Fifty years after Don Bolles’ murder, we owe it to him to continue his courage

By Jeremy Duda, Axios

On June 2, 1976, Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was backing out of a parking space at Phoenix’s Clarendon Hotel, where he’d been lured for a fake meeting, when a dynamite bomb exploded under his car. He used his last words to tell paramedics and bystanders who he thought was responsible, then clung to life for 11 agonizing days before succumbing to his injuries.

In response, the Fourth Estate mobilized in a way it never had before and hasn’t since. Bolles was a founding member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, then still in its infancy, which sent an invading army of journalists from across the country into Arizona. The goal of the Arizona Project, as the effort came to be known, wasn’t to solve Bolles’ murder. It was to continue his work, expose the climate in which someone believed they could assassinate a journalist with impunity, and create an insurance policy for the rest of us. You can kill one journalist, but you’ll bring dozens more to your doorstep to avenge their fallen comrade by turning over every rock they can.

As the 50th anniversary of his murder approaches, it’s as important as ever to keep his memory and his work alive.

Over the course of nearly a decade I spent researching and writing Murder in the Fourth Estate: The Assassination of Investigative Journalist Don Bolles, I learned everything I could about Bolles, his murder and the labyrinthine investigation that followed. I’m proud to have written the first comprehensive history of the assassination that shocked the country and rattled our industry to its core. Because of the length and complexity of the case, that was no easy task. I believe the result is a work of journalism of which Bolles would have approved.

Something that occurred to me as I wrote about the case is that what often gets overlooked when we talk about Bolles is the 14-year career at the Republic that preceded the bombing we remember him for today. His reporting on government corruption drove elected officials from office and got him nominated for a Pulitzer. His coverage turned Arizona’s most nefarious land fraud kingpin into a household name. He exposed the mafia’s steady infiltration into the state. The corruption, the crime and the corrosion of society that Bolles covered genuinely outraged him. For Bolles, his work was truly a crusade.

For his efforts, Bolles’ phone was tapped. He got threatening phone calls at his house. He would put Scotch tape on the hood of his car so he’d know if someone tampered with it. A source once mentioned that he’d seen Bolles checking under his car one day. Bolles responded that he routinely checked because “I know what I’m up against.” And in the end, as he said while he lay dying in a hotel parking lot, “They finally got me.”

We’ve all felt the growing atmosphere of hostility toward journalists through the years. It’s become impossible to ignore, and it’s getting worse. It’s all the more reason to dig in our heels and do what we do best. It’s what Bolles would’ve done. He would’ve looked with indignation at the people who disparage journalism and try to hinder our work, and been inspired to redouble his efforts.

Bolles knew the risks that came with his work. He did the job anyway. He gave his life for our profession and for the community he served. We owe Bolles our gratitude and we owe it to him to remember his sacrifice. And we owe it to Bolles to honor his legacy and carry on his work.

We don’t have to recreate the Arizona Project to do that. We only need to do our jobs, to do them as Bolles would have — with a lot of tenacity and no small amount of righteous indignation that people think they can get away with abusing the public trust.