "the governor" was. It could have been Castro or it could have been simply a figure of speech or a nickname for just about anybody. And even if it was Castro to whom Dunlap allegedly refer-red, owning an airplane with Marley did not constitute a criminal case. Neither local reporters nor the IRE team had come up with any firm business dealings between Castro and the wealthy Marley. Meanwhile, the governor was outraged that his name had been brought into this seedy case. "I want to categorically deny any interest in anything in Mexico, the United States, or anyplace else with Kemper Marley," bristled Castro after the hearing had recessed for the day. "I have never owned, nor do I now own, any plane or have any interest in any plane with any person whatsoever. . . . I categorically deny that I have ever had or presently have any business dealings with Kemper Marley." There was one more meeting between Adamson and Dunlap, the star witness testified the next day when the hearing resumed. About a week after the bombing, with Bolles still clinging to life, Adamson said he went to Foster's office for a secret meeting with Dunlap. "Max gave me a package, an envelope containing money. He said there was just under six thousand dollars there." Two thousand of the money, Adamson said, was to fulfill the murder contract on Lizanetz. As Dunlap left, Adamson said he again assured him that his wife would be financially supported if Adamson had to serve jail time. Adamson had been a good witness. Despite intense and often tricky cross-examination by famed Texas criminal lawyer Percy Foreman, brought in as Dunlap's counsel for the cross-examination, Adamson stuck to his story. Max Dunlap and James Robison were bound over to stand trial for first-degree murder. But Kemper Marley remained free. Despite Adamson's damning testimony, it was not enough to enable authorities to issue a warrant. Adamson had received all of his information from Dunlap. While his testimony could be used to corroborate allegations of Marley's involvement in the Bolles murder conspiracy, there was only one person who could finger Marley enough to make it stick in court: Max Dunlap. And Dunlap, who had been raised as a son by the millionaire rancher, gave no indication that he was ready to talk. The Adamson confession came as a surprise to the IRE reporters, a pleasant surprise. Somehow, seeing the wheels of justice start to move, wheels which seemingly had been rusted in place since the state was admitted into the Union sixty-five years before, lifted the IRE team's spirit. It was also a fitting end to their reporting. For the project was nearly complete. The man whose death had brought them all to Arizona was being avenged, properly, through the courts. That, at least, was a beginning. Their slain colleague was also being eulogized. On Saturday, January 22, Don Bolles was posthumously given the John Peter Zenger Journalism Award by the three-hundred member Arizona Newspapers Association for "distinguished service in behalf of freedom of the press and the people's right to know." In an acceptance speech on behalf of Bolles's widow, J. Edward Murray, the former Republic managing editor who had hired Bolles fourteen years ago, summed up the feelings of the IRE team as it finished the project. "We all wish that Don Bolles were alive today to make this speech," said Murray. "But in fourteen years of trying, he was not able to make a sufficient dent on the Arizona criminal scene to prevent his own murder." Murray paused for a moment. Then he began asking the big questions. "Why was Don Bolles, one of the best investigative reporters in the nation, able to make so little progress against the criminal element here? Or against the sleazy, soft-on-criminals attitude? And why did he have to die before Arizona woke up to what he had been exposing for a dozen years? The answers, it. seems to me, lie in the flawed and rotten political fabric of this state." Murray was speaking in Tucson. There were no IRE reporters there. But up in Phoenix, reading his speech in the Republic the next Sunday, the reporters who had worked so long and hard in tribute to the slain reporter clipped the Murray speech story from the paper. Many of them would take it home. Bolles's reporting was "all but ignored by the general public, politicians, and law enforcement," said Murray. "That lack of reaction created the sick public conduct which invited the conspiratorial murder. That is why Bolles's murder is an indictment of governors, legislators and the courts for a prolonged permissiveness which amounted to an open invitation to criminal elements to come to Arizona. That is why Bolles's murder is an indictment of the lawyers, bankers and other businessmen whose self-aggrandizing jungle ethics allowed them to collaborate with the underworld even though they knew that their actions were undermining the entire society, which they hypocritically pretended to respect. Don Bolles-did his work extremely well. But the rest of the democratic process failed." Murray, urging that Bolles's work not be abandoned, had high praise for the IRE team up in Phoenix, which, its investigative work basically completed, was about to write its series on Arizona wrongdoing. But then, as if he were one of them, he echoed the fears of the IRE reporters, who worried that once the state's ills had been exposed and they had returned home, the series would only be drowned in apathy. "By far the most important single requirement, however, is that the people themselves become aroused. When and if that happens, they will find ways to make their desires known. Investigative reporting, no matter how excellent, cannot accomplish much all by itself." At the end of January, the IRE reporting was done. All that remained was to write and rewrite the stories until they were in publishable form. There was no wild farewell party. On the last Wednesday night in January, nineteen of the reporters gathered in the apartment rented by Drehsler, Rawlinson, and Overton. They chipped in and bought twenty dollars' worth of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a couple of cases of beer. But by eleven, most had returned to the hotel. They were even too tired for a party. By February 1, most of them had returned home. pps. 239-251 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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