There were two threats brewing for Don Bolles in 1970, at least in his mind. And one was coming from inside the newsroom. 

Bolles had begun to suspect that his reporting partner had Mafia ties. Despite a lack of evidence, his partner was taken off the beat. 

The Arizona Republic would go public with allegations of wiretapping. It would also publish Bolles’ 10-day seminal series, “The Menace Within.” 

But the threat from outside the newsroom continued to grow. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After discovering that the Funk family may have wiretapped his phones, Don Bolles was put in a unique position. He wasn’t so much a reporter as he was trying to solve a crime. 

Helping him in this endeavor was his reporting partner, Dom Frasca. Frasca was a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter who had experience looking into the mafia. 

When the duo started asking questions, major concerns were raised about the credibility of their main source. Despite those concerns, the paper wanted to go public about the allegations. 

It was a decision that would cost them. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The murder of investigative reporter Don Bolles shocked what was then a much smaller, sleepy Phoenix. He was a reporter killed for doing his job. It was — and still is — a rare incident in the United States. 

In the years before his murder, Bolles was known for his tenacity, like a character out of film noir. Driven to keep the city from becoming mob run, Bolles worked diligently to expose ties between the Funk family — which owned the horse and dog racing tracks in town — and the Mafia. 

He made few friends in doing so. Eventually, Bolles was told that the Funks had pawed through his bank accounts and wiretapped his phones to dig up dirt on him. 

The man who was determined to hold people accountable now had to discover if these allegations were true.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don Bolles was an investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic in the 1960s and '70s. After years of reporting on corruption in the racing industry, he was killed by a car bomb in 1976. 

Decades later, we found cassette tapes of his phone calls from the '70s. Thanks to those tapes, we're telling the story of Don's life and his quarrels with the mafia before his death and how his spirit was crushed long before his murder. 

Rediscovering: Don Bolles, a murdered journalist is the latest podcast from The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. The show launches with two episodes on Tuesday, Nov. 5. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio or wherever else you listen to podcasts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices