'They Finally Got Me'

As gangland executions go, it was ordinary enough. A dynamite bomb attached by magnets to the bottom of a car. The driver brutally maimed after the electronic triggering mechanism was set off by remote control. The hit man far from the scene. But the locale was not Chicago's West Side and the victim was not a wayward mobster. He was Investigative Reporter Donald F. Bolles, 47, and his death in Phoenix last week of injuries from the bomb underscored the viciousness and power of organized crime in Arizona in a way nothing he wrote ever could have.

For eleven days and through half a dozen operations, during which both legs and his right arm were amputated, Bolles had fought for his life. His last whispered words -"Mafia ... Emprise ...

They finally got me... John Adamson, find him" -had resulted in the arrest of Adamson. More significantly, they had ensured the first major statewide investigation of the corruption that has enriched home-grown and imported conmen, including Mafiosi, while bilking land buyers of more than $500 million since the mid-1960s.

Gunned Down. Ever since Phoenix's emergence from a parched cow town in the early 1940s to a steamy Southwestern metropolis in the '50s and '60s, criminal elements have flocked to the desert country and flourished. Land fraud has proved the most profitable enterprise, but racketeers have also gained control of restaurants and other fronts for illegal activities.

Besides Bolles, twelve persons associated with some of the land fraud scandals have died over the past six years, all before they could testify. Five died in two separate plane crashes, one drove off a cliff, another succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning in his automobile. Three suffered fatal heart attacks and another died of cancer. One was gunned down 24 hours before he was to testify in a grand jury investigation.

Even for an area steeped in the lore of such outlaws as Butch Cassidy, Black Bart and Billy the Kid, this was rough stuff. Bolles, an Easterner hired by the Arizona Republic, sensed that organized crime flourished in collusion with public officials. In 1965 he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for detailing bribery within the Arizona State Tax and Corporation Commissions. Two years later, he exposed a gigantic land fraud scheme involving Western Growth Capital Corp. Later stories resulted in the prosecution of Ned Warren Sr., a major figure in that corporation and an ex-con. In 1975, Warren escaped prosecution in a land fraud case after the chief prosecution witness was slain.

Undaunted, Bolles also attacked Emprise Corp., a notorious sports enterprise controlled by Buffalo, N.Y.. interests that had gained control of Arizona horse and dog racing tracks. He became so expert on the intricacies of Emprise operations in Arizona that in 1972 he became a witness before the Select Committee on Crime of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The presence of such mobsters as Joe Bonnano Sr. and Peter Licavoli in Tucson reinforced Bolles' impression of how hospitable Arizona had become to organized crime. His exposes made big journalistic splashes, but resulted in few indictments and even fewer attempts to curb organized crime. At length Bolles wearied of what he came to regard as windmill tilting and asked to be taken off the crime beat. But he could not stay away. When Adamson, a disreputable greyhound breeder and former tow truck operator, telephoned him three weeks ago with information purporting to link top Arizona Republicans to land fraud schemes, Bolles rushed off to meet him at a Phoenix hotel. While he waited, someone apparently placed the explosive charge in his car, parked in the hotel lot. Adamson failed to appear, and Bolles soon after stepped into his white 1976 four-door Datsun -and the trap that had been laid for him.

Whoever plotted it. the senseless killing seemed certain to boomerang. Arizona Attorney General Bruce Babbitt quickly took charge of the investigation, brushing aside the bumbling Maricopa County prosecutor, Moise Berger. Both houses of the state legislature swiftly approved legislation to break up the Arizona dog racing monopoly, controlled in part by Emprise. A special prosecution fund providing $100,000 to investigate Bolles' murder is assured of speedy approval by the legislature. The Arizona Republic vowed to intensify its crusade against "the slimy hand of the gangster and the pitiless atrocities of the terrorist."

Investigators were inclined to doubt that the Mafia had ordered Bolles' assassination. Said a Department of Justice expert on organized crime: "The gangsters are smart enough to know that getting rid of a reporter only causes more trouble than the reporter could stir up in the first place." Arizona authorities finger home-grown mobsters as more likely to commit such an act. They suggest that, despite his apparent loss of interest, Bolles may have been close to linking some big names to illegal schemes. Phoenix Police Lieutenant Jack Bentley told TIME Correspondent William F. Marmon Jr.: "Bolles had reams of stuff in his files that was very damaging but never printed. We have volumes of information leading to influential people, but people insulated to the nth degree. It is really hard to tell who the enemy is at this point."

Broad Front. According to newsmen Bolles talked to after receiving Adamson's call, Adamson told Bolles that he could link Senator Barry Goldwater and Representative Sam Steiger to land fraud schemes. But there is no credible evidence involving either. Authorities believe that the names were used only as bait to entice Bolles. Of considerable interest to investigators is the role of Neal Roberts, a Phoenix attorney and an associate of both Adamson and Ned Warren, the so-called "Godfather" of Arizona land fraud schemes. Roberts quickly stepped forth with an alibi for Adamson, claiming that the two were together in Roberts' office moments before the explosion that maimed Bolles. Roberts' attorney, John Flynn, concedes that "the circumstances could cause one to wonder what the hell is going on."

At week's end Arizona officialdom at last seemed determined to move on a broad front. More than 900 people, including the Governor, the attorney general, 80 legislators and top business and community leaders signaled their outrage by crowding into the Church of the Beatitudes of the United Church of Christ for Bolles' funeral services. Observed one high-ranking Arizona official: "You cannot have the sort of systematic fraud and swindling that we have without the complicity of some top business and political figures."

That is the message Don Bolles had been trying to convey for several years.

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