Phoenix Confidential: the dog track underworld

With Arizona ending live greyhound racing, it's the end of an era long coming. Where the state once had five tracks, the only one left was in poor Tucson, which couldn't even keep a slice of Spring Training. The track in Phoenix closed to live racing in 2009. Changing tastes, animal activists and, especially, the proliferation of tribal casinos did in the pastime.

But once upon a time, it was a big deal. Before Phoenix Greyhound Park became a swap meet and was painted, like so much of the town, brown, it was one of the city's premier entertainment attractions. The golden age was from the 1950s through the 1970s. Opening in 1954, Phoenix Greyhound Park at 40th Street and Washington was a neon-lit palace where middle-class couples and compulsive gamblers mixed with the city's elite — and members of its extensive population of mobsters. Betting was legal. And a pre-video-device audience thrilled to dogs racing chasing a mechanical "lure" around the track. The park promised glamor, excitement, and was highly advertised ("there goes the rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!").

The extent of organized crime's penetration of dog racing in Phoenix remains an important, and controversial, element of the mystery of the 1976 assassination of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles. After the blast and before he passed out, first responders heard Bolles say (a version of) "they finally got me...Adamson, Emprise, Mafia...find John Adamson..." Emprise was a sports conglomerate headquartered in Buffalo, N.Y. and controlled by the Jacobs family. It held a controlling interest in Arizona dog tracks.

Emprise was found to be associated with organized crime figures and convicted in Los Angeles of racketeering in 1972. The allegations involved taking a hidden interest in a Las Vegas casino to skim the profits. In Phoenix, Emprise had been a target of Bolles' investigative reporting and focus of a crackdown by the state Racing Commission in the early 1970s. Even so, the state allowed the company to keep its concessions, including at Phoenix Greyhound Park. Emprise's Phoenix partner was the Funk family And it had friendly ties to Kemper Marley, the powerful land-and-booze baron always lurking at the edge of the Bolles murder.

Phoenix is a small town, a tight web of connections. For example, a 2000 New Times article on presidential candidate John McCain and the his wife's beer fortune by John Dougherty and Amy Silverman contained this:

Emprise reorganized in Arizona as Ramcorp and was allowed to keep its lucrative concession contracts while its Los Angeles conviction was appealed. But all the company's proceeds from dog tracks were funneled through a trustee, former Mesa rancher and farmer Dwight Patterson. Patterson, according to the (Investigative Reporters and Editors), urged then-Arizona governor Raul Castro to appoint Kemper Marley to the three-member Arizona Racing Commission, a position Marley reportedly was eager to get. Marley would replace Robert Kieckhefer, who had been an opponent of Emprise.

Castro received more than $19,000 during his 1974 gubernatorial campaign from Marley, and another $5,000 from Marley's daughter -- colossal sums at the time for an Arizona political campaign. Castro appointed Marley to the racing commission in 1976. ...Bolles wrote a series of stories documenting Marley's questionable performance in appointive posts he'd previously held. Bolles' stories doomed Marley's appointment, forcing him to resign soon after being named to the Racing Commission.

Marley's liquor distribution empire was the precursor of the Hensley fortune (Cindy McCain's father Jim and uncle Eugene Hensley worked for Marley before striking out on their own after World War II, with Marley's backing). But as with so much else in the Bolles case, nothing could ever be proved against either Marley or Emprise. Or against Brad Funk, the heir apparent of the local family controlling Greyhound Park. However, circumstantial evidence connecting Funk with bomb-planter John Harvey Adamson is strong. One police theory was that young Funk was trying to impress his elders by taking revenge on Bolles. But Funk was never charged. No law enforcement officers who investigated the bombing were satisfied that justice was done.

Back to the dog track. Read enough of the Bolles reporting and Phoenix Greyhound Park is almost as important a place as the mob bars of Midtown Phoenix. Adamson himself owned a few racing dogs.

A very different state Legislature from today, led by Republican Burton Barr, spent years trying to clean up dog racing and its whiff of organized crime. Among other things, lawmakers forced the Emprise-Funk combination to divest some of their tracks in the state. By 1979, the Funks were gone from dog racing — bought out by Sportsystems Corp. (Emprise renamed and supposedly cleaned up). The trusteeship was short-lived. Not a season of million-dollar earnings was missed. Delaware North Cos., the renamed Sportsystems and labeled "a global leader in hospitality management and food service management," owned the track to the end.

Read more about the underbelly of the city, in the Phoenix Confidential archive.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Cal Lash]

Jon, I sent U a similar and bigger version of the following a few years ago.

Despite the fact that the Bolles killing brought together a mass of journalists and law enforcement the story has never really been told in it’s totality in an organized manner.

Despite all the authorities and others the Republic whose observations the paper continues to mention the articles are a hodgepodge of happenings.

The Bolles story started not in Arizona but in the bowels of Midwest organized crime looking for places to hide and invest its ill got gains. (On Oct. 17, 1931, Chicago gangster Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion)
The local Organized crime imports furthered this with crooked land deals and liquor and drug movements. Organized crime ate its way into Arizona politics and helped facilitate one of the biggest land grabs in history along the Arizona/Mexico border.

When ever I hear of the Bolles case and on many other occasions I think of Phoenix Organized Crime/White Collar crime detective, Lonzo McCracken and one his many informants. McCracken was one of the few people I knew who could unannounced see Harry Rosenzweig anytime he desired. The result of one of these meetings was the resignation of a county attorney.

And in the Bolles matter seldom a mention of the attorney turned informant (to avoid prosecution).

Many folks believe the Bolles killing was a local affair and that many of the peripheral stories have little or no meaning in the scheme of things.

The bad guys keep winning even today they are out there, but who cares?

Someday I hope there is a writer/investigator out there that can pull it together and give the story a much better treatment than it has had to date.

Including a more diligent look at the local politicians of the time.

[Rogue Columnist]

The attorney-turned-informant being Neal Roberts? North High schoolmate of many of the players in the case.

[Cal lash]

NO

[Rogue Columnist]

Who?

[wkg_in_bham]

@RC: I have responded (partially) to your quite valid criticisms of the last thread. There are a couple of other issues I didn’t respond to (but should) but I didn’t want to get too far into the weeds.

You pointed out in the number of commenters who have “gone away” recently (with Soleri being the probably most salient). I think this is just a function of the topics of late; for example this one. I find the “Phoenix 101” and “Phoenix Confidential” to be very interesting, but almost impossible to comment on in any constructive way. Kind of the same thing with “Circle Records” and “Macayo’s” postings. Even those familiar with the buildings didn’t have much to say about the situation.

Let me introduce a tangent to the current posting. I’ve always thought a city of substance needed a Red-Light District. Things like drinking, gambling and prostitution are always going to be with us; I’d almost go far as to say “who’d want to live anywhere that didn’t have them”. Making these activities legal or illegal introduces no end of problems. Having a semi-official Red-Light District would address these but introduces a large number of problems in its own right.
B’ham, by the way, is the gamblingest place I’ve ever lived – especially during football season. There are at least two mini-casinos that I know of. There are probably more – but gambling is one of the few vices I don’t have.

I found it interesting that Phoenix was a big dog racing city. I would have though car racing would have been more natural. I know there’s a NASCAR track there. But when I think of car racing I don’t think of Phoenix.

[Rogue Columnist]

Car racing was never big in Phoenix, although NASCAR runs at Phoenix International Raceway. My cousin was the racer Jimmy McElreath. We would go to the old Veterans Memorial Coliseum to watch him in the Indianapolis 500.

[Cal Lash]

We race Desert Tortoises harnessed to Road Runners, Beep Beep!
U dont gamble but you frequent the "houses"?

[Cal Lash]

WKG said, "I’ve always thought a city of substance needed a Red-Light District. Things like drinking, gambling and prostitution are always going to be with us; I’d almost go far as to say “who’d want to live anywhere that didn’t have them”.

You live as a formally educated edurite gentleman in whats left of the worlds primeval swamp of stewing microbes. Plus it rains a lot. I would think that might lead to insanity.

However, for this informally knowledge seeking rat in the desert, I prefer

"the pre human sanity of the desert"
Ed Abbey

I do admit to my weakness of travel by motorized vehicles. But now at 75 and crippled, walking (the best way to observe) has become difficult. So I will not be backpacking to DC again.

[wkg_in_bham]

@Cal: “U dont gamble but you frequent the "houses"? Nope have never paid for any – at least directly. But the indirect payments have been enormous.

Re; “Plus it rains a lot.” You got that right. Was curious about that and went to Wiki to look it up: Annual rainfall for selected cities:
Portland, Org 36.03”
Seattle 37.49”
Orlando, Fla 50.6"
Phoenix 8.03”
Birmingham 53.72
Mobile Ala 66.1”

[Cal lash]

Well according to Jim Harrison (and I agree) it's better on dry land than underwater.

[Ramjet]

Arizona has always been a fertile ground for organized crime from the "Cowboys of Cochise County" to Emprise, the Mafia and more.
Political corruption and OC have always been in bed together. No investigation has ever really gone anywhere because they are all "bought"

The old trite saying "Money talks and Bullshit walks has never been truer.

[wkg_in_bham]

Closely related to a red-light district, a city needs a skid row. Much like sinners, the hard-luck folks will always be with us. Those oh-so-expert planners would leveled “The Deuce” in Phoenix thought they were doing the right thing. As an aside (damn it all – I’m sucked into “Death and Life” again) Jane Jacobs speaks quite fondly of the atmosphere and usage of New York’s skid row parks. Those are parks that actually work – and most don’t – even in New York.

[Cal Lash]

Parks dont work?
Parks dont kill people.
Parks do not work because people do not make them work.
Most of the parks I go by in the "Valley of The Sun" have some to a lot of activity. But then it doesn't rain here.