Forty-one years after the murder of Republic reporter Don Bolles, we take a look back at how tips from citizens helped investigators crack the case and make an arrest.
On the front page of The Arizona Republic for June 3, 1976, alongside the news that Don Bolles, a reporter for the newspaper, had been critically injured the day before when a bomb blew up his car, a short notice appeared: The Republic and its sister afternoon publication, The Phoenix Gazette, were offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.
In the days that followed, contributions would push that total higher. It was $32,145 on June 16, rose to $33,591 by June 25,and then $35,700 by November 1977.
The first arrest in the case would come within 11 days of the bombing, the same day Bolles died. The first convictions would come the next year.
Then it came time to divide the reward money. The newspapers had to figure out who deserved credit for cracking the case, and how much their information was worth.
The newspaper company, Phoenix Newspapers Inc., created a committee of three men, including a former governor, who would sift through those claiming credit.
A look back at whom they decided to reward shows the complicated nature of the investigation into the bombing, which marks the last time a U.S. journalist was killed inside the country for their reporting.
Police were able to take small pieces of a puzzle provided by a disparate set of witnesses and put together a case for murder.
The rewards were announced in 1982. It was a strange moment in the long legal road in the case that would extend into the late 1990s.
By 1982, one man, John Adamson, had been convicted and sentenced to death. Two other men, Max Dunlap and James Robison, had also been convicted and sentenced to death, based largely on testimony from Adamson. But those convictions had been overturned.
In announcing that The Republic and Gazette would give out the rewards, Bill Shover, the company’s community relations man, said it seemed apparent the justice system wasn’t through with the murder. But, he said, police and prosecutors didn’t expect any more major developments.
Shover’s prediction would prove correct. The three men who had been implicated in the weeks and months after the case would remain the same prime suspects. And the evidence that implicated them in those days would still be the key pieces presented at their trials.
The reward money went out to those who helped lead police to Adamson. He was the man accused of building the bomb. He was arrested June 13, 1976, the day Bolles died in a hospital. The arrest was made largely because of tips provided by the public.
The three men who decided how to divvy up the money were former Gov. Howard Pyle, Fred Stofft, a retired Army major general and former commander of the Arizona National Guard and Edward Boyle, who had headed the Phoenix office of the FBI. The 10 awards they gave totaled $33,115,
slightly less than the $35,700 the fund had reportedly reached. Shover, reached by phone this week, said any leftover funds would have been donated to a charity picked by the Bolles family.
Shover said the committee met in the room used by the Editorial Board of The Republic. He was not privy to how they came up with the amounts they decided to award.
The biggest chunk of the reward money, $8,055, or nearly a quarter of it, went to Robert Lettiere. He was a close friend of Adamson at the time.
After the bombing, he told police that he and Adamson went to The Republic employee parking lot. Lettiere said he heard Adamson ask a security guard where a reporter named Don parked his car.
At the time, however, Bolles worked at the state Capitol, so his car typically would not have been in the downtown Phoenix lot.
On that trip to the lot, Lettiere told police, Adamson told him he was going to be paid $10,000 to blow up a car.
The night after the bombing, Lettiere hosted Adamson at his home. Lettiere would tell police that Adamson bragged about that bombing.
Lettiere said Adamson told him, “You didn’t believe I could do something like that, did you?” Lettiere also would testify that Adamson expressed surprise that Bolles survived the bombing, saying that if he were ever to blow up “another foreign car, I’m going to make damn sure it’s not a Datsun.”
Lettiere had reportedly owned racing greyhounds with Adamson, but he told a reporter soon after the bombing that if turned out Adamson was involved, “our partnership is going to dissolve quickly.”
The next largest chunk of money, $4,475, went to Mickey Clifton, an attorney who counted Adamson as a sometimes client and drinking buddy at the Central Avenue bar Ivanhoe.
Clifton was also friends with Bolles and a police detective, the three men having met at the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind, where their hearing-impaired children attended classes.
Clifton told the Phoenix police detective what Adamson had told him the day after the bombing: Bolles was only the first target.
There were two more hits that Max Dunlap wanted done: Gov. Bruce Babbit and an eccentric ad man known as King Alfonz.
It was the first time police detectives would hear Dunlap’s name associated with the crime.
Also netting $4,475 was attorney Marvin Johnson. He represented a onetime girlfriend of Adamson’s.
That girlfriend told of a trip to a hobby shop in San Diego where he purchased the remote-control device used to detonate the bomb. Johnson was able to track down the exact hobby shop where Adamson bought it.
That work was praised by one of the lead detectives on the case. “He did one helluva job for us and this investigation,” Detective Jon Sellers told The Republic in 1976.
Both Johnson and Clifton had filed lawsuits against The Republic and Gazette seeking the reward money. No further details about the lawsuits were found in the newspaper’s archive.
A third person was also awarded $4,475. That was Eileen Katz. She was a legal secretary to an attorney named Neil Roberts. She told of a meeting in Roberts’ office involving Adamson, Roberts and Dunlap the morning of the bombing.
Another legal secretary was awarded $3,580. Patti Lloyd told police about another meeting in a law office, this one involving Adamson and Dunlap in the office of attorney Tom Foster days after the bombing. Dunlap would admit to police he gave Adamson an envelope with cash at that meeting.
Two people who heard Bolles’ last words outside the Hotel Clarendon, William Anderson and Leslie Arnold, were each awarded $2,685. Arnold said she heard Bolles say, “Adamson did it.” Anderson said he heard Bolles say, “Emprise,” the name of a corporation that owned horse- and dog-racing tracks in Arizona. Bolles had done several stories about that industry.
Three other parties were each awarded $895.
Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Skaggs (Mrs. Skaggs was not identified by her first name in the reward summaries) had found an address and appointments book at a second-hand store that belonged to Adamson. The books included names of key figures in the investigation.
Mr. and Mrs. Sherman Watters managed an apartment complex where Adamson lived. Juanita Watters had testified that Robison had visited Adamson there that summer. Watters also told reporters that Adamson was two months behind on his rent, but that days later, he paid with a handful of 20-dollar bills.
Adamson also apologized to the Watterses that police had been to the apartment to question him in the Bolles bombing. “If it’s any comfort to you at all,” she said he told her, “I’m a patsy.”
Finally, Frank Willets, another neighbor of Adamson, told police about suspicious items he had seen in Adamson’s apartment. That was enough for police to secure a warrant, confiscating magnets, wire and a copy of the amateur explosives guidebook, “The Anarchist’s Cookbook.”
All the evidence culminated in Adamson’s arrest and a first-degree murder charge.
On the eve of his trial, facing daunting evidence, Adamson agreed to testify about what he knew. He implicated Dunlap and Robison and the two men were arrested in January 1977. Their convictions were tossed out in 1980.
Adamson balked at testifying against the men again and they would be free for almost a decade until Arizona refiled murder charges against them.
Dunlap was found guilty in April 1993. A jury acquitted Robison of the crime in August that same year.
After reneging on his plea deal, Adamson was put on trial and sentenced to death in 1980.
The reward money was paid based on that conviction.
But that verdict was overturned in 1986.
Adamson, facing a retrial, agreed again to testify against Dunlap and Robison in their trials in exchange for a 20-year sentence.
He was released from prison in 1996.
All three men have since died.