User:Arizonista/sandbox/Don Bolles

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Evidence against Kemper Marley

In early 1978, while making a routine traffic arrest, a Utah highway patrolman discovered what appeared to be a financial journal of illegal Las Vegas casino operations. The arrested man, a low-level Mafia associate named Gerard Denono, was wanted on an outstanding warrant in Las Vegas. The journal was a record of Mafia money laundering of coins from casino slot machines to greyhound dog tracks in Arizona. The operation would later be found to be part of a larger tax-evasion scheme organized by casino owners. (16)

After confiscating the journal, the Utah patrolman, "Wayne Wickizer," sent it to the California Department of Justice. An analyst for the department’s organized crime branch reported in February 1979 that the document was an authentic weekly financial record of unreported (and thus untaxed) slot-machine profits. “Although the authorship of the ledger remains unknown and laboratory tests have so far failed to link the document itself to known OC [organized crime] figures,” analyst Daniel H. Bultman wrote, “the correlation between the ledger and previously confirmed intelligence data indicates that it is genuine.” (16) The “Denono ledger,” as it would become known to the public, described an operation that funneled $4 million in untaxed profits from Las Vegas slot machines to Arizona race tracks over fifteen months from 1972 to 1973. (16)

The California report on the ledger attracted the interest of the FBI. Among its analysts was "William F. Roemer," the bureau’s chief investigator of the "Chicago Mafia" and a noted author. (17) Roemer, too, concluded that the ledger was genuine. (18) Roemer’s analysis of one of the three entries stated “That "Kemper Marley" (Phoenix millionaire) had something to do with the Emprise Corporation from Phoenix furnishing one million dollars to "Tony Accardo" Chicago Mob Boss thru his bagman "Tony Spilotro.” " (18)

Based on Bultman’s authentication, the FBI shared copies of the ledger and Roemer’s analysis with journalists and law enforcement in Arizona, asking for information about Marley’s role, if any, in the Arizona racing industry. (18)

Homicide detectives in the Phoenix Police Department were among those who examined the document. The Phoenix analyst was Det. "Andy Watzek," who wrote an internal department memo on the subject. Watzek, too, believed the ledger was genuine. “The information contained in these entries that refer to Kemper Marley and the Emprise Corporation points or percentages going to the dog-racing interest was never uncovered by investigating agencies or news sources. Thus, it would be known only by someone on the inside,” Watzek wrote. (18)

The importance of the casino-skim document to the Bolles investigation relates to the task of establishing a motive for the murder. Police, prosecutors and some journalists have said they believe that Marley was angered by Bolles’ articles about Marley’s conflict of interest in accepting an appointment to the state racing commission while one of his companies held exclusive contracts to supply racetracks with liquor. That theory was never tested in court because police and prosecutors accepted Marley’s denials of involvement in the crime and declined to pursue a case against him. The ledger’s value as legal evidence was weakened because no chain of custody could be established about its origins or whereabouts before Wickizer confiscated it. (18)

According to reporting in the Wall Street Journal in 1987, shortly before his murder Bolles told friends and fellow journalists that he was planning a trip to San Diego to investigate a story involving Las Vegas casinos. One, Kathy Kolbe, told Journal reporter John R. Emshwiller that Bolles described to her “a complex story involving the Mafia, Emprise, racetracks, and some sort of skimming operation…. Ms. Kolbe says that right after the murder, she tried in various ways to tell the police of what she knew. ‘But the police never interviewed me,’ she says.’ (19)

In response to an inquiry from Wayne Wickizer to Gerard Denono in Novembner 2016 asking whether Bolles had arranged for an interview with him before he was killed, Denono responded that he had. “[Arizona Republic reporter] Jerry Seper informed Denono that Don Bolles was coming to San Diego to talk to him about the ledger and the dog tracks in Arizona. Bolles never showed up.” (19)

       (16) Jerry Seper, “Diary of Alleged skimming may be tied to Bolles killing,” The Arizona Republic, May 16, 1980. 

• (17) William F. Roemer, Man Against the Mob (1989). ISBN-13: 978-1556111464 • (18) Dave Wagner, The Politics of Murder: Organized Crime in Barry Goldwater’s Arizona (2016), pp. 178-79. ISBN-13: 978-0692662656 (19) • (19) John R. Emshwiller, “Bungled Case? Bolles Murder Inquiry Is Marred by Accusations of Cover-Ups, Lost Files.” The Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition), Feb. 23, 1987.

       (20) Interview with Wayne Wickizer by Dave Wagner, Oct. 25, 2016.