Phoenix Underworld

The scene after Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was fatally injured when a bomb went off in his car in 1976.

You don't have to scrape too far beneath the veneer of "a clean, new, well-run city" to understand that Phoenix is perhaps historically one of America's more corrupt, crime-run cities. It didn't get a great city in exchange for its corruption, as with Chicago. And being crime-run isn't the same as being crime-ridden, so whatever statistics the boosters pull out to show community safety are really beside the point.

It's long been this way. When I was a child, Phoenicians sniffed that Tucson was the Mafia town, with Joe Bonanno, Pete Licavoli Sr., and company. Yet the FBI estimated that in the 1960s Phoenix had more mobsters per capita than New York City. I grew up just a few blocks from the house where, in 1958, Gus Greenbaum and his wife had their throats slit in retaliation for Gus' skimming from the casino tills in Vegas (and, local lore has it, the hitmen then ate the steaks the Greenbaums had just cooked). Phoenix was full of bars (Rocky's Hideaway, the old Blue Grotto, Ivanhoe, the Clown's Den, etc.) frequented by made men and the wanna-bes.

This was not the result, as some would have it, of "the Wild West atmosphere." Rather, it was the interface between a city growing too fast with few rules or institutional checks and the migration of Midwestern gangsters to exploit the situation (or, later, to be relocated by the feds). And an establishment willing to look the other way, or join in the "business." A culture of fraud built on successive real-estate booms, or scandals such as the collapse of Arizona Savings in the early 1960s, also made the city a magnet for criminals. The most prominent figure in this was Ned Warren (aka Nathan Waxman), the Kingpin of Arizona Land Fraud. He figured in the Bolles bombing.

But the roots of organized crime in Phoenix run much deeper. Al Capone was a visitor at the Westward Ho and the Chicago Outfit controlled liquor during Prohibition.  In 1928, the Outfit chose Phoenix as the hub of its proprietary, and illegal, betting wire, the Trans-America Publishing and News Service. Greenbaum was sent to run it. The wire service gained a powerful local ally in land baron and rancher Kemper Marley (the most prominent figure in the Bolles bombing, although he was never charged). After booze was legalized, Marley became the city's largest liquor wholesaler — and patron of the Hensley clan, which went legit by the time Cindy Hensley married John McCain. A Hensley retainer in Jim Hensley's trouble with the feds was a young lawyer named William Rehnquist, future Chief Justice of the United States.

Thus, the midcentury mobs in Phoenix included both Italian and Jewish gangsters. Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles produced two series about organized crime: "The Menace Within" in 1970 and "The Newcomers" in 1973. If the city had a godfather, he was Joseph "Papa Joe" Tocco, who also went by the nickname Buddy. His brother was Albert Tocco, a capo of the Chicago Heights mob. But even Papa Joe didn't wield total power. Phoenix was considered open, neutral territory by the Mafia. No family controlled it. In addition to the profits to be had, Phoenix offered resorts and golf for the made men. Much of the Phoenix power structure, including the Goldwater and Rosenzweig brothers and Del Webb, were friendly with organized crime.

Much of America first discovered this nasty reality after the bombing murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles in 1976. A national team of investigative reporters gathered at the Adams Hotel downtown and spent months digging into the reality of sunny paradise.

The resulting stories showed Arizona, and especially Phoenix, as a hotbed of mobsters, illegal activities, rampant land fraud, exploitation of illegal immigrants, and the corruption of judges and other officials. Much of this was not new to Arizonans who paid attention. Despite the same boosterism as today, Gene Pulliam's Republic also did real investigative reporting, especially with Bolles and the late Al Sitter. Stories documented growing mob influence from back east. This journalism had real power, sending people to jail, shattering schemes. Local reporting showed how mob influence could be found in the most innocent-seeming places, such as Hobo Joe's coffee shops.

Nor were Phoenicians unaware of the potential for violence. A witness against the mob had been bombed in Tempe a year before the Bolles attack. And relocated mobster Willie Bioff, a notorious enforcer for mob-controlled  Hollywood unions, was killed by a bomb in 1955. As with the Greenbaum assassination, the Bioff case was never solved.

When it came time to run the Arizona Project, however, the Republic balked (Pulliam was dead by this time; New Times ran it, making its reputation). Was the series spiked because of legal or journalistic concerns, or because stories raised questions about some of the most powerful people in the state, including Bob Goldwater -- owner with the Martori family of the Goldmar land and citrus empire -- and even Barry himself?

Whether or not the Goldwaters were mobbed up is an unanswered question for historians. Barry was attracted to celebrity, including the dark side. As for Bob, the borderline in Phoenix business between the mobsters and the legitimate was so porous that telling the two apart was difficult. Phoenix city father Harry Rosenzweig was another question mark: mobbed up, or just close to mobsters? Such was the Phoenix of the 1950s through the 1970s.

Who murdered Don Bolles? The front-line assassin was John Harvey Adamson. On the scene, Bolles, in agony, said, "They finally got me...the Mafia, Emprise (owned of dog racetracks)...find Adamson." The revenge theory implicating Marley has merit (Bolles' reporting had cost Marley a post on the state racing commission). So, too, does the hypothesis of a renegade from the seedy dog-racing industry, seeking revenge. How high did the conspiracy go? At the time, more than one old Phoenician said, "They never would have done this if old man Pulliam were still alive." It's also true that the investigation into Bolles' death was horribly botched and police records were destroyed or permanently misplaced. My 2018 novel The Bomb Shelter, a fictionalized telling, is based on many hours of interviews with detectives who investigated the Bolles case.

Phoenix was a land-fraud capital. Warren and Howard Neal Woodall were among the more notable swindlers who ran schemes selling worthless desert (or nothing) to gullible easterners. Woodall went on to testify against an alleged accomplice in the Bolles killing. He also sang for the cops about the murder of an accountant close to Warren. There's much more to learn about this era. (Here's a list of major players in the Bolles case).

Underworld Phoenix changed in the 1980s. In some ways, it went legit. For example, Goldmar's Arrowhead Ranch, where the Investigative Reporters and Editors team documented horrendous conditions for migrant workers, became one of the first "master planned communities." The old Mafia was being snuffed out by RICO and other fed pressure. Papa Joe died in federal prison in 1995 after being convicted nine years earlier on loan-sharking and other charges. Italian organized crime did linger, exemplified by a series of hits in the late 1980s and early 1990s, detailed by New Times' Tom Fitzpatrick.

But a new group of sharpies, exemplified by Charles H Keating Jr., arrived. Unlike the old gangsters, they usually pushed right up to the limits of the law. They continued the process of co-opting the local establishment, although most of the old guard had died off. The Phoenix 40 group of powerful executives promised reform, and some happened. But a new old-boy network emerged and who needed land fraud when you could make a killing from building tract houses across the Sonoran Desert with virtually no restraints? Which is not to say that the old rackets disappeared. They gradually were taken over by new owners.

Today local drugs and prostitution are the province of the hundreds of gangs of all ethnicities that operate throughout — and I mean throughout — metropolitan Phoenix. Gambling has largely become legit. The metro area is also a major staging ground in the international illicit drug world, where the operators are as sophisticated as any multinational and armed with the best technology in the world. It is the nation's capital for the human smuggling trade. The consequences of all these activities are magnified because of the limited local economy, segregation, lack of community and weak institutions.

The federal witness protection relos and general mob affinity for Phoenix continue, sometimes with disastrous consequences. In the late 1990s, Gambino goombah "Sammy the Bull" Gravano set up a drug trafficking operation with some Gilbert white supremacist teenagers. The usual Arizona Laff Riot ensued, with the media and residents expressing shock, shock, that crime could be going on in their white suburb, with affluent white kids. Did anyone think Sammy would buy a house in Willo? Of course not. The promise of suburban Phoenix is anonymity and the annihilation of community. The perps have wheels; thus, much lurid crime happens in the 'burbs and the media are always shocked. Ironically, suburbia was supposed to promote safety. In reality, it merely promotes isolation and criminal opportunity. Sammy the Bull and the 9/11 hijacker would never have chosen to live in a historic district, a real neighborhood with front porches and people who know each other.

A big difference from the past is that the local establishment — especially the law — isn't as compromised. In the 2000s, Attorney General Terry Goddard was a scourge of the smugglers and meth dealers. The problems arise more from the malpractice and media-chasing of The Badged Ego (aka Joe Arpaio), the neglect of some of the county justice courts, and, especially, the scattering of real community leadership.

The people with the most power and means to make a difference live behind walls in Paradise Valley and north Scottsdale. They can write off the present underworld as "Maryvale," brown people and that's that. At least the old guard wasn't afraid to socialize with the criminals of their day.

And the organized criminals of our day? We mostly don't know. With media layoffs and the loss of institutional knowledge held by veteran reporters, citizens aren't aware of the underworld all around them.

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My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.

Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.

 

Comments

[soleri]

My father had an unhappy relationship with Howard Woodall that, nonetheless, resulted in a happy ending. Dad apparently thought Woodall could leverage his underworld contacts to secure needed financing for a stalled construction project. Woodall told him to sign over the deed, which Dad did, whereupon Woodall got a bank loan and ran away with the loot. Dad sued the bank and got a favorable judgment, which resulted in a loan for his project from the chastened bank.

This was back in the 1970s and as crazy as it all seemed, it was one way of doing business. My father was a bit player but he had lost a fortune in legal judgments himself, and one of the beneficiaries, a Jack Cohen, was a Meyer Lansky operative. He was murdered a couple of years after the transaction with Dad.

Maybe it was the romance of the Rat Pack, the Runyonesque magic of tough guys playing liar's poker, or the era's hypermasculine ethos (Jimmy Carter was not president yet), but it was normal in its own bizarre way. After the IRE stories broke, Barbara Walters asked Barry Goldwater if he had been on the take. He answered, "hell, back then, everyone was".

This was a country that elected LBJ and Richard Nixon. We did dumb things, of course, and occasionally tragically stupid things. But there was still a core decency in our politics that almost seems quaint today. Both parties had a sense of the possible. Both parties negotiated and compromised. Things got done.

Not anymore.

[Zelph]

Are you familiar with a old book called "The Green Felt Jungle" by Ed Reid? It's about the history of Las Vegas, but the names of prominent Arizona families pop up in the book: Rosenzweig, Greenbaum, Goldwater, etc. Al Capone's wire service ran through Phoenix and a lot of these folks hung out with mobsters at the Phoenix Country Club. People like "Icepick Willie" who murdered his victims by shoving an icepick through their ear. Has some great and gruesome black and white photos too.

[eclecticdog]

When my parents moved to Phoenix in 1956, one of their first friends was a Jewish couple living in Paradise Valley. The husband, turns out, was an accountant for the mob. The Feds got him on a charge, but he wouldn't talk. He did his time, got out, moved to San Diego, and bought a yacht.

Strangely enough, I worked with a clerk at U-Totem that was paralyzed along one side of his body. The cause - a petty crook (known to him as a regular customer from the area) tried to kill him after robbing the store by shoving an icepick through his ear.

[Mark]

My dad was a small time developer of garden apartments back in the 1970's and my brother was his general contractor. I recall several stories of my brother being told to choose certain plumbing contractors or else he was risking his life. My brother, being the cowboy that he was, wanted to tell them to fuck off, but, my father, being from Chicago, promptly ordered him to comply.

Not sure if the Italian mafia is as ingrained in the formal economy as it once was in Phoenix. Today, Phoenix is a major HQ for the Mexican Mafia. An enormous amount of cocaine brought from Latin America is transacted in Phoenix, as are assault weapons.

[James]

Don't forget the shenanigans of an earlier time with the 1932 Winnie Ruth Judd murder trial. Apparently there were many political and police "higher ups" who did a very good job of covering their butts on that one. Enter local businessman J.J. Halloran. Investigative reporter Jana Bommersbach does a decent job of telling the story in her book, but there are still some dark crannies that will probably never be illuminated.

[Trey anonimous]

My grandfather was Howard Neil Woodall and i love him to this day he tought me alot of the ins and outs on how to survive in this crazy world. He also told me alot about his dealings with Ned Warren and company and for you to say he sang to the police is a little insulting. My grandpa did what was best for him and his family and our family is in a better place for it. My grandfather had nothing to do with the murders that happened, he was only the faceman, salesman of the land swindling sceme that was going on. I dont condone what my grandfather did in those days but i do respect him for cooperating with the police and stopping the sceme that robbed alot of people out of there money. One thing noone ever gives my grandfather and his Boss Ned warren credit for is that they used the system got rich and basically built the town of Scottsdale arizona in the middle of the desert, and as everyone know it is know one of the more populous cities in Arizona. So at last i will end it with grandpa i love you and you will be missed; to those he stole from i appologize.

[C]

Can you please contact me Trey. My mother married your grandfather while he was in jail.
Would like to know more

[Stan Moody]

I personally knew Ned Warren and his accountant, Ed Lazzar, who was gunned down in an elevator, I believe...Tony Serra, who I knew very well, was killed in prison by the Mexican Mafia...

I was in Tony's office one day, when he asked me to wear a suit in the morning...When I asked why, he said, "I want to introduce you to the Godfather (Ned Warren)...I told him, "When the Godfather wants to see me, he comes to my office!"

I got too close to that mess in the early 70's...You could not be in business in Phoenix without becoming tainted by these guys...The glamor of organized crime figures was the hook that corrupted us all at one level or another...

[Rob Spindler]

So many stories, Matthew Luhrs Crane and Phil Tovrea have mob stories too. We recently posted historian Jack August's 2004 interview with Roy Elson, Senator Carl Hayden's AA. See side A at 23:05 and Side B at 14:20 for Elson's comments on Bolles and organized crime. I don't think there's much new there but Roy was always a good story teller!

[Rob Spindler]

The link, the link! http://repository.asu.edu/items/28618

[Abby Gilmore]

Thanks for the link, Rob!

I'm listening to Roy Elson claim the ladies who lunched at the Main Chance, Arden's Nazi sympathizing roost,cooked his goose by slicing his singular editorial coverage right before the election. Way to press the old gander, Nina! My SSMom's mother owned that place before she sold it to Arden. She bought it from the man who founded the Grunow Clinic, speaking of Winnie Ruth...

Gotta love a good AZ Mafia story. My SSMom's own mom sold her place to the Valley Bank president's brother as she's buying Bob Goldwater's ex-wife's home since she was divorcing her own doctor of a husband who worked at same clinic. Phoenix is sick with Chandler style stories. Big Sleeper.

[Abby Gilmore]

Did I hear that right? Roy was boffing "The Body?" Isn't that Horseface's wife? Roy's brother, head of FBI in Nevada, didn't know that profile? Don't tell me he was gay, too.

[old Scottsdale res]

Here's a question...old Phoenician insisted that Margaret Hance (Phoenix Mayor and Deck Park Namesake) ran a brothel in the outskirts of Phoenix prior to her civic days...anyone ever hear such a thing?

[Rogue Columnist]

Never heard that. Kemper Marley did.

[Phil Motta]

A brutal, but substantiated, analysis. Phoenix may lack texture, but it has a lot of grit. And grime.

[Michael Robson]

Hello,My father was a prominent criminal defense attorney in mesa and Phoenix,When I was growing up I actually knew many of the people involved with this story.I have some information about more recent things if you're interested.

[Amy M]

Internet hmm