I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years writing about true crime.
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a twenty first century lens.
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
This is buried Bones.
Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how are you today?
I'm doing well. I wanted to ask you a question because you know, you and I come from backgrounds where sometimes people don't like us for what we do for a living. Sometimes people don't like journalists, and sometimes people don't like you know, a law enforcement even like the forensic community. Do you think it has made you a more cautious, paranoid anything like that, like too much over the top. Do you feel like you look over your
shoulder every once in a while. Have you ever felt like that in your career.
Oh yeah, no, for sure.
In fact, there's a couple of times in my career in which I received death threats. What the very first time, which is when I first started, I was just a civilian toxicologist and I testified against a guy. I think it was a manufacturing a drugs charge and he was a bad guy.
You know.
He ended up being sentenced and put in Pelican Bay in California, which is, you know, for the hardest of the hardened criminals out there. And then I get my boss coming up to me handing me a form saying you need to get DMV confidentiality because she had just been notified that the guy had threatened to kill the chemists that had testified against him. And I was like, what what am I getting myself into here?
Right?
And then I had an online sleuth type on Golden State Killer kind of want to do me harm?
So over the Golden State Killer.
Yeah yeah.
And there's several other individuals out there that probably have some mental health aspects going on that aren't fans of mine, So you know, you do become a little bit more cautious, a little bit more paranoid. Fortunately, especially towards the end of my career, I had access to resources at the federal level that could be deployed if there was a need.
Well that was very cryptic, and I know as men as a scare tactic, but congratulations, I think you did it.
Let's see.
You know, there is a what do you want to call it? There is possibility do sort of a whack of moole aspect.
Okay, there you go. I tell my journalism students all the time. You know, this is a fantastic profession to be in, and you are doing so much good. If you are a responsible journalist, a good person who wants to do the right thing. They're in this business to do the right thing. To inform the public. It is dangerous. Oh you know, we are in the public and what
you've done is dangerous too. When you particularly when you're dealing with other people's lives and their freedom and everything, you are in the public eye and you run some pretty big risks. And so I always say, you'll have to really think about that. You know, this is something that you want to do, because you're going to piss people off generally in this business.
Now, you know, at any time when you're affecting somebody's emotions, their livelihood, and sometimes it's just the receiver's perception of who you are and what you're doing, particularly when it's you know, kind of from afar. It does elevate the risk just because you know, ninety nine percent of the people out there are good people, but the one percent out there is what you have to be concerned about,
and the point one percent are straight out dangerous. So you know, it's just something that in these types of professions you kind of have to accept that these are the risks. It's sort of that risk versus reward aspect. You know, pursue your passion, do what you love, but getting into these fields you most certainly just be aware of, you know, some of the aspects.
Well, the main person we're going to be talking about in our episode today is an investigative journalist. He was a reporter for the Arizona Republic. He was investigating had been investigating for years corruption and organized crime in Arizona, which sounds like a terrifying beat to be on. He was really really good that I will say, just as
a preview, put him in some pretty dangerous situations. So, you know, the murder weapon that we are going to talk about has never been a weapon we've talked about before.
Oh interesting, I'm curious.
Yeah, okay, Well let's go ahead and set the scene. Nineteen seventy six. I was born two years earlier. I was the prospery two year old when this story took place. I'm not going to do the math. How old were you in seventy six?
I was eight years old. I was living outside of Washington, d C. I can remember the bi centennial. Yeah, so I distinctly remember nineteen seventy six.
Well, I'm thrilled to be doing a story in which I was born in this time period. I think that's amazing. It's amazing that we're going to the seventies. Okay, So, as I said, we are in Phoenix, Arizona. It's June second, and the main person at the center of the story is a guy named Don Bowles, and he's forty seven. He's an investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic, great newspaper. He is very hard working. He has lots of sources,
really deep sources for all kinds of corruption, mafia. I mean, he's really digging around for a lot of different bits of information and I think that he is concerned that he could possibly be in danger at some point, but he's a long term reporter and people like that, the investigative journalists, I know, they put their job above their own safety. I mean clearly, if you are a reporter who is digging into mafia ties and government corruption, you
know you are dealing with dangerous people. And he very strong felt that this was his calling and he wanted to help protect the people of Arizona and this was his way to do it.
Yeah, and you know, I've got to think there's got to be for someone like him. In addition to you know, the fear of the people you might be pissing off, is there's an adrenaline rush as well, you know, and
I think that that's just part of that personality. Not only is you know, the fact finding and informing the public, but I think people who get into that line of work truly enjoy, you know, sort of the discovery of the information that somebody else is trying to suppress or cover up or whatever it is.
Yeah. Well, what's interesting about Dawn And I don't know if this was his age, if he got tired of this beat or what, but he decided he wanted to switch up concentrations. So very very recently he decided he wanted to move to more day to day state politics. There is in the state politics, and he actually had a desk in the press room at the Arizona State Legislature. I would think good move for Dawn because it keeps
him out of the crosshairs of danger. You would think getting away from the organized crime and mafia aspect of it kind of bad news for us because it's going to open up his circle even wider, because he's now covering all sorts of contentious subjects and people who you know, are doing really lazy things, and his job is to dig up the dirt.
Yeah, well, obviously something bad happens to don.
Yeah, unfortunately. So on June second, he leaves his desk for a meeting with a source at the Hotel Clarendon in downtown Phoenix. You know, he is a reliable guy. He's married to a woman named Rosalie. It's the second marriage for both of them. Between the two of them, they have seven children, four from his previous marriage, two from hers, and then they have one together. He's a family man, seems to be a great guy. So eleven fifteen am on this June second, he goes to the hotel.
He waits in the lobby for a little bit and then a receptionist calls him to the front desk. He talks on the phone to someone there for about two minutes. She said I have no idea who he was talking to, but that she could tell from his end of the conversation that this meeting with the source was being postponed. He told the other person on the line to just come down to the State House. You know, he has that desk at the State House, and that was it.
So it sounds like it was a meeting involving his politics beat, not his former mafia you know, corruption beat. So now this timeline is important. He's in the hotel for a total of fifteen minutes, so he's parked his car, He goes to the hotel, he comes back out, he gets back to his car, which is parked in the hotel's parking lot. Now we took about witnesses to what's
about to happen. There's a guy named Lan Reid. He's on a ladder and he's working on an HVAC system in a neighborhood building at eleven thirty, so fifteen minutes later from when Dawn had entered the hotel lawn. Here's a massive explosion, and it is powerful enough to shake the entire building he's working on in this HVAC system. He climbs down from you know, whatever floor he's on. He walks outside and he sees the direction the noise came from a massive plume of white smoke. It's coming
from the parking lot of the hotel. He hears a man screaming, and he and other workers start running. Now I can pause, or I can tell you what more I know. I told you we've never talked about this weapon. We haven't had a car explosion before. I don't think, no, we haven't.
I in my career did not have a bombing.
I reviewed a case that had happened in my jurisdiction like a couple of years before I started, which was a bombing a car, a vehicle bombing that resulted in
the death of an individual. And of course I've through my friend pathology studies have seen what happens to the human body as a result of bombings, including during the early days post ninet eleven, attending some of the law enforcement based training provided by the FEDS in terms of the various bombings that had occurred across the world and seeing the devastation that bombs can do to not only property, but to the people that are impacted.
Well, this is very graphic what happens with Don. He unfortunately, I will say, does not die immediately, and there are some heroes in this story. What it sounds like happened is he was just starting to pull his car out from the parking space when part of it, the right part under his seat, seemed to have exploded. I have photos of the interior and exterior of the car. Don is not in it. We don't see any of that.
I can so tell you what state Dawn was found in and what they were trying to do to save him. So do you want to see the photo? What do you want to see? Oh?
Yeah, no, I definitely want to see the photo. This is the crime scene.
Some may if you need me to zoom in on any of this.
Okay, So I'm taking a look at the photo of the driver's side of a light colored four door Sedan vintage nineteen seventies.
I mean, this is.
Looking very much like a dots in import vehicle. I can't say it for sure if it's a dots and from this photo and the driver's door is open, the hood of the vehicle is slightly bent up.
But from this photo I can't really discern much more.
What I think what I am surprised by is I was expecting the vehicle to be much more damaged externally than what I'm seeing.
Let me show you a couple more angles, and then there's an internal one.
So the top phot is showing basically that almost the same view of the car from the driver's side, with the driver's side door open, I can see three plane closed investigators, one which is crouched down at the front of the car by the front bumper with a device that probably is a mirror on a handle, looking at
the undercarriage of the vehicle. There is some debris that's on the ground on the driver side, and the hood itself is showing I would almost call it like an it's been uplifted from probably the blast internally, but it still looks like it's engaged. It's not like it's flipped open. Maybe the front driver's side tire might be flat, but I can't tell from that photo. And then the bottom photo. The car has obviously been transported. The previous two photos
were black and white. Now this photo is color, and it appears that this car has been put I don't know if that would be the investigating agency's impound yard or if this is just a junk yard ank junk yard, but it's showing the kind of the left front of the car. So I can now see the front of the car. I can almost make out that it's a dots and but I'm not entirely sure about that.
Yeah, no, it's a dots and I say it. Here's the big photo, I think now now right underneath him.
Yeah, now this is the critical photo. So now I'm seeing a photo of the inside driver's front seat, shows the steering wheel, the front dash. There is a massive hole that is directly under where the front seat cushion should have been, but that is completely gone in this photograph. The floorboard itself has been blasted through with the edges, showing that the force came from underneath the vehicle to
the inside of the vehicle. You know, there's been This photo is showing that there has been processing of the vehicle. So the kind of the dash components have been removed. I can see where the various electrical sockets have been individually unplugged, so this must have been that item must
have been collected during the processing of the vehicle. Obviously, Don sitting in this seat with this explosion going off, would have suffered immense lower body injuries, and that potentially could account for why he survived for a period of time, as the sea cushion itself would have received the initial blunt of the blast, but that would not have prevented Don from sustaining significant injuries from such a large blast. You know, the percussive forces from an explosion can also
damage the internal organs. And you know, I would not be surprised that not only were Don's legs and you know, lower part of his body be you know, completely mangled, if not somewhat severed from his body, but he may have also suffered from various blast injuries to his upper body and internal organs.
Well, let me tell you about the injuries. Because these workers, including the man who you know initially heard the blast lawn, are trying to save his life. They run over they find him lying face down halfway out of the car with extensive of course injuries. His legs are basically destroyed. As you had predicted. Blond ties his bell around one of Don's legs at the thigh sinching in as tight as he can to make a tourniquet. He yells for someone else to give him another belt. He does the
same thing with Don's other leg. I mean, Don is gravely injured. There's blood spurting from his leg. Why this is important that somebody responds this quickly to Don. Don dies, We know that Lawn becomes a witness because Don is trying to say some things before he dies. So he says a name, John Adamson. The firefighters in the emergency personnel arrive at the scene within four minutes of the explosion, and he's rushed to a nearby hospital. He's still conscious.
He keeps saying, over ago, over again, this name John Adamson. And then emergency personnel hear him say that he's an investigative reporter working on a mafia story. He repeats to them the word mafia, and then he says the word m prize E M p R. He's unconscious after that, and then that's it. The final words we're working with here are John Adamson in Mafia. An imprise sounds cryptic. Some of it is, And this is a man who is very much trying to tell people who might be responsible for his murder.
Yeah, it's a dying declaration.
Yeah, you know, so there's in some ways there's a level of veracity given to this type of statement because this person doesn't have jeopardy or consequences moving forward, so there's no reason to lie. So now, I mean, this is golden for the investigators. There's a name, the fact that it's associated with the mafia, which is, you know, something they probably would have figured out just looking at the victimology of Don. But then this word emprise. I don't know that word.
Some of this is confusing what he says, and you know, and then part of it is Don doesn't know maybe who did this. Yeah, a family friend picks up the youngest kids and brings them to the hospital, but the police say get them out of here, and they're under police protection from then on twenty four hour police protection, which doesn't surprise you, I'm assuming considering this is does this feel like a mob hit? I mean, is this like a signature mob hit mafia?
Well, I think that you know, this is where obviously this is a.
Very unusual type of crime, but it does happen, and it does happen without some sort of organized crime aspect to it. This is where now it gets into, in part, the physical evidence investigation. You know, what is the level of sophistication of this bomb. Obviously nineteen seventy six, most certainly using radio triggers, there could have been a remote detonation of this bomb once the offender saw that Don was in fact in the car, but most likely this
bomb was placed after Don went into the hotel. It was only in the hotel for fifteen minutes. They linked it to the electrical system for when Don started the vehicle. Now there's the electrical signal that is triggering the detonation of this this bomb. What's the chemistry of the bomb? You know, what are the components of the bomb? Is this looking like something that is showing a level sophistication where now you're dealing with a highly sophisticated, knowledgeable bomb
making individual. Does it look like it could be state sponsored? Does it look like it's juvenile? You know, is this merely a pipe bomb that they were able to put an electrical detonation device on and they bought all the components from a hardware store, you know. So that's that's all part of the assessment of who the offender might be, and that's through the crime scene evidence.
Well, let me get to the bomb part. I'm going to skip down because you just asked about the device and I was wondering how professional this setup is because I am clueless. So this is what they said. So the first law enforcement officers on the scene are from the bomb and arson unit, not the homicide investigators, so they are assessing, which is well, I mean, but that's good, right, because there's nobody there to muck up the bomb scene.
No homicide investigators are staying two hundred yards away from this until your bomb guys clear it. There's no way in hell, as an investigator, you're going anywhere near this. You know, some of the tactics of bombers, and we see this, you know over in the terrorist organizations, is they will have a bombing and then all the first responders respond, and then they have a second bombing to
kill all the first responders. So the proper way to handle this type of thing is to get your bomb arson guys to clear this scene, and they're trained to be able to do that without contaminating the homicide evidence side aspect too much.
Well, the way that this all unfolds, you know, is so mysterious. It's to me very cloak and dagger. But let me tell you about this device. Okay, So the bomb and arson guys get there, and this is what they figure out. The bomb under the driver's side of Don's door had been made with six sticks of dynamite, and you're right, it had a remote control. It was attached to the bottom of the car under the driver's
seat with a magnet. Now, they miscalculated Don was six foot two, and so I don't think they realized that he pushed his seat back, so they made an estimation of where he would be sitting. That's why he put his seat back or his seat was back, and they didn't know this, I guess. And they figured out that this is why it hit his legs more than anything else. Had he been more forward, he would have been killed instantly, is what they're saying. So I don't see an assessment
of whether or not this is considered professional. Six sticks of dynamite with a remote control in the seven What do you think about that? Does that signal anything to you?
That's showing a level of sophistication in my estimation. Now, the positioning of the bomb underneath on you know, the offender not taking into account his height or the exact position of a seat. I don't think that that's a factor at all. They're attaching this bomb using a magnet. You think about being underneath the vehicle, You're just kind of going with six sticks of dynamite. I just need to get this under the driver's side and this is
going to kill Dawn. Now, you know, with the forces of the blast, there's so many just weird things that happen under these extreme weird.
Phenomena, you know.
So the idea that if he had just been six inches fourd that this would have just absolutely devastated his upper body, Well, no, you have this intervening object of the seat cushion, you have the floorboard, you possibly have cross members underneath the vehicle, and this is all deflecting and having all sorts of weird aspects to these forces. The offender is just going, I'm placing these six sticks of dynamite underneath the driver's side door, and I am
confident this will kill down. And now the offender, whether it's the bomb maker, slash bomb placer, or it's a triggerer, you know, somebody who's you know, we don't know what kind of conspiracy we're dealing with, but now you have somebody who has a vantage point to be able to know when Don is in that vehicle in order to
do the remote controlled detonation. You know, this is showing this is not most certainly you could you could have some very intelligent, criminally minded teenagers that might be able to pull this type of thing off, but we don't generally see that. You know, they they're the ones that use the little pipe bomb stuff. This is to me telling me, okay, you know there is a level of
expertise and sophistication. I can't say to what point yet, you know, but it's something that's like I am a little bit concerned about who might be behind this.
Well, I want to tell you about Don's most active investigations. We know he's been digging into mafia, corruption, government stuff for years, but remember he's on this political beat. So this is what they figure out happened with Don. The day that this happened Now I will say Don lived for a while, several days, and he was trying his best to give information. He does end up dying, but
he is able to confirm some things. I mean, he really wanted to help figure this out, and I'm sure he didn't have any illusions that he was going to survive this. It must have been a tremendous amount of pain that he was in. So this is what happens. That morning. He had gone to the state Legislature to cover a Senate session on that morning before his appointment with this source at the hotel. Before he left, he jotted down a note on a colleague's typewriter, and it
was a reporter named Bernie Wynn. So Bernie turns this over to the police, and the note says, I've gone to meet that guy with the information on Steiger at the Clarendon House. Then to Sigma Delta Kai back about one thirty bulls. So Steiger is referring to Congressman Sam Steiger. So Sigma Delta Chi refers to a luncheon held by the legal branch of the Society of Professional Journalists, which
is held at the Phoenix Press Club. What Dawn had said was that this source that he was meeting was a sleazy bastard, as he said, from San Diego, who had told him about a tip about a dirty land deal involving this Congressman Steiger, and the first contact had happened about a week before, on May twenty seventh, right before Memorial Day weekend, and that person had also implicated Senator Barry Goldwater, who was the sixty four Republican presidential nominee,
and another politician named Harry Rosenwig. So now it starts to feel a little bit like a political cover up if these are connected. Dawn had said, I'm not I don't know if I'm that interested in this. I was going to turn it over to the paper City desk, but he wasn't sure anything was going to come of it. Ultimately, it sounds like he decided to go ahead and meet this source anyway, even though he's like, I don't know
if this is the right story for me. On his own desk, he had written a note that said John Adamson Lobby at eleven fifteen Clarendon House fourth in Clarendon. And we don't know if he left this for somebody else or if this was a note and he didn't take it with him. But John Adamson never shows up, he never makes contact with him, and then he's in
this car explosion. So that is his day. He's looking into political corruption, a dirty land deal involving a congressman, and you know, he ends up in this terrible, terrible accident slash murder scene.
Okay, so it's interesting thoughts an investigation I was doing out in Stockton related to Golden State killer. I had a dirty developer, this Eckhart Schmidts, who was a child molester who had a connection to Barry Goldwater and the
land based aspects. Not saying that mister Goldwater had any criminal aspects going on, but when you said that Barry Goldwater had some sort of connection with this Steiger and a bad land deal or a dirty land deal, that just was like, you know, bells are going off in my head, you know, and that seems like that would be kind of an interesting topic to dig down into in the future. Now, the question I have it sounds like this John Adamson, or the observation I have is
it sounds like this John Adamson. Is this source at least Dawn thinks John Adamson is a source. So now is Adamson legitimately a source and just coincidentally, you know, backed out of the meeting at the hotel. Or was John Adamson sort of the loure and had been hired to bring Don out to this hotel right now? Don't know, it could be it could be either way. But obviously you have to identify John Adamson and go talk to this guy.
Well, luckily police do. He is in San Diego, he is well known to the police. He's considered a low level street hoodlum, and they find him eventually in Lake Havasu, which is about two hundred miles away from Phoenix. So it doesn't look like John Adamson was actually ever present at the hotel lobby when he was supposed to meet Don. But when they show a picture of John Adamson to Don, you know, Don says, yeah, this is the person I've been talking about. Now, I don't know how he knows
what this guy looks like. He is confirming that this is who he thinks that he's supposed to be meeting. So two days after the bombing, Don is still fighting for his life and the police speak with a lawyer named Neil Roberts. There are a lot of names in this story, now, Paul, because this this is a big conspiracy at this point, yea. You know, now we're talking about deep government stuff and lawyers, sleazy lawyers, no less. So Neil Roberts says that he was with John Adamson
at the time of the bombing, so alibying him. Police are also tracking down John Adamson, like I said before, and he comes back to Phoenix, and it sounds like Neil Roberts actually bought the plane tickets for him to come to Phoenix to talk to the police. So then this helpful, we think. Attorney Neil Roberts not only says listen, you know, John Adamson had nothing to do with this. He was with me. Here he is, I'm bringing him
to you. He's leading police to two more guys. One is a real estate developer named Max Dunlop and the other one is a man named Kemper Marley. So they are linked to the dog racing industry. To me, what Neil Roberts sounds like is an attorney for corrupt people, for reputable people, is what it sounds like to me. So I can continue talking about this more or you can comment, But clearly Don has been getting into all different kinds of investigative roots here that are leading him.
He reports on the dog racing industry also.
Well you know, the dog racing is gambling, and this of course, you know, has probably mafia associations all over it, right, especially during this era. This Neil Roberts, you know, is he is he an attorney for the mob?
You know?
Is there anything along those lines or is he is he just an attorney? I forget what you said. Was he an attorney for Steiger?
He's an attorney who was I don't know if he's directly representing John Adamson, the hoodlum guy who's supposed to be the source, right, but he's definitely facilitating him talking to the police. And then he's pointing out these two other men. And then I can kind of get to where we're going with because imprize comes into play at this point. This is a deep story. I mean, this
is not your typical murder story here. This is a journalist who was digging into some places where people thought he needed to stay out of it.
Well, if this John Adamson is a just your typical street level thug.
You know how and why is.
What sounds like a fairly highly priced attorney, this Neil Roberts representing him. Somebody is paying Neil Roberts to represent John Adamson.
Well, let me keep We'll keep digging and see what we can come up with. So Dawn Bowles has some notes that are discovered, and reporters look at these notes and figure out that people in the racing industry would have been really pissed off about this, the dog racing industry that he was really digging in on another story. So it doesn't sound like he's going completely you know, boring state legislature stuff. He's still staying within corruption. He
used that phrase. Remember the weird one we talked about Imprise, which is the it turns out of a gambling operation, dog racing gambling operation based in New York, but it's nationally known. It's still in business, actually under a different name. One thing that is confounding is that there doesn't seem to be a link between you know, this guy Kemper who I had mentioned, Keimper Marley, who is linked to the dog racing industry and this Imprise. So he's mentioning Imprise.
It looks like this sleazy attorney is pointing to, well, you should really look at these guys who are involved in the dog racing industry. But it doesn't look like Don is reporting on these particular people. So it's almost like this jigsaw puzzle that's been thrown up in the air and there's answers here somewhere, but nobody's been able to put it together just yet.
Well, Don, over the course of his career, probably has made many enemies. However, his dying declaration seems to be focusing in on this aspect of why he thinks he was targeted to be killed, and so I think there has to be a lot of weight put on Imprise. And then what Don was discovering about Imprise? Now, was he focusing in on any particular individual or was he focusing in on aspects of Emprize that could have potentially shut down aspects of its operation that would have financially
hurt people and now they are protecting their livelihood. You know, that could kind of open up the suspect pool a little bit. But right now we have John Adamson, Mafia and Imprise, So at least investigators can kind of, you know, put their resources down that path to see where it leads.
Well, what they're figuring out is they're trying to make that connection between Imprise and the mafia, and they figure out that the company is trying to conceal an ownership of a hotel that would result in like a big restructuring within this company and would reveal that Imprized have ties to the mafia. So all of this is wrapped up in and around this attorney, Neil Roberts, who now seems to be representing John Adamson. So you know, Neil Roberts is not doing this out of the goodness of
his heart. You know, John Adamson is tracked down and might not have ever been tracked down had number one Don not left that note. And number two of course he said that name. So you know this was all Don solving his own murder here. So Neil says the attorney, He says, listen, John Adamson, Yes he was in Phoenix. Yes he was with me. Yes we were five minutes from the hotel where Don was murdered. But we were together the whole time for that fifteen minutes leading up
to it. There's a discrepancy and police are able to prove that. They can't say we were definitely where we said what we were. There's evidence that if these two people were involved with the bombing, that they were able to But then, you know, what I had thought was, well, why don't they could have planted it the day before or days before? It's a remote control right, I mean, this is not something that had to happen that day, is it but held by a magnet? I don't know, well.
Right now, I think it's it's hard to assess why that day that time, And I think I go back to was John Adamson just a lure, you know, in order to be able to get down to this hotel and there must have been confidence that his vehicle would be accessible in order to plant the bomb. If that was the case, you know part of this and I don't know if you have any information on this, but you know, going back to the physical evidence in the case.
Oftentimes with bombings the like this remote control device, depending on what it is, but sometimes you have the components even through this explosion, that survive and the investigators are able to recover like serial numbers and trace them back to where you know, where this device will is purchase from Layton. Prints can survive explosions, and so sometimes you can get the bomber's fingerprints, you know, off of you know,
the various components or fragments, you know. So that's part of what I'm wondering is is do they have any further forensic evidence, you know, that can also point to, you know, who the bomb maker possibly was.
Well, they do not seem to have forensic evidence that that can you help us with the bomb maker.
Okay.
What they do though, is they are lucky that it looks like the main player here is not particularly smart. So this is what ends up happening so far, so there's no reliable alibi. This leezy lawyer cannot be trusted, and John Adamson is on the hot seat because they go ahead and search his apartment, the apartments in San Diego.
They find, i mean, magnets, firecrackers, electric wire tape, and a copy of the Anarchists Cookbook, which I mean, I mean, you know, which includes instructions on how to make bombs. Have you ever looked at that? I've never looked at it before. I've read about it in many stories, but I've never looked at it. Actually, I've read it, Okay, you find it valuable?
Yeah, no, absolutely, you know I had a hard copy, or I should say my Sheriff's office lab library had a hard copy of that. And you believe it or not, the same publisher has a book that's titled, in essence, how to Become.
A Professional Hitman.
So you know, these are people that are putting out, you know, how to commit crimes. And the Anarchist Cookbook has legitimate aspects to it. Now, some of it probably isn't as accurate as others, but I would not be surprised. Like if this John Adamson wanted to learn how to do a bomb, yeah, he could have turned to such a publication.
This will come down to once we start really thinking about John Adamson. This is really going to come down to what we think of Don's last words, what you called the dying declaration that he made. Okay, so let me tell you more. We have this evidence against John Adamson, and as soon as Don dies, which unfortunately happens. Let's see, the explosion happened on the second and he died on the thirteenth, So the amount of pain he must have gone through. So that's eleven days. He dies in the
hospital and they arrest him. They arrest Adamson for murder a few hours later, so there is a preliminary hearing to determine whether he can be tried. That prosecutors call witness. This is an associate of Adamson's named Robert Lettier, and they're connected through this greyhound racing industry. So Robert flips and says that five days before the bombing, he and Adamson were driving around and they went to the Arizona Republic offices to look for Don's car. They didn't find it.
Adamson said something, well, I couldn't do anything here anyway, That's what he says. And then they went to a dots and I mean, god, this guy. They go to a dots and dealership and Adamson looks underneath a Dotson that's similar to the one that Don drove and ultimately the one that he was fatally injured in. So this is pretty good testimony, I'm assuming. I mean, he is saying, let me give you one more line, Paul. On the drive, Adamson alluded to an upcoming job and asked for help
following the target around. He said he'd be getting twenty five thousand dollars, and he promised Robert to cut up ten thousand dollars, but Robert said, no, he does not say I'm going to kill this guy. He's just saying I'm supposed to just kind of follow him around. There's a job coming up. But he's doing all of this stuff. This does not sound like a smart mafia guy to me.
He's a street level thug that's been hired. Yeah, the question is is who hired him? Now?
Is it somebody connected to the mob, is it, you know, somebody else. If Adamson is offering or saying he's getting twenty five thousand dollars, I mean, this is a pretty decent paycheck for somebody like him, you know. So you have somebody that's hiring him, that has money and has an interest in shutting Don down, you know. So that's that's the thrust of the investigation. Needs to figure out
who that is. I mean, Adamson may be the yeah, the actual bomb maker and placing the bomb, but you still need to go after the people who employed Adamson to do this homicide.
Well, just so you know, twenty five and seventy four is about one hundred and forty thousand. Now, so that is not insignificant. I mean real coniflation, I mean real So well, yeah, that's not insignificant. And he was offering this guy, Robert almost half of that and Robert it down. So we've got a couple of other witnesses before we get to who might have been responsible. Here there's a
woman named Gail Owens. She dated John Adamson. She says, idiot, he took her to go buy remote control the kind that fly model I mean, why is he taking people? He's getting a remote control that flies model airplanes and he's just like taking friends along with him.
Yeah, you know, it just speaks to his lack of sophistication, you know, on that front. But he is doing it in a way, you know, as I talked about earlier about assessing the bomb itself. You know, he is getting the instructions from somebody within that anarchist cookbook that is very sophisticated, you know, so you at least have him being able to follow instructions. But how many times has he done a bombing in the past, how many times has he committed a homicide in the past.
Probably he had.
You know, he's probably not a professional hit man, but he's somebody that for money, is willing to commit this type of crime. But he's not covering his tracks very well at all.
No, he's not. And you know, this case goes on and drags on and on and on until nineteen seventy seven. He ends up ultimately pleading guilty and in the process prosecutors say, who are you working for? He says, this guy Max Dunlap, who is a real estate developer, who is close to this guy Kimper Marley, who's in the racing industry. Down had reported on Kimber Marley in the racing industry. Right, so this seems to tie up some things for investigators. This seems right. Dunlap is charged with
Don's murder. He's found guilty. The issue is is that and that I think is an interesting point is Dunlap's family says, listen, you know, yes he's this leazy real estate developer, and yes he's connected to a guy who Don reported on because of the dog racing industry, but he's not connected to Imprise. And Don was pretty specific about what he was saying. So they think his family of course, this is his family. But Max Dunlap's family says we think he's actually been set up by other
figures in the Arizona underworld. Adamson says that I can tell you who the person who hit the remote control was. It's this guy named James Robinson. I mean, I told you there's a million people. James Robison. He said. Robison was the one who watched Don as he exited the hotel and triggered the bomb when he got into the car. There's not enough evidence against Robeson and he's acquitted, but you know, there's just a lot that Dunlap's family and
other people were saying. Those last words of him. Mafia doesn't make sense with Max Dunlap, and neither does Imprise because neither of those guys have dealings with Imprise. So how much do we rely on on what Don is saying? Does he even know what's happening? You know, when his legs are blown off essentially and he's bleeding out.
Well, what we can say is Don knew what he was looking into, and he knew that it probably was a risky venture as an investigative journalist to start digging in. He probably is making a guess as to why he was targeted, and it's his most recent venture, you know, and he's giving a specific name, John Adamson, who obviously is the bomb maker the idea of mafia and imprized. Don must have had some knowledge that was going to really disrupt this imprize aspect, you know, whatever that would
have been. So in some ways, you know, I can see where the Dunlap family is going on. Hold on, you know, at least with what what Don is saying. The victim is saying. That doesn't add up with with Max Dunlap, you know. And and when you get into these types of corrupt and organized crime aspects, you know, this is where things The higher up you go, the more murky it gets, right, And this is where the FBI.
I mean that they are good at pursuing these types of investigations, but they've also got decades of understanding the structures and who are the shot callers and you know, who has interest in let's say this mprice. You know, my perspective would be, you know, there's just no way with you and I talking to sort out this type of you know, who really was the one that called
the shot here there's just no way, right. But that's where you know, the FEDS, that's their area of expertise, you know, and so that's where like, if if I were involved in a case like this at the local level, it's you know, automatically, you need to get the FEDS involved. Yeah, even if it's just an isolated local jurisdiction crime, you need the people who know how to handle the investigation.
It's just like if if there's a homicide on federal land, you need to get a local homicide investigator involved, because they actually investigate homicides. The FEDS don't for the most part, you know. So there is recognizing where the expertise and experience lies, and that's in this type of scenario, that's what the FEDS.
Well, to wrap this up, we are going to go back to the sleazy attorney, Neil Roberts. Neil Roberts is connected to everyone in this story, every suspect imprize. He's represented people within that company. He is the one I think you remember who pointed to Dunlap to begin with. In the racing industry. He apparently paid for Adamson's defense.
It seems like I think it sounds like that Neil Roberts was the middleman here between his client, whoever his clients are, and Adamson, who is the muscle in all of this, and that bastard Neil Roberts was given immunity from being charged as an accessory after the fact, even though it turns out there were a couple of convictions out of this and that was basically it, and we don't even know if these were the right convictions aside from Adamson.
So my thought is, with this level of organized crime that appears to be involved, Mprize has a nationwide footprint and appears to have a connection back to New York, I can't imagine that an arm of this organized crime entity, maybe it's mafia, would commit a homicide like this without somebody from way up authorizing it because they want fly under the radar, because you know, a bombing of an investigative journalist is going to bring a lot of attention
from law enforcement as well as media, and people in the mafia don't want that. So whatever Don was digging into must have been serious enough to wear a very high up shot caller, likely out of New York said take him out.
But why hire an idiot? Like John Adamson, some street hood from San Diego. Why not get somebody more experienced, you know, well, this is where they are they're employing. In some ways, this is like your plausible deniability. There are so many layers from the people that are saying take down out to whoever's hiring Adamson, that there's never going to be You're never ever going to be able
to connect all those dots. And so now Adamson, who doesn't appear to be mafia associated, he's not a made guy, you know. So he's the one that is tasked with it, and they're paying him good money, right one hundred and forty thousand dollars in today's money, in order to do this.
There is a risk, I mean where he can flip and say well I was hired by so and so of course, but they've shielded themselves because there's probably several steps of intermediaries in which there isn't going to be that obvious connection that can that law enforcement can trace back all the way to the top. And then I was thinking, well, why would John Adamson turn on Dune Lap unless it was done lap? But obviously Adamson, if
he's going to flip. It's not going to be on the real estate developer that probably doesn't have any serious ties. He's not going to flip on Mprize, which clearly has lots of ties and would have him murdered in prison. So now, at as we conclude this, does it sound more and more like you that maybe Max Dunlap is not responsible for this and it's just much deeper than that.
Yeah, that's my guess, and that's all I can all I can give. Adamson pled guilty.
Yeah, he pled guilty, and that's when he flipped and said it was done lab Okay.
So again I'm just speculating here, But if you have an entity like New York based mafia that's calling the shots, and this Neil Robertson is an attorney, you could see where now there's communication to Adamson going keep your mouth shut, point fingers at Max Dunlap. You'll serve X amount of time and there could be threats both either to him or to his family.
However, it's like when.
You get out, you will be rewarded with X amount of money, something like that. You got twenty five grand up front. When you get out, we'll give you two hundred grand just stay quiet and do what we say. So I would not be surprised that there's some sort of arrangement like that with Adamson.
Well, you have an investigative journal I mean, just to wrap this up, you have an investigative journalist who is doing so much overtime work to try to make people's lives safer and better. He has put himself in danger and it has happened, you know, statistically, something unfortunately would have happened to him at some point. Boy, I mean, when you're poking enough people out there, we need journalists like that who will help protect us. That's part of
our job as journalists. You know, you're going and you're putting yourself out there, just like people in law enforcement. You're putting yourself out there knowing that you can get hurt. And don did. And now we have like a big conspiracy and we don't know who is in prison for what reason and why and who's responsible for it. But we've never really done him offia conspiracy type story on this show before, so I thought it was interesting or a car bombing.
No, you know, these types of cases are They're fascinating. There's no question about it. It's just a it's a different world than like what I lived in when I
was working within law enforcement. You know, My experience, I would say, is more or you know, reading some of these books, you know, agents that have gotten under cover within organized crime entities, you know, and kind of getting the inside information on how these entities think and why they you know, carry out the types of crimes that they do.
You know.
But well, certainly something like this case Don's homicide, even though it sounds like they got convictions, they didn't solve it. They got the low level players, but there's very powerful people in my estimation that are behind this, that are you know, living scott free and probably have committed similar crimes across the nation.
You know what this is interesting there I mentioned this guy really briefly, Rubison, James Albert Robison. So he was the guy that John Adamson had said was the trigger guy, the guy who pushed the button. So this was a plumber he was charged initially with. John Robison said I had nothing to do with this. I didn't trigger a bomb.
I didn't do anything. Adamson pleaded guilty as I said, and served twenty years and two months in prison, so Dunlap, Max Dunlap, and Robison, whom Adamson had had implicated, they were tried together and Ross and Custon's case was based on Adamson's testimony who said that Dunlap and Max Dunlap approached him about killing Dawn and they reached out to a friend, this guy, Robison, and that Adamson was paid about six thousand dollars for his role in the crime.
Both of these guys were convicted, both were sentenced to death. So they were convinced the courts and the law enforcement was convinced Max Dunlap and John Albert Robison were responsible for this, these kind of low level guys, and actually Robison didn't have a record at all. So in February of nineteen eighty, the Arizona Supreme Court overturned the convictions, saying that the court improperly denied a defense motion to
strike Adamson's testimony and so so later this year. Later that year, their murder charges against Dunlop and Robison were dismissed without prejudice because Adamson wouldn't testify again. So ultimately what ends up happening is they're trying to try him again and they can't get a conviction. He was acquitted. Immediately after Robson was acquitted, federal authorities charged him with soliciting a prison inmate to kill Adamson while he was
awaiting his second trial, and he did that. Robison did try to set up Adams to be murdered for testifying against him. So all of this is to say that there is all kinds of people floating around. James Albert Robison is listed under the National Registry of Exonerations. But at the same time he said, yes, I tried to have this guy executed. I tried to happ into this guy murdered because he was setting me up. I mean, it's awful. I mean, what a story. I mean, getting
into the mafia and stuff. It's scary to even think of that. Journalists dig in that deeply, but they do and I respect that. That is something I can't do, but I respect those who do.
Yeah, you know, and it is.
It's not just like with what Don was looking into with this Empress. You know, I had a case which put me down a rabbit hole, something called In's law promise. And you have journalists and others that were killed as a result of this other super weird conspiracy theorist type of thing.
You know.
I just have firsthand experience kind of with something along those lines, and that there are powerful people that are behind a lot of it. And it's like, well, how you know, if you're just a local PD investigator, you know, how do you get to where you're actually going up into the ranks of these organized crime entities. My sense is with with Don's homicide is there's probably an FBI agent who basically say, oh, yeah, we know who probably
called the shot. You know, we can't make a case on it, but we know who the you know, the og is or the godfather or whatever you know, you want, whatever title that person has.
So fascinating for sure.
Well to end on I think an uplifting note here. When he died in seventy six, so many people in journalism were inspired by what he was doing and why he died. Clearly it was based on his reporting. We don't know one hundred percent sure which, but because he was doing so much, I mean, was this like the you know congressman, was this the mafia? What was this
dog racing all of it? Real estate? But thirty over that year from seventy six to seventy seven, thirty investigati journalists from all across the country came to Arizona and dedicated themselves almost in shifts to report on corruption in mafia. And they called it the Arizona Project. And it wasn't his honor, you know, I mean, it wasn't connected to let's figure out who did it, who killed Don. It was more like this guy's work has to carry on.
Yeah, No, that it's a very cool story. And you know what those journalists did and his honor was. I mean, I think that's that seems genuine and heartfelt, you know.
So that's that's really cool.
Well, we're not going to do another story about a journalist who dies, not for a while, because that just gets to me. But thank you for listening to my story. Well, we won't do another car bombing for a while. But I'm always interested in learning more about different kinds of weapons and the way, you know, I mean, just the different types of forensics I think is fascinating. So thank you for coming along this journey with me to nineteen seventies Arizona.
No, this was again fascinating.
I appreciate this case is unusual and it's somewhat intellectually challenging.
Let's say that.
Well, that to me means you need some time off. So we're on a little bit of a hias, just a little tiny Hiatu's nothing too long. But we'll be back and I'll have another story that will be a mind bender.
I'm sure all right, sounds good, Kate.
Thank you, Paul. This has been an exactly right production.
For our sources and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried Bones sources.
Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Our theme song is by Tom Bryvogel.
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones pod.
Kate's most recent book, All That Is That Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now, and
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked My Life Solving America's Cold Cases is also available now.