-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 --[7]-- 7 The Appearance of Ned Warren, Sr. On Monday, October 18, 1976, John Harvey Adamson went on trial for the murder of Don Bolles. Two hours into the jury selection, Judge Frederic Heineman's long description of the case was interrupted by a messenger who presented him a written note. He glanced at it and then put down the pile of notes he was using to instruct the prospective jurors. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, seemingly with a sigh, "we've had a misunderstanding. The trial will not proceed now." The note concerned security. The courtroom was too difficult to guard, according to the sheriffs deputies. There had been several threats against Adamson. While they were too vague to act on, they couldn't be ignored. For maximum security, the case should be moved to a smaller courtroom. The county could not stand the embarrassment of a Jack Ruby-type killing. The next day, interim County Attorney Donald Harris blew it. According to the code of legal ethics, the prosecuting attorney must keep silent as to the direction an investigation is taking, particularly at the beginning of a trial, when prospective jurors can easily be exposed to publicity about the case they may soon be asked to hear. So it came as a surprise to reporters and a shock to the judge that Maricopa County Attorney Donald Harris was shooting off his mouth about the theories on the case on the second day of jury selection. His remarks made page one news in the Los An geles Times. Harris said his office was close to bringing charges against six other persons in the Bolles case. No, he said, he didn't think the killing necessarily involved the Mafia. Instead, Harris thought it was more likely that the conspiracy involved the elite of Phoenix, "the country-club set." Judge Heineman declared a mistrial without delay, citing excessive pretrial publicity which then made the selection of an unbiased jury impossible. The following day, in an unprecedented move, Raul Castro, Arizona's Democratic governor, stepped into the case and ordered it transferred from Harris's control to that of Arizona Attorney General Bruce Babbitt. Babbitt, a young lawyer elected the previous year, had tracked down the governor in a Tucson hotel. Babbitt claimed that Harris's bungling had ruined his own case. He told the governor of Harris's lust for seeing his name in print, of the sensational statements he had given newspapers and magazines, and of the interview he had done with CBS's "Sixty Minutes," in which he flatl y stated that he believed Bolles had been killed because he was getting too close to a figure of local prominence. Although no one else had been charged in the killing, Harris was spouting off about other conspirators. Those were not the kind of things a prosecutor said when he was about to try the only person so far implicated in the murder. Castro agreed and signed a letter giving his attorney general the authority to bump Harris. On the night of October 21, after Harris had gone home, Babbitt ordered police into the county attorney's office to remove all files connected with the case. Harris was furious. He would appeal the governor's order, he told reporters at a hastily called press conference. Meanwhile, Adamson was returned to solitary confinement in the county jail. The date for his new trial was tentatively set for the first week in December. Babbitt confided his disgust with Harris to IRE reporters. "What he wanted to do, besides seeing his name in print, was to make a big splash, bring everybod y even remotely connected with the case in. Charge them all in a bunch of shotgun indictments and then hope that maybe a couple of charges will stick." Babbitt was one of a handful of state and local figures that IRE team members trusted. As they had done with a few officers with the Phoenix Police Department's intelligence unit, they had made informal contacts and secured pledges of cooperation from Babbitt's office. Harris, Babbitt said, was about to form a grand jury to investigate the Bolles killing. "That's the worst possible thing right now," the attorney general explained. "In the Adamson case, witnesses are at a premium. That is, their testimony is. If a witness testifies before a grand jury, you can bet your ass his identity is going to be made public. If that happens, there exists the very real possibility that he will be killed. Then, no matter how good his testimony before the grand jury was, it's all void. However, if we make a case not by grand jury but by regular charges, we get the witness to talk in open court at a preliminary hearing. That way, no matter what happens to the witness, the testimony can always be used." "Do you really think a witness would be killed to prevent him from appearing?" Babbitt was asked in a briefing with IRE shortly after he had taken over the case. "You bet I believe it." After the initial interview with Greene and Drehsler, Don Harris had clearly been skittish of IRE. Of late, he had begun bad-mouthing the team, telling local reporters that IRE was on a wild-goose chase, only interested in winning journalism prizes and making a name for its members. Dick Levitan, an award-winning reporter for WEEI-Radio in Boston and the only broadcast reporter with IRE, was assigned to visit with Harris to get his views on the mistrial and the subsequent removal of the case from his office. "Babbitt is a four-eyed prick, a real fuck-up," Harris told Levitan for openers. Sitting in his office, which was decorated with eight medals he had won as a Marine in Vietnam, Harris conceded that he wanted to call a grand jury. He was convinced that Kemper Marley, the wealthy rancher and political shaker, had contracted Adamson for the job. He also believed that Max Dunlap, Marley's protege, was the middleman. There were others involved, he said, who had assisted Adamson, but those were the big three. Rocking in his leather swivel chair and fondling his Western-style shirt, Harris changed the subject to the hundred thousand dollars a year he had raked in as a private attorney. Levitan steered the conversation back to the Bolles case. "Do you think that if you get the case back you'll still order a grand jury into the Bolles murder?" "Who gives a fuck?" Harris shot back. "Frankly, the case is so botched up now that I don't want it back." Harris had refused to cut any deals with Adamson. There were no promises in exchange for testimony. If Adamson wanted to talk, the only thing Harris would do would be to ask for a life sentence rather than the death penalty. That wasn't much of an inducement for Adamson, thought Levitan as he returned to the IRE office. Even if he were sentenced to death, Adamson knew the odds against dying in the electric chair were overwhelmingly in his favor. Meanwhile, the IRE team was deep into its various investigations As October began to turn to November, suite 1939 at the Adams was the scene of constant activity. The original glamour had faded. Now, they all seemed to be working for a single newspaper, trying to cover dozens of different news stories. The phones and the mail daily brought news tips from the general public. Some of the contacts were fruitful, some not. Others were rather unusual. For example, a former Phoenix resident now living in California wrote Greene a 200-page letter complaining that her invention had been stolen. The woman's invention was a revolutionary new brassiere that purported to increase the bust size by three inches and still appear natural. Her story was full of betrayal, hardship, near victory, and bad times again. Things had been so rough once that her family existed by stealing food from a Phoenix zoo. During this period the woman's husband deserted her because, she said, "he didn't like monkey food." The woman wanted the IRE to help her get her bra back. A very interesting and mysterious source contacted Wendland and Drehsler early in the investigation. A part-time private eye and real estate speculator, the man had dozens of leads which he rattled off while chain-smoking cigarettes in the Adams Hotel coffee shop. He showed up daily for a month. His tips were never detailed, merely suggestions to look up certain people who might be connected with various types of wrongdoing. But unknown to him the names he kept raising were also showing up in the IRE files in precisely the same context he hinted. His motives for seeking the reporters out were selfish. He had been blacklisted from selling real estate by local bankers and politicians who, he claimed, were angry at him for not making kickbacks from his sales. He wanted to expose the corruption. There was a grain of truth in most of his accusations. But he never produced anything more than the barest details. Because of his rapid-fire conversation and one-line leads, Wendland and Drehsler dubbed him their Henny Youngman informant. He was insistent on one particular point. From the time the reporters first began talking with him, he was concerned about the Arizona Republic's connecti on with the team. "You got a Republic reporter working with you. I'm telling you, you're being had. The Republic has no intention of ever printing the stuff. They've sent the guy just to keep an eye on you." Wendland and Drehsler didn't believe it. They both had worked with John Winters, the bearded, bolo-tied reporter from the Republic, who was currently investigating land frauds with other IRE men. Winters was not simply an observer. He was an active participant who had come up with several good pieces of information. Besides, Republic city editor Bob Early was another IRE backer. Early had stopped by several times and voiced strong support. "Look, I know what you guys are thinking," said Henny. "But mark my words right here. The Arizona Republic won't print a thing. The only reason they're here is to find out what you're doing here and who you're talking to." "How do you know?" asked Drehsler. "Never mind how I know. I just know. I'm telling you this for your own protection, that's all." "We know the Republic reporter. He's solid. So's his city editor," vouched Wendland. "Sure they are," said the informant. "That's because they don't know a thing about it. It goes much higher than the reporter or the city editor. I know this for a fact. There was a meeting held over there among some really top people. At it, they decided to play along with you guys." "Why? And who was at this meeting?" pressed Wendland. "I told you, I can't say any more. But why do you think they wouldn't cooperate? Because the people you guys are investigating are the people they've protected over the years, that's why. Just don't ask me any more. I'm telling you, they won't print the stories you guys write and they'll try to derail you." Henny's allegations disturbed Wendland and Drehsler. They mentioned the conversation to Greene. "Forget it," said Greene. "The Republic's with us all the way. Your source is way off." Wendland and Drehsler considered bringing the matter up with Winters. But if the source was right, Winters wouldn't know about it anyway. There wasn't much they could do about the tip except hope it wasn't true. The dilemma was temporarily forgotten when, on October 29, Drehsler came into the office to find a phone message from a most unexpected source. It was from Ned Warren, Sr., the self-styled "godfather" of the state's billion-dollar land fraud business, who at that moment was under investigation by IRE. Warren, an ex-con who had migrated to Arizona with his wife, his mistress, and his pet dog some twenty years before, had become a millionaire by selling worthless desert land as "vacation homesites." In 1967, he received his first widespread attention when Don Bolles uncovered a massive swindle which Warren masterminded through a firm known as Western Growth Capital Corporation. A thousand people throughout the United States had been taken in the scam that sold land through a series of mostly dummy corporations for five percent down. Once the money was turned over, salesmen then split a twenty percent commission with the buyer, who then promptly defaulted. Warren raked his money off the top, bankrupting the company and escaping prosecution. The "godfather" then went into more than three dozen other Arizona companies, peddling worthless land and mortgages. Each time, before the top caved in, he unloaded the firms themselves to legitimate buyers, who then had to stand the losses. Although he had been charged with hundreds of counts of land fraud and assorted other offenses, including bribery, he had never been convicted in Arizona, a fact generally attributed to his talent for cultivating prominent and powerful politicians. One of Warren's boosters was Senator Barry Goldwater, who wrote a glowing letter on the state of Arizona to potential Warren customers. Warren's swindles also had the odor of death. A string of eleven corpses, all former associates of the "godfather," had been laid to rest since 1972. The most recent obsequies had occurred just a year earlier, when Edward Lazar, Warren's chief accountant, had been shot to death the day before he was to testify before a grand jury investigating Warren's operations. Drehsler, who had interviewed Warren in the past, was very mindful of that string of deaths when he returned the call. Warren wanted a meeting, right now, with no one else except Drehsler. Drehsler wasn't to tell anyone. He was to drive out to Warren's spacious home on exclusive Camelback Mountain. Alone, stressed Warren, who refused to say what he wanted to discuss. Stalling, Drehsler said he wasn't sure when he could get away. He said he would see if he could get out of a couple of appointments and call Warren right back. He told Greene of the request from Warren. "Tell him no dice," said Greene. "The son of a bitch just wants to pump you to see what we've got on him." ,,, I don't think so," said Drehsler. "That's not his style. He's got somethin g. Or at least he wants me to think he does." Greene agreed to the meeting. "But you don't go alone. You're covered all the way. You meet him in a public place where we can observe the whole thing." Drehsler phoned Warren back. The meeting was arranged for the Compass Room, a circular bar in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, just across the street from the Adams. Warren would be there at four o'clock. John Rawlinson, the Arizona Daily Star reporter from Tucson, and Myrta Pulliam, from the Indianapolis Star, were assigned as backup crew. They would pose as a couple on a date and sit as close to Drehsler and Warren as possible. Harry Jones from the Kansas City Star would be on standby at the office with a waiting car, in case Warren and Drehsler were to leave the Hyatt for any reason. Rawlinson, Pulliam, and Jones had been working upwards of fourteen hours a day on Warren since their arrival at the beginning of October. They knew him probably better than Warren knew himself and were anxious to get their first look at him. Besides spending hundreds of hours tracing Warren's background and untangling the maze of shell corporations he used to cover his land fraud schemes, they also had an informant, a highly talkative one. The Warren snitch was Richard Frost, a former partner of Warren's who had become Warren's chief detractor in the fall of 1976. Frost was one of the dozens of businessmen duped into a partnership with Warren. A paunchy, white-haired man of fifty-five, Frost was a native of Michigan and a highly successful businessman, comfortable in the upper reaches of Detroit's automotive money and Democratic politicians. He was appointed director of the Port of Detroit in the mid1950s. But in 1957, his wife in ill health, Frost gave up the job, moving first to Kansas City, Kansas, where he opened a successful consulting firm, then in 1963, after his wife's death, to Phoenix, where he hooked up with the gigantic Del Webb Corporation. Phoenix was a boom town at the time. And the boom was in land. Frost soon left Webb and jumped into real estate. Not long afterwards he started the immediately successful Arizona Land Corporation. His sales director was Ned Warren, Sr. Frost stated that he had no idea of Warren's background until it was too late. That was in 1968, when Frost uncovered documents showing that Warren had been making widespread payoffs to state real estate officials and had secretly formed two corporations of his own to sell nonexistent ALCO lots. Frost quickly bailed out of the company, realizing that Warren had, in effect, taken control. He was a bitter man. So, gathering up the documents linking Warren to fraud, Frost turned them over to the Maricopa County Attorney's office. Soon, ALCO was bankrupt, bled dry by thousands of phony sales contracts Warren had sold to unsuspecting investors. Frost was a ruined man. The money he had successfully parlayed from his days in Detroit was lost in the dust of ALCO. What little assets he had were tied up in dozens of civil suits arising from the bankruptcy. In September 1975, Frost was a main witness against Warren in an extortion trial in Seattle, Washington. Warren was convicted on two counts, but after posting bond and filing an appeal, left the state without serving a day behind bars. In Arizona, Warren had been indicted on three occasions. Each time the so-called "godfather" of land fraud had seen the legal proceedings dropped, either through inaction, government incompetence, or procedural errors. The Seattle conviction wasn't enough for Frost. He was obsessed with exposing Warren's swindles. Frost himself had some legal difficulties stemming from a job he held briefly with a firm known as New Life Trust Co. In October 1975, a month after the Warren case in Seattle, Frost was among those members of the company indicted by the federal government in connection with land fraud, though he maintained that he had only worked there for a few weeks after the ALCO debacle and had quit when he suspected that New Life was also cheating its customers. Frost had spent dozens of hours with IRE reporters Pulliam, Rawlinson, Winters, and anyone else on the team who would listen, briefing them on everything he had learned about Warren and land swindles. He had brought in nearly 2,000 pages of depositions, court transcripts, and personal notes that he had collected in his campaign against Warren. One of his main charges was that the incriminating documents he had turned over to former county attorney Moise Berger during the ALCO bankruptcy in 1968 had disappeared from the prosecutor's office. The incident was one of the many things that forced Berger to resign in August, 1976. It came to light during a 1974 land fraud trial against Warren and two of his associates, James Cornwall and Tony Serra. Charges against Warren were dismissed by Berger's office, though Cornwall and Serra were convicted. Berger, asked about the ALCO evidence after dropping charges against Warren, said he knew nothing about the documents. He conceded, however, that they had somehow been misplaced by someone on his staff. Again, Frost was enraged. So he went to the Arizona State Prison in Florence on August 10, 1976, with his attorney and a court stenographer and questioned Serra. Frost provided the IRE reporters with a copy of Serra's deposition in which Serra said he was in fear of his life. But not included in the deposition, because the court stenographer had not yet set up his equipment, was a statement Frost said Serra gave him as soon as they began talking. "He said that he himself had removed the ALCO records from Berger's office," Frost told the reporters. "He told me that he had some help. He said that Berger and Warren were in on it with him." Frost said Serra had voiced fear that he was going to be murdered in prison because of what he knew about Warren. "He's terrified, petrified for his life," Frost told Wendland several days before Drehsler was called by Warren. "Look, I know Warren. He's smooth. He's sharp. And he can be quite charming. But he's a dangerous man. Look at the deaths involving those who were in a position to testify against him." Wendland, while not working the Warren investigation, had, like the other reporters, frequently been cornered by Frost. And like his coworkers, he was not prepared to accept Frost's statement that Serra knew where the missing documents were. If it had been on the deposition, he explained, it at least would be quasi- admissible in court. But as it stood then, all the team had were Frost's allegations. "Look, Dick, it's not that we don't believe you "I said Wendland. "But right now, it's just your word. And your word isn't good enough. You're awaiting trial on land fraud charges yourself." Frost was frustrated. "I understand all that. But you don't understand. Serra's going to be killed. They're going to get to him in prison. They'll kill him. I know it." Unfortunately, Frost was right. The meeting with Ned Warren, Sr., on Friday, October 29, was carefully planned. Alex Drehsler and Myrta Pulliam left the Adams about the same time. Drehsler went into the Hyatt first, taking a seat in the lobby outside the Compass Room. Pulliam waited outside for ten minutes, allowing Warren and Alex to meet and select a table. But when she entered, Drehsler was still alone in the lobby. She had hoped to pick a table near Warren and Drehsler in order to observe the discussion. There wasn't much that could be done now, so she walked past Drehsler into the Compass Room. She was alone for about five minutes. Then Warren, a short, tanned man in casual clothes, walked in with Drehsler. He looked around the sparsely occupied lounge, his eyes sweeping past Pulliam without a second glance. With Drehsler in tow, he selected a table on the opposite side of the circular room, out of Pulliam's sight. According to the carefully orchestrated surveillance outlined by Greene, Rawlinson was supposed to join Pulliam in the lounge, bearing a box of candy as if he were late for a date. He was not to enter, however, until Warren and Drehsler sat down. But like Pulliam he encountered Drehsler still waiting in the lobby. So, he went back outside and walked around the block, stalling for time. Then he almost ran into Warren, who was hurrying through the lobby. Quickly, Rawlinson turned his back without being noticed. He gave Warren three minutes to meet Drehsler. Then he went to buy his box of candy. But the hotel giftshop didn't carry boxes. He settled for a candy bar and a small roll of breath mints. Pulliam cracked up as the straight-faced Rawlinson entered the Compass Room and presented her with the candy. Discreetly, they changed tables so they could keep their eye on Warren and Drehsler, ordered drinks, and began chatting like two infatuated lovers. Warren, meanwhile, said nothing until the waitress took their drink order. When she left, he cleared his throat. "You got a body bug on you?" he asked Drehsler. "Of course not," replied Drehsler. "You want to go in the bathroom and check?" Warren shook his head. "Look, what I got to say will only take a couple of minutes. Then, we'll take a short trip. Okay?" Drehsler said nothing. "Okay, look. Here's the deal. I'm here speaking on behalf of John Adamson. And his wife, Mary. Now I don't want you to get any ideas. I'm not really that close to Adamson, you understand? He's not my type. Let's just say I've known him casually for a few years. He and his wife have been out to my house a couple of times. But my wife wouldn't have anything to do with him. See this one time, Mary, Adamson's wife, said the word 'fuck' in front of my wife, Barbara. Now Barbara is a very straight lady, you understand. Later she says to me, 'Ned, I don't want those people here anymore. I don't like that kind of talk. They sound like they are hoodlums.' Well, since then, I haven't really seen them much." Warren was starting to ramble. "Get to the point, Ned." "Yeah, okay. I just wanted you to understand the picture. Here's the deal. Adamson wants to talk. He's ready to give the cops the names of everyone involved in the Don Bolles bombing." "How do you know this?" "From Mary, his wife. She tells me that these other people comprise a ring." "Wait a minute, Ned. Where are you getting all this from. Adamson or his wife?" "From his wife. She told me that John decided to wait ninety days after his arrest, to see what would happen, if his friends would take care of him. But they haven't. She told me that everyone has deserted him." "If Adamson wants to talk, how come he doesn't just talk? How come you're mixed up in this?" "'Cause John trusts me. He told his wife to come to me, to let me handle the negotiations. He's afraid to go directly to the cops. He wants to protect himself with some intermediaries." "Okay," Drehsler asked, "what does Adamson get out of the deal?" "Four things," said Warren. "He'll talk if he gets out of jail in ten years. More time than that and he says nothing. He wants a television set in jail. He wants the state to take care of his wife financially. And he wants conjugal visits from Mary once a week. After all, a man gets used to a regular piece of ass. You can't fault him for that." "So much for Adamson. What does Ned Warren, Sr., get out of all this?" "Nothing, nothing at all. I've been asked to do this and I agreed, that's all. I'm just doing a favor for the wife, really. The only thing I want is for the state to stop fucking with me. I mean if anyone has evidence of something really criminal I've done, okay, I understand they got to file a case against me. Otherwise, they ought to stop fucking with me on chicken-shit cases like they've been doing." "Ned, why the hell are you telling me all this? What am I supposed to do?" "You're on that task force of reporters, aren't you?" "Yeah, but we're not looking into the Bolles case at all. We're looking into other things." "That doesn't make any difference," said Warren. "I want you to act as a go-between. I want you to go to Bruce Babbitt and tell him I can get the names and circumstances of the persons involved in the Bolles killing." "Why don't you go yourself, Ned? Or send Mary. Why me?" "Look, I'm not stupid. If I go, who else knows that I was involved? No one. They can take the information and put the screws to me if they want. With you involved, they'll have to be more careful. Babbitt wants to be governor some day. He won't fuck around with this if he knows the press is involved." "What's to stop Babbitt from going right to Mary?" "'Cause Mary won't talk to anyone unless I say it's okay. And Babbitt knows he can't make me talk. It's either this way, or no way." "How sure are you that Adamson wants to talk?" "I'm positive. Now I'll tell you what we're going to do. I'm going to go make a phone call. Then we're going to go see Mary Adamson. I want you to meet her. She'll assure you that I'm speaking for her and her husband." Warren excused himself and left the table. Drehsler waited a minute and was just about to run over to Rawlinson and Pulliam and tell them to get ready to follow him when Warren walked back into the room. "The phone's busy," he said. He sat back down and sipped on his drink. "This has been one hell of a week." "What do you mean?" Warren sighed. Good lord, thought Drehsler, it looked like he was about to cry. Tears were welling up in Warren's eyes. "My dog," Warren said. "He died the other day." "I beg your pardon?" "My dog, my Doberman. He died. He was twelve years old. You have no idea how attached my wife and I were to him. Our own kids are grown. I guess the dog was like another kid to us." Drehsler was dumbstruck. This was Ned Warren, Sr., the state's leading swindler, a man whose associates over the past few years had died in a bizarre series of coincidences. "It's been hell," he continued. "I just paid two hundred and fifty dollars for the Doberman's burial plot at this little pet cemetery. That includes the tombstone. I also bought another plot for our other dog. He's just a mongrel, really, but he's getting up in years, too. It's so sad to lose a pet. I guess we can buy another Doberman puppy. But it just won't be the same." Drehsler was getting uncomfortable. "Say, what about that phone call?" "Oh. Yeah. I'm sorry to burden you with this. I'll be right back. Drehsler waited again. He got up and looked around the comer. Warren was on the telephone, deep in conversation. Quickly, he rushed over to Rawlinson and Pulliam, who were into a game of backgammon, played on a portable board Myrta had stuffed in her purse before leaving the Adams. "Get a car", Drehsler hissed. "Do what?" asked Myrta. "Get a car. We're leaving. Be out front." "Why?" "We're meeting someone. Hurry up." Pulliam got up and dashed out of the room, leaving Rawlinson to cover for her. "Who are you meeting?" Rawlinson asked Drehsler. "Mary Adamson," replied Alex, darting back to his table before Warren could return. At the Adams, Pulliam ran into Harry Jones, who was waiting in the lobby with the parking ticket for an IRE car. Rawlinson had phoned the office right after Myrta left, hoping to save time. "Who the hell are they meeting?" Myrta asked Jones as they entered the elevator for the garage. "Rawlinson said some guy named Harry Anderson. "Who the fuck is Harry Anderson?" Jones didn't know. That was the message. They hurriedly located one of the rental cars on the third floor of the Adams parking garage, wheeled it out to the street, and made their way to the front of the Hyatt. Pulliam spotted Rawlinson standing between a couple of bushes near the entrance. She parked on the street, leaving the engine running and the lights out. Rawlinson ran across the street and jumped in the car, just moments before Warren and Drehsler came out of the hotel and got into Warren's Oldsmobile. With the reporters following, Warren drove to North Central Avenue, turned right, and headed to a run-down bar called Fonzie's, located about two miles north of the Adams. He pulled his car up in front as Pulliam turned into a parking lot across the street. "You wait out in front," Warren told Drehsler. "She's in here, drinking. But I don't want you to go inside. If someone were to recognize me with you, it could leak out what I'm doing. If that happened, I'd need protection from dusk to dawn." A couple of minutes passed. Then Warren, accompanied by a tall woman with long black hair and tight white pants came outside. "Are you Mary Adamson?" he asked her after taking her over to Drehsler. "Yes, I am," she replied in a soft voice. "Okay, honey. Now I'm not going to introduce you at this time. I just want this man to be sure who you are and that I'm acting on your behalf. Do you have a driver's license you can show him?" The woman looked confused for a moment. She shrugged her shoulders, fished around in her purse, and handed Drehsler her license. She was Mary Adamson. Warren thanked her and said that they'd be back in touch. She went back to her drinking and Warren returned Drehsler to the Adams. Drehsler said he wasn't sure what, if anything, IRE would do with Warren's information request, but that it would be forwarded to Babbitt. "That's all I can do," he said. "If we are going to pursue this anymore, I'll be back in touch." That was good enough for Warren. The two shook hands as Drehsler said goodbye. "Say, Alex, one thing," Warren said. Drehsler turned around. "Back at the Hyatt, you said you guys on that reporting team weren't looking into the Bolles killing. What are you doing then?" Drehsler couldn't resist the opportunity. "Lots of things, Ned. We're looking into just about everything else. Especially land fraud. In fact, I'm sure we'll be talking to you soon about that." Warren laughed. "Yeah, I'm sure you will." With that, he left. It was the last weekend in October. Drehsler and Rawlinson, as was their weekend habit, drove home to Tucson to visit their families. Wendland flew back to Detroit for a couple of days. Sunday was Halloween, which, next to Christmas, was his kids' favorite holiday. He was homesick. His wife, Jennifer, accepted the long absence but still was angry. News stories were always complicating their family life. The birth of their second child, in 1972, had to be induced because the city desk had assigned Wendland to an out-of-town political story and he hadn't wanted to be absent when Jennifer delivered. And he had almost missed the birth of their third child, born in October 1975, during the middle of the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance because he was staked out around the clock in a crosstown motel waiting for a break in the case. So after a month in Arizona, he want home to take his three kids trick-or-treating and to tell his wife that the story had no end in sight. Over the weekend Bob Greene drafted a confidential letter to Attorney General Bruce Babbitt. He specified Warren's deal and reiterated IRE's intent not to involve itself in the Bolles case. The reporters decided to avoid any middleman role between Adamson and Warren and the authorities. For one thing, Warren was a major object of IRE investigations. Were they to work with Warren on this, they would be hard pressed to suddenly turn on him when it was time to go into his own land fraud activities. Another reason was simply a matter of propriety. Reporters have to walk a fine line between observation and participation. It was one thing to meet with Warren and discuss Adamson and the Bolles murder. It was another to cooperate with him, on Adamson's behalf, in negotiating a deal. Babbitt, meanwhile, was elated by the news that Adamson wanted to talk. He understood the reporters' feelings about not getting involved. And he was not concerned that Adamson would only talk through his wife. That was nothing more than jailhouse bravado. If Adamson wanted to deal, he must be feeling alone and unprotected. Babbitt figured that it was just a matter of time until Adamson broke. And when that happened, so would the entire Bolles case. pps.93-107 --[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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