Jeremy Duda’s new book, Murder in the Fourth Estate, pulls together the tangled story of the 1976 car-bomb assassination of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles and rebuilds it from the ground up. Arriving as Phoenix edges toward the 50th anniversary of the June 2, 1976 bombing, the book puts long-scattered documents and interviews back under a single spotlight and brings old questions out of the archives and into the present.
According to Bloomsbury, the publisher, the book is billed as the first full-dress account of the case, built from extensive archival digging and interviews. The publisher’s listing, with publication details and a table of contents, shows how Duda tracks the case from the June 1976 blast through decades of courtroom reversals, plea deals and retrials.
What the book uncovers
Duda recounts how Bolles was lured to the Clarendon Hotel in midtown Phoenix on June 2, 1976, and how a dynamite device strapped beneath his car exploded as he backed out of the parking space, leaving him mortally injured and dying days later. The early investigation leaned heavily on the account of central witness John Harvey Adamson, who told authorities he had been hired by Phoenix contractor Max Dunlap and that Chandler plumber Jimmy Robison set off the bomb. Duda revisits those claims with interview material and documents that refresh the public record. He also details, as reported by Axios Phoenix, alleged purges of intelligence files by some Phoenix Police Department members and new or rarely discussed leads tied to a lawyer named Neal Roberts and other possible suspects.
Court drama that refused to end
The legal aftermath turned into a maze. Dunlap and Robison were tried, convicted and sentenced to death in 1977, but the Arizona Supreme Court overturned those convictions in 1980, as detailed in the court’s opinion archived at Justia. Federal appeals and subsequent rulings through the 1980s and 1990s added more twists, including a U.S. Supreme Court decision that addressed Adamson’s sentence, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. Separate retrials in 1993 produced a new conviction for Dunlap and an acquittal for Robison, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
Files, archives and local reporting
Duda’s reconstruction leans on public records and interviews preserved in state and local collections. The Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records houses many of the attorney general files and related documents he cites. The book has already drawn attention in Phoenix media, and Arizona PBS has spotlighted the reporting and placed it within a broader conversation about how the city remembers the killing of one of its most prominent reporters.
The car, the family and the 50th anniversary
One thread in the narrative follows the fate of Bolles’s bombed-out Datsun and the debate over where it belongs. Freedom Forum, which managed the Newseum collection, has discussed the possibility of sending the car back to Arizona for display. Some Bolles family members quoted in recent coverage say they do not want the vehicle on public exhibit, as reported by Axios. With June 2, 2026 approaching, those arguments over memory, spectacle and respect are likely to intensify.
Legal implications…