John Adamson wasn’t Carl Verive’s only non-Mafia sidekick. Another such local fellow was Jim Burdick, reportedly a business partner of Verive in both a salvage yard on West Buckeye in Phoenix and an area apartment maintenance service. Burdick also was said to have developed considerable skills in electronics while employed for a time by General … Continue reading →

Starting to attract too much attention from Chicago law enforcement officials, Mafia enforcer and killer Carl Verive opted to move west by 1970 — if not a bit sooner — to Phoenix, a growing town rapidly becoming a desert colony of the Windy City mob. But also noticed here by Phoenix PD intelligence officers, he … Continue reading →

In a move that professional magicians might admire, ranking officials of the Arizona AG’s office actually managed to make a crucial Don Bolles case witness completely “disappear.” The man who effectively vanished at that wave of the AG’s wand was Danny O’Keefe. I first heard of O’Keefe as such a potential witness from DENVER POST … Continue reading →

John Adamson’s numerous acquaintances in the Valley of the Sun with penchants for criminal activities included William Rocco “Rocky” D’Ambrosio and Frank Mossuto. They were Chicago mob guys who back in the 1970s had acquired a lounge in Scottsdale called La Versailles. They were the ones who also procured the dynamite used in the car-bomb … Continue reading →

Tucson-based Joe Bonanno clearly was the Mafia boss in Arizona back in June 1976 when Phoenix reporter Don Bolles was the victim of a fatal car-bombing. Since Bonanno in that capacity oversaw the mob’s silent partnerships in all six Emprise/Funk greyhound racetracks in the state at that time, he wouldn’t have been pleased with Bolles’ … Continue reading →

Back in the early months of 2012, I arranged for formal affidavits on the subject of the strange death in January 1977 of ARIZONA REPUBLIC editor Tom Sanford to be completed by (1) his widow Janet Sanford, recently deceased, (2) his daughter Susan Sanford, (3) former journalist and his close friend Bill Meek, (4) Kathy … Continue reading →

Some years ago I wrote a piece which ended up on my website concerning the strange January 1977 death of Tom Sanford. He had been reporter Don Bolles’ editor and close confidante at the ARIZONA REPUBLIC in the years leading up to the fatal car-bombing of Bolles in June 1976. In that earlier piece I … Continue reading →

In late December 2018 and again in early January 2019 I sent an email query to former Arizona Attorney General Bruce Babbitt (click below to read that email in its entirety). Since there still has been no word back from him, it now seems safe to assume that Babbitt does not intend to respond. Over … Continue reading →

In the course of digging through old records stashed in large filing cabinets, I recently discovered a forgotten bunch of black and white photos assembled by the Investigative Reporters & Editors Arizona Project of 1976-77 following the fatal car-bombing of Phoenix journalist Don Bolles. Some of them have relevance to my website commentary on “Don … Continue reading →

In a recent phone conversation with California filmmaker John Church, he asked me an interesting question, one touching on the 1976 Don Bolles homicide. In answering it, I realized that I was in possession of both some information and a related document which ought to be memorialized on my website. I should note as a … Continue reading →