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Don Bolles, an investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, was murdered in 1976 when a bomb planted under his car blew up.

Because of the method of execution, the slaying immediately gave rise to speculation among police and journalists that the killing had something to do with the “Mafia.” The Bolles slaying led to the formation of a group, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), which launched an open-ended “investigation” into Arizona’s criminal element. Eventually, thirty-six journalists from twenty-seven news organizations throughout the country participated in the project. Spearheading the project were Bob Greene, a reporter for Newsday, and Tom Renner, a so-called organized crime expert, also of Newsday.

The IRE said its goal was to continue the investigative work begun by Bolles. Self-appointed and self-mandated, the IRE produced a series of lengthy articles published in newspapers nationwide. The articles were also compiled into a paperback book.

Not long after the Bolles murder, I received a letter from John Rawlinson, an Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) reporter on leave to work with the IRE group.

Rawlinson, a former city policeman, had previously written about me in his newspaper in an article of minor importance. But since he had succeeded in interviewing me where others had failed, he gained a reputation as one who had access to Joe Bonanno.

In his letter, he assured me that he didn’t think I had anything to do with the Bolles murder. Then he asked for my help in identifying the culprits, the assumption being that I knew about every crime committed in the state anyway.

He also offered me his protection. If I cooperated with him, Rawlinson assured me anonymity.

*   *   *

The IRE series was published early in 1977. Here are some excerpts from the article about me:

Federal mob watchers estimate that 200 members of organized crime families are currently living in Arizona. And the biggest most important man of all is Joe Bonanno, today probably the most powerful Mafioso in America, the undisputed Boss West of the Rocky Mountains.

Today, the Bonanno organization moves kilo amounts of heroin through Pueblo, Colo., for shipment to St. Louis.

Now that Bonanno’s two sons are established in San Jose in Northern California, the old man appears to be making a concerted effort to gain control of the rackets in the entire state.

Federal and local police officials who have plotted all these moves and traced all this action are convinced that Joe Bananas, from his home base in Arizona, is in the midst of bringing it all together under the mantle and protection of the Bonanno family.

None of these statements concerning me has ever been substantiated. The reporters were merely mimicking the unfounded speculations of lawmen, from whom they received this distorted information.

Here’s another example of this yellow journalism:

There’s a telephone booth outside the Lucky Wishbone, and after carefully closing himself in, the old man fishes a handful of quarters from his pocket, drops one into the slot and begins chatting quietly. In Sicilian. Exactly what the old man says is known only to him and whomever he calls. But chances are the conversation is about narcotics, guns, girls, gambling, money, deliveries, meetings, couriers, payoffs, discipline, punishment, and other elements of Arizona’s biggest growth industry, organized crime.

What kind of comic book were these reporters writing? These reporters never overheard me talk in a public telephone booth.

I want to say a few things about my making calls in public telephone booths.

It’s my right, of course, to talk in private with whomever I want, whether in Sicilian or Swahili. However, since I’m Joe Bonanno, I have to assume that my house phone is always wiretapped, whether legally or illegally.

I also have to assume that whomever I call from my house phone, law-enforcement agents will link that person, rightly or wrongly, with some sort of clandestine and nefarious activity. If I call my Aunt Tilly to ask her how everything is going, police will interpret this as meaning, “Did the heroin get there all right?” I don’t care who you are. If you had to worry about every single word that came out of your mouth, as I do, you’d use a public phone too.

*   *   *

I wasn’t the only one outraged by the IRE series. Several people mentioned in the articles filed multimillion-dollar defamation suits. The Arizona Republic, Bolles’ own newspaper, refused to print the stories.

After the IRE series had done its damage to the reputation of many innocent people, the perpetrators of the Bolles murder were eventually arrested, tried and convicted. None of them was of Italian background. The murder had nothing to do with the “Mafia.” The culprits were not foreigners but Arizonans.

*   *   *

In addition to Bolles’ murder, the summer of 1976 was significant in my life also because Dennis DeConcini, the son of my fair-weather friend Evo DeConcini, successfully ran for the U.S. Senate.

Dennis’ political career had moved at an astronomical rate. He started out being a lawyer, with an office across from his dad’s. He later became an administrative aide to Arizona Governor Sam Goddard, a friend of the DeConcinis. In 1972 Dennis was elected Pima County attorney.

The county attorney’s job was only a steppingstone. While at that job, however, Dennis established the Narcotics Strike Force, which was supported by state and federal funds. Dennis was the strike force administrator. He appointed Terry Grimble, a lawyer in the county attorney’s office, to be strike force director.

The Narcotics Strike Force was an attempt to combat the narcotics traffic along the Arizona-Mexico border. Since I’ve never had anything to do with narcotics in my life, I didn’t pay too much attention to this new agency when it was established.

Dennis was running for the U.S. Senate when Bolles was murdered in June 1976. The very next month, while on the campaign trail, Dennis said (Arizona Daily Star, June 8, 1976):

“America has not only tolerated organized crime, we have utterly been romanced by it. The death of Phoenix reporter Don Bolles may be the end of that for Arizonans and other citizens throughout the country.”

I hadn’t heard Dennis speak so vehemently against organized crime before. I was very sensitive to his remarks, because whenever anyone in Arizona talks about organized crime the inference is that he’s talking about Joe Bonanno. I ascribed Dennis’ words to political rhetoric, however. After all, if you’re a politician it’s pretty safe to come out against Communism, government waste and organized crime.

My misgivings intensified when I read the following in the Arizona Republic on October 28, 1976:

Dennis DeConcini, whose campaign for the U.S. Senate has emphasized his record against organized crime as Pima County Attorney, has received a number of campaign contributions from individuals identified as associates of organized crime.

DeConcini told the Arizona Republic he has returned some of the money and that he intends to return more of it.…

DeConcini said he has returned $50 donated to him April 15 by Victor Tronolone, longtime accountant for Mafia chieftain Joseph Bonanno and Peter Licavoli.

Dennis had gone beyond normal campaign rhetoric here. Victor Tronolone is my accountant, but does that make him an “organized crime figure”? Did Dennis mean to imply that Tronolone’s $50 contribution (to a campaign fund that was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) was an attempt to influence him on behalf of organized crime? Tronolone was a friend and an accountant not only to me and Peter Licavoli but also to Dennis’ father. At the same time that Dennis was rejecting Tronolone’s harmless contribution, Tronolone was handling (and continued to do so until about 1980) some of Evo DeConcini’s business tax returns. Does that make Evo DeConcini an “organized crime figure”?

The year after Dennis was elected U.S. Senator the subject of his father’s friendship with me again came up. On June 5, 1977, Dennis appeared on a local televised news conference. A reporter named Leasa Conze asked him about Evo’s friendship with me, and Dennis responded that his father had first met me in 1948. When asked how many times Evo and I had seen each other since 1948, Dennis replied that it had been only a couple of times, just a few. Dennis said his father knew me only as a cheese man from Wisconsin. Dennis also said that his father and I hadn’t been that friendly.

About a month after this television appearance, I had a letter prepared and mailed to Dennis, and a copy of it also went to his father, Evo. The letter is dated July 13, 1977:

Dear Senator DeConcini,

As a person who has known you for many years and has followed your career with interest, I viewed your election to the United States Senate with pride. I believed that the youth I knew, and the man I know, would enter the Senate and bring with him, in his public appearances, the traits of character which we all have traditionally held dear.

Throughout history, many have breached their oath and principles in order to further political aims and ambitions. The truth has been distorted and warped in order to justify immediate self-centered goals. If we are men of principle, then there can be no deviation from truth in its purest form. Thus, I was dismayed on seeing a report on Channel 13, here in Tucson, in which you had cast aside past relationships with cavalier disregard for your own integrity. In truth, there can be no wrong. A practiced deceit, however, flaws our character forever.

Mark Twain hid great wisdom behind a humorous facade, and it is with respect that I quote from Advice to Youth:

“An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is a thing which you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie as that has no more real permanence than an average truth. Why, you might as well tell the truth at once and be done with it. A feeble, stupid, preposterous lie will not live two years—except it be a slander upon somebody. It is indestructible, then, of course, but that is no merit of yours.”

I hope that your disavowal of those whom you counted as friends was a careless gesture, unintended and one which will be corrected, if the opportunity were to rise in the future. I am not ashamed of having known you, and feel that you should not be ashamed of having known me.

I pray that your career will be marked with great achievement and benefit to our country. I also pray that you will always comport yourself with integrity.

Most respectfully,

Joseph Bonanno, Sr.

I never received an answer, not from Dennis nor from Evo.