cover image Loud and Clear

Loud and Clear

William Hoffman, Lake Headley. Henry Holt & Company, $22 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-1138-8

In 1976 Phoenix's Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed by a car bomb, but before he died he named his murderer. Given immunity, John Adamson implicated three others: Kemper Marley and James Robison were found guilty and sentenced to death; the third man, Max Dunlap, was not indicted. Convinced of Marley and Robison's innocence, a group of Arizonans hired Las Vegas private eye Headley to investigate. This is his appalling tale, written with freelancer Hoffman. The authors charge that the Arizona establishment, with the connivance of the police, had railroaded the two convicted men so that the real culprits would not be uncovered. They show us a venal, corrupt power structure: for example, Barry Goldwater, according to the authors, has ties to organized crime and has for years cheated the Navajo nation, while his brother Robert is alleged to be one of the worst exploiters of migrant workers in the state. Headley uncovered sufficient evidence of innocence to clear the two men on death row. An attempt on his and his girlfriend's lives provides the climax to this hard-hitting, fast-moving expose. Photos. TV rights to Universal. (Sept.)