Murder in the Fourth Estate

In just a few weeks, it will be a half-century since a car bomb tore Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles apart outside the Clarendon Hotel, resulting in the now-legendary Phoenix journalist’s death 11 days later.

It’s a story that not many outside of the journalism world know.

But a new book — released last week and written by one of our Capitol press corps colleagues — sets out to finally compile the messy facts of the still-mysterious murder into one neat bundle. But as author and Axios reporter Jeremy Duda will tell you, the conclusions of his hard-boiled whodunnit are far from tidy. (You can order your copy here.)

Duda’s second book, “Murder in the Fourth Estate,” reflects the fact that to this day, a thick fog of mystery surrounds the bombing and who ordered it.

After his assassination, Bolles became a household name in Arizona and among reporters across the United States. Journalists from the newly-formed Investigative Reports and Editors organization parachuted into Phoenix to finish whatever work it was assumed cost Bolles his life, though it was never clear what exactly that was.

Seven years of trials and retrials resulted in the convictions of three men: John Adamson, Jimmy “The Plumber” Robison and Max Dunlap. But suspicions that someone more powerful might have been involved — like rancher and liquor wholesaling king Kemper Marley or shady dog racing scion Bradley Funk — remained suspicions.

Duda says it wasn’t necessarily his goal to change that perception.

After reading the book, we can tell you that it doesn’t uncover an earth-shattering revelation that connects any of the suspected powerful interests to the murder.

Duda ends the book with his own opinion — separate from the work of the fact-based narrative — in which he states that it doesn’t seem likely Marley was involved.

Nor was there enough evidence to point to Funk, whose business dealings with the mafia-adjacent Emprise Corporation Bolles tried to expose. Funk reportedly held a personal vendetta because Bolles assisted Funk’s ex-wife with investigative work during Funk’s divorce proceedings; the Phoenix New Times even ran a story about him in 1976 titled, “He was the perfect suspect… and the cops ignored him.”

What the book does provide is a rigorously researched, fact-based dossier of what is known — and a snapshot of Phoenix in the 1970s, when it was still transforming from a small farming community to the sprawling, air-conditioned megalopolis it is today. The city that Bolles documented was a Wild West outpost colliding with the opportunism of the postwar economic boom, rife with big business interests, mafiosos, land fraud and rumors of political corruption. At the heart of the book are a shady cast of characters, from lawyers and business elite to hard-drinking, low-life crooks.

And yep, it’s the first time anyone has pulled all these sources together — making it an exciting read for anyone (especially our fellow journalists) who have heard Bolles’ name lionized but aren’t familiar with the details of the drawn-out investigation into his murder.

And the story of Bolles is as relevant as ever today. In the past few years, Arizona lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have introduced a bill — which our very own Hank conceived of in 2023 — to honor Bolles with a statue at the Capitol, which would be paid for by private funds.

It’s the subject of the lone TikTok (which is absolutely worth a watch) we’ve ever made.

But year after year, the project has been stonewalled by Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman, the chair of the Senate Government Committee (and also a fake elector and professional troll farmer).

This year’s bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Selina Bliss, passed the House and is now sitting at Hoffman’s desk, where HB2079 is likely to die yet again. That’s because Hoffman, after years of outright ignoring the Bolles monument, has decided to use it as a sort of bargaining chip to rename the park plaza across from the Capitol after his late friend, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. He introduced a bill, SB1686, tying honoring Kirk to the Bolles monument, which Bolles’ son said was “sad” for him to hear.

Hoffman’s bill passed the Senate and the House Government Committee. It’s currently sitting with Speaker of the House Steve Montenegro awaiting a final vote in the House.

If anything else, that makes it as good a time as any to get yourself a copy of Duda’s book, revisit the tale of Bolles and understand why we should honor a man whose unrelenting pursuit of the truth — even after he was taken off the investigative beat at the Republic — put him in the way of danger.

Bolles knew that and it never swayed him.

As Duda writes: