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Last Updated: Aug 26, 2008 - 1:45:25 PM |
Phoenix News Times 2000 - [Senator McCain's] wife and -- more
important -- his father-in-law, James Willis Hensley, are very wealthy
people. Like his father and grandfather before him, McCain was a career
Navy officer. His earning power and his inheritance were modest. At its
peak, his pay as a captain was about $45,000.
But he retired from the military in 1980, divorced his first wife, wed
Arizona native Cindy Lou Hensley and moved here to plunge into the
world of politics. His first job in Arizona was as a public affairs
agent for Hensley & Company, one of the nation's largest beer
distributors. He was paid $50,000 in 1982 to travel the state, touting
the company's wares. But he was promoting himself as much as he was
Budweiser beer. A better job description might have been "candidate."
In 1982, Cindy drew more than $700,000 in salary and bonuses from
Hensley-related enterprises as her husband was elected to the U.S.
House of Representatives in his first political campaign. . .
>From Day 1, Hensley money has enabled McCain to be a full-time
politician, free from financial concerns. . .
John McCain's political allegiances to liquor purveyors and his
father-in-law's interests are subtle. That narrative is marked by a
pattern of patronage.
The Hensley saga, meanwhile, swirls with bygone accounts of illicit
booze, gambling, horse racing, deceit and crime. James Hensley embarked
on his road to riches as a bootlegger.
It was December 6, 1945. World War II had ended a few months earlier.
Joseph F. Ratliff was just about to wrap up another day as office
manager at United Distributors Company when two of his bosses, Eugene
and James Hensley, paid a visit to Ratliff at the company's Tucson
liquor distribution warehouse around 5 p.m.
The Hensley brothers were partners with a powerful Phoenix businessman
named Kemper Marley, who had cornered a large share of Arizona's
wholesale liquor business after Prohibition was lifted in 1933.
Ratliff had gone to work for United Distributors in September 1944. His
job was to oversee shipments of whiskey into and out of the United
Distributors' warehouse by keeping track of invoices, filing tax and
sales reports with the federal government and monitoring cash flow.
During and after World War II, the sale of whiskey was tightly
regulated by the federal government. Demand for whiskey was high,
particularly on the black market, where prices were more than double
the regulated market price.
"'Well,' Gene Hensley says, 'It is five o'clock, why don't you go home?
It is time to close,'" Ratliff told Assistant United States Attorney
E.R. Thurman in sworn testimony in March 1948.
Ratliff went home.
Upon his return to the warehouse the next morning, Ratliff found a
disturbing sight.
"When the warehouse man came down and opened the warehouse, I started
out through the warehouse to go to the men's room, and I noticed there
was two rows of whiskey there the night before that wasn't on the floor
that morning. So I went back to the office. I thought we had been
robbed."
In his office, Ratliff found another surprise.
"There was a bunch of invoices in my desk that had been made out after
I had left the office, apparently," Ratliff testified.
The invoices appeared to be related to the whiskey -- about 50 cases --
that had disappeared from the warehouse overnight.
Ratliff went outside to empty some trash and noticed "a pile of empty
whiskey cases out there." Tangled up in the pile of boxes were federal
tax serial labels that were supposed to remain with the liquor when
sold to a retailer.
Ratliff recognized the handwriting on the invoices as belonging to
then-25-year-old James Hensley, who had become general manager of the
Tucson operation in June 1945 after a three-year stint in the military.
James Hensley had served as a bombardier on a B-17 and was shot down
over the English Channel on his 13th mission.
Ratliff wasn't sure what was going on until later that day, when James
Hensley returned to his office.
"He came in and paid me for those invoices," Ratliff testified. "Cash
sales."
Ratliff dutifully marked the invoices as paid.
The seven invoices prepared by James Hensley -- after the warehouse was
closed -- indicated the liquor had been sold and delivered to seven
establishments in southern Arizona. . .
In fact, none of the liquor went to the retailers named in the invoices
prepared by James Hensley. Nobody but James Hensley knows where it
really went, and he never told authorities. He declined repeated
requests to be interviewed for this story.
What is certain is that what occurred that December day was standard
operating procedure for the Hensley brothers between April 1945 and
January 1947. During this period, a 1948 federal criminal indictment
charged, the Hensleys made approximately 1,284 false entries related to
the sale of thousands of cases of liquor by their two companies --
United Sales Company in Phoenix and United Distributors in Tucson.
Ratliff's testimony eventually led to James and Eugene Hensley's
conviction on federal conspiracy charges "with the intent and design to
hide and conceal from the United States of America, the names and
addresses of the person or persons to whom the said distilled spirits
were sent, and the prices obtained from the sale thereof."
A federal jury in U.S. District Court of Arizona in March 1948
convicted James Hensley on seven counts of filing false liquor records
in addition to the conspiracy charge. Eugene was convicted on 23 counts
of filing false statements and the conspiracy count. Eugene was
sentenced to one year in prison, and James to six months. Neither
brother testified during the trial, relying instead on their lawyers,
who included Louis B. Whitney, a prominent attorney who served as mayor
of Phoenix from 1923 through 1925.
After a two-week stint in the Maricopa County jail, the men were
released on bond on May 17, 1948, pending an appeal to the U.S. 9th
Circuit. The appeals court affirmed the conviction on February 8, 1949.
Two weeks later, a judge sentenced Eugene to one year in a federal
prison camp near Tucson, but suspended James' sentence, placing him on
probation instead. Both men were fined $2,000. United Sales and United
Distributors were also convicted and fined $2,000.
The criminal convictions had little immediate impact on the brothers'
fortunes.
James Hensley profited handsomely from his association with liquor
magnate Kemper Marley, a man police suspect ordered the 1976 murder of
Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who had written about Marley's
business and political dealings. The man convicted of placing a bomb
beneath Bolles' car testified that Marley also wanted former Arizona
governor and then-attorney general Bruce Babbitt murdered because
Babbitt had filed an antitrust lawsuit against the liquor industry in
1975. (Marley, who died in 1990, was never charged in the Bolles case.
Babbitt is now U.S. Secretary of the Interior.)
By 1955, James Hensley had launched a Budweiser distributorship in
Phoenix, a franchise reportedly bestowed upon him by Marley, who was
never indicted in the 1948 federal liquor-law-violation case -- or a
subsequent one -- despite his controlling financial role in the liquor
distribution businesses.
James Hensley's conviction didn't deter the State of Arizona from
granting him a wholesale liquor license in the mid-1950s. The Arizona
Department of Liquor Licenses and Control turned a blind eye to
repeated liquor-law violations at the company. State liquor regulators
did nothing when James Hensley failed to disclose his federal felony
conviction on a sworn 1988 disclosure statement to the department and
the City of Phoenix.
Today, Phoenix-based Hensley & Company is the nation's
fifth-largest beer wholesaler -- a privately held business that
80-year-old James Hensley still controls. He built the Budweiser
distributorship into at least a $200 million-a-year business, with
annual sales of more than 20 million cases of beer.
James Hensley owns nearly all of the voting stock, and most of the rest
of the closely held securities are in trusts for his grandchildren or
owned by his daughter, 45-year-old Cindy Hensley McCain -- wife of U.S.
Senator and presidential hopeful John McCain. . .
Although Hensley wealth has helped propel McCain's political career,
the senator will never get his hands directly on the Hensley fortune
because of an ante-nuptial agreement he signed before his 1980 marriage.
A centerpiece in McCain's remarkable and sudden rise to national
prominence is his promise of campaign-finance reform.
Yet McCain has relied heavily on the financial contributions from big
corporate donors -- with the liquor and beer industry near the top of
the list. McCain won -- one could say bought -- his first election to
the House of Representatives in 1982 with lavish sums of Hensley beer
money. . .
Since 1982, Hensley & Company employees have donated almost
$200,000 to federal political candidates and campaigns. . .
Liquor spirited from the Hensley brothers' warehouses helped fuel a
lively nightlife at some of the Valley's most exclusive clubs in the
mid-1940s. The Green Gables, the Silver Spur and the Cowman's Club were
recipients of black-market shipments, according to testimony presented
at the 1948 federal trial of the Hensleys and their two companies,
United Sales Company in Phoenix and United Distributors in Tucson.
Jack Baldwin, a salesman and supervisor at United Sales, testified at
the 1948 federal trial that Eugene Hensley regularly instructed him to
draw up false invoices, transfer scores of cases of liquor offsite and
deliver premium whiskeys to selected black-market clients.
Baldwin testified he was ordered by Eugene Hensley in September 1946 to
kick in a door at the United Sales' warehouse on North 19th Avenue and
take five cases of scotch for a black-market sale to the Green Gables.
In other instances, Baldwin testified that he took as many as 50 cases
of whiskey from the United Sales warehouse and stashed them on the back
porch of his central Phoenix home for later delivery to black-market
buyers.
"I can name you 20 deals like that," Baldwin testified. . .
"Why would you make invoices that did not show the true fact
situation?" Assistant U.S. Attorney Thurman asked.
"The liquor went someplace else," Baldwin stated.
"Under whose direction did you make these invoices?"
"Gene Hensley," Baldwin replied.
"After these were made out, these particular invoices, what did you do
with them?"
"I took them home, burned them usually," Baldwin stated. . .
Sometimes the Hensleys sold liquor to unlicensed individuals who would
transport up to 55 cases at a time to states including Oklahoma and
Utah. Carl "Kid" Carter from Ogden, Utah, purchased dozens of cases of
whiskey at a time, loaded them into a late-1930s sedan, covering the
illicit cargo with a blanket before heading home, 600 miles north. . .
While the bootlegging operation was in full swing, the Hensleys and
Marley dissolved their partnerships and created two corporations in
September 1946 -- United Sales Incorporated in Phoenix, and United
Distributors Incorporated in Tucson. At the time of incorporation,
Eugene Hensley, 32, was president of the companies, while James
Hensley, 25, served as secretary. Kemper Marley, 39, was listed as vice
president of both companies.
Despite Marley's title, federal prosecutors stated that Marley had
purchased control of the companies in January 1946.
Over the years, Marley built the companies, which became United
Liquors, into Arizona's largest wholesale liquor distributorship. Along
with his vast land holdings, political, gambling and prostitution ties,
Marley built a fortune worth more than $39.2 million by 1980.
On February 26, 1953, James Hensley once again found himself charged
with federal liquor crimes. This time, the government alleged that
James Hensley and other officers of United Liquor Company and United
Liquor Supply Company falsified records to reduce the company's tax
bill.
On the opening day of the trial in federal court in Tucson, Judge James
A. Walsh granted a motion by Hensley's attorney -- former Maricopa
County Attorney Lynn Laney -- to dismiss all charges against Hensley
and other individuals. The case continued against the two companies.
The government alleged the companies falsely stated that about 400
cases of whiskey were transferred from Tucson to Phoenix on December
30, 1950, and December 30, 1951, to avoid paying higher liquor taxes
levied in Pima County, where Tucson is located. The government charged
that the liquor never left the Tucson warehouses.
On the third day of the four-day trial, Kemper Marley -- owner of
United Liquor and United Liquor Supply -- unexpectedly took the stand
as a defense witness. Prosecutors successfully halted his testimony,
claiming it was immaterial and irrelevant.
Defense attorneys argued that although the liquor was never transferred
to Maricopa County, all taxes were nevertheless paid to Maricopa
County, therefore nothing further was owed. Defense attorney Joseph
Jenckes said the companies were simply trying to meet their tax
obligations in the most practical way, according to an October 17,
1953, story in the Arizona Daily Star.
The next day, a jury acquitted the two companies on all 11 counts.
In December 1952, James Hensley joined his brother Eugene in the
purchase of Ruidoso Racing Association in south central New Mexico.
Prior to the purchase, Eugene Hensley operated a couple of nightclubs
in Phoenix, including Hensley's Horseshoe Bar on Van Buren Street, with
his first wife, Billy.
The New Mexico venture proved to be more trouble for the Hensley
brothers, who became embroiled in a controversy with the New Mexico
Racing Commission over hidden ownership.
The commission was concerned about the Hensley brothers' ties to
Phoenix gambler Clarence E. "Teak" Baldwin (no relation to Jack
Baldwin). The commission asked the New Mexico State Police to
investigate in 1953.
According to a March 26, 1977, article in the Albuquerque Journal, the
1953 New Mexico State Police report stated that Teak Baldwin was a
"bookmaker for leading tracks." According to the Journal article, the
police report stated that the Hensleys' Arizona liquor business
partner, Kemper Marley, "is reputed to be the financial backer for the
bookies. . . ."
The Journal story appeared shortly after a group known as Investigative
Reporters & Editors -- spurred to action by the murder of Don
Bolles -- unleashed a series of 23 stories on organized crime, land
fraud and political corruption in Arizona.
The Journal reported that the 1953 New Mexico State Police
investigation stated that Marley "owned a wire service formerly
operated in connection with bookmaking of the Al Capone gang."
The Journal also reported that the state police report included a
transcript of a phone conversation between an officer in Santa Fe and a
Phoenix police officer who said, "... Our confidential files built up
on Baldwin (and others) was loaned to some officials and never
returned. We've never been able to locate them."
With the police report in hand, the New Mexico Racing Commission
grilled the Hensley brothers in May 1953 about their ties to Baldwin.
While the brothers were forthright in disclosing their liquor business
ties with Marley and their subsequent federal felony convictions, they
told the commission that Teak Baldwin had nothing to do with the track.
Eugene Hensley told the commission in May 1953 that Baldwin steered him
to look at the track as a possible investment. Former commission
chairman Tom Closson told the Hensleys "the commission would not have
Baldwin connected in any way, shape or form down there [Ruidoso
Downs]," the Journal reported.
The Hensleys denied that Baldwin had any interest in the track, the
Journal reported.
But two years later, according to the Journal, records indicated that
Baldwin actually had a one-third stock interest in the track with the
Hensleys. . .
In April 1955, James Hensley sold his interest in Ruidoso Downs, for
which he was listed as secretary-treasurer, and had no apparent
connection to the track thereafter.
Eugene Hensley's problems at Ruidoso Downs were just beginning. In
1963, Eugene Hensley was sued by minority partners for $415,000. The
partners alleged Eugene Hensley used track money to make improvements
to his Scottsdale home, used the track's airplane for personal pleasure
and built and operated a guest house for his personal use. The lawsuit
was settled the same year after Eugene Hensley agreed to return 1,000
shares of Ruidoso Racing Association stock that was by then worth
$350,000.
The civil suit was prelude to an eight-count federal criminal
indictment filed against Eugene Hensley in 1966, alleging income tax
evasion. Eugene Hensley was convicted on all counts in a scandalous
trial that revealed he had purchased several automobiles using track
money and given them to his wife and a girlfriend.
Despite his 1966 conviction and subsequent five-year prison sentence,
Eugene Hensley remained free on bond and continued to control
operations at Ruidoso Downs until the New Mexico Racing Commission
banned him from the track in 1968. After his criminal appeals were
denied, Eugene Hensley entered a federal prison in La Tuna, Texas, in
1969.
That same year, Eugene Hensley sold his remaining interest in the track
to NewCo Industries Incorporated, which immediately signed a 20-year
concession contract with Emprise Corporation of Buffalo, New York.
Emprise had documented ties to organized crime, and was the
concessionaire at Arizona dog tracks. One of the company's strongest
Arizona supporters reportedly was the Hensleys' old business partner --
Kemper Marley.
In the early 1970s, Arizona racing officials began to clamp down on
Emprise after the company was convicted and fined $10,000 in U.S.
District Court in Los Angeles for its hidden ownership in the Frontier
Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The IRE series reported that as a
defendant in that case, Emprise was linked to several prominent
organized crime figures.
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 IRE, 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.
Arizona Republic reporter Don 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.
On June 2, 1976, Bolles was mortally wounded by a car bomb. Before
lapsing into unconsciousness, Bolles uttered the words, "Adamson,
Emprise, Mafia." He died 11 days later.
John Harvey Adamson confessed to luring Bolles to a Phoenix hotel
parking lot and placing a bomb beneath the reporter's car. The bomb,
Adamson testified, was detonated by James Robison, a Chandler plumber.
Adamson testified he was hired to kill Bolles by Max Dunlap, a Phoenix
contractor and close associate of Marley's. Marley had extended a $1
million loan to Dunlap, which had not been repaid. Adamson said Dunlap
hired him to kill Bolles because Marley was upset over Bolles' stories.
Adamson served a 20-year prison sentence and has since been released.
Dunlap was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced in 1994 to
life in prison. Robison was convicted, but his case was later
overturned on appeal and he was acquitted in a 1993 retrial.
In 1981, Marley filed a libel suit against IRE for a 1977 story that
linked Marley to organized crime and the Bolles murder. Marley sought a
"six-figure" award for compensatory damages and a "seven-figure"
punitive award. A jury ruled that Marley had not been libeled by the
stories. However, the jury ruled that IRE had inflicted "emotional
distress" on Marley. The jury awarded Marley $15,000 in punitive
damages, a fraction of the damages he was seeking.
Marley died in 1990 at age 83.
He was never charged in the Bolles case and denied any involvement.
After selling his interest in Ruidoso Racing Association, James Hensley
turned his attention to a wholesale beer distributorship he reportedly
founded in 1955 in Phoenix with 12 employees. . .
Some liquor industry observers say Hensley was given the Budweiser
distributorship by his old business associate Kemper Marley, but a
search of public records has not confirmed this theory. What the
records do show is five decades of steady growth for Hensley's
enterprise under the lax supervision of the Arizona Department of
Liquor Licenses and Control. . .
One can only speculate how a convicted felon who falsified federal
liquor records managed to obtain a state and federal wholesale liquor
license within a few years of his 1949 conviction and 1953 indictment.
But apparently, Hensley did. . .
However, it is extremely unlikely that a person with a similar
conviction today would get a federal liquor license, says Allison
Stevens, ATF Phoenix Area supervisor. . .
State records show James Hensley applied for another liquor license in
1988. This time, Hensley did not disclose his federal conviction when
asked specifically on the form whether he had ever been convicted of a
felony. James Hensley signed the sworn and notarized statement that
warned false information "could result in criminal prosecution.". . .
Hensley & Company is reported to be the 12th largest privately
owned company in Arizona, with nearly 500 employees and a sales and
delivery fleet of more than 300 vehicles, according to a September 1999
article in the trade journal Beverage World. . .
Company records show that as of January 1996 James Hensley controlled
through a trust 2,110 shares of stock, of which at least 1,655 shares
were voting stock. Cindy McCain owned the largest block of stock with
7,436 shares, but only 177 shares were voting.
Her three children, John, James and Meghan, each had 1,370 shares --
including 336 voting shares each -- held in trust. An adopted child,
Bridget, had 600 non-voting shares.
The company placed a value for tax purposes of $1,467 per share on the
stock in 1996, making Cindy McCain's stake in the company worth $11
million. The trusts for the four children are worth about $7 million.
Delgado, meanwhile, controlled 4,572 shares of non-voting stock worth
$6.7 million.
The Hensley & Company stock is only part of the McCain clan's
wealth. According to Senator McCain's financial disclosure statement
for calendar year 1998, Cindy McCain controls more than $1 million
worth of Anheuser-Busch stock that generated between $15,000 and
$50,000 in dividends. Cindy McCain and her children also report owning
real estate in Mesa, Sedona and Yuma worth more than $2.5 million. . .
Senator McCain's personal wealth is tied completely to his wife.
Tom Fitzpatrick, Phoenix New Times, 1992 - McCain is the perfect
example of evil masquerading as good. He made an advantageous marriage
to the daughter of state beer baron Jim Hensley, the Budweiser
distributor. This made him an instant millionaire.
Hensley is a man who understands loyalty. In his earlier days, he and
his brother took falls for his then-boss Kemper Marley. Hensley and his
brother were convicted. Their rewards were exclusive distributor
territories in Phoenix and Tucson. Since then they have become
inordinately wealthy.
Marley, now deceased, was one of the state's richest men. His name
surfaced as the power behind the 1976 car-bomb murder of Arizona
Republic reporter Don Bolles.
At Marley's funeral, Frank Sinatra's signature tune "My Way" was played
by the organist over the objections of the church's pastor. The man
responsible for this unusual tribute was Max Dunlap, whose trial for
Bolles' murder is scheduled to begin next month.
It is no longer fashionable in local journalistic circles to mention
McCain's close friendship with Charlie Keating. It's a shame they had a
falling out. They seemed to have so much in common and enjoyed each
other's company so much.
They met in 1981 when McCain moved to Arizona. Keating was a World War
II pilot. McCain made nine vacation trips to Keating's home in the
Bahamas from 1984 to 1986. The trips were made free of charge on jets
provided by Keating.
Because the ethical violation was so obvious, McCain was eventually
forced to pay $13,433 for the flights to Keating's company, American
Continental Corporation.
He escaped ethical censure because the trips were made while he was a
member of the House of Representatives and the trips didn't come to
light until he was a member of the Senate, which conveniently declared
it had no jurisdiction.
The House couldn't act, either, for the same reason. Keating
contributed $112,000 to McCain's 1982 and 1984 House campaigns and his
1986 Senate run. McCain's father-in-law and his wife also took
advantage of the chance to make a lucrative shopping-center investment
with Keating.
NY Times, 2000 - In his rise to political influence, Mr. McCain,
who had no ties to Arizona until he married Cindy Hensley and moved
here in 1981, also won the critical blessing of the city's business
establishment through his close friendship with another of the state's
power brokers, Darrow Tully, the publisher then of the state's dominant
newspaper, The Arizona Republic. ''Duke'' Tully led an ad hoc group of
business executives and self-appointed political kingmakers known as
the Phoenix 40, whose backing helped Mr. McCain in that first
Congressional race and assured his Senate victory four years later. . .
Mr. Tully was a far different patron from Mr. Hensley. A swaggering,
fun-loving 6-foot-4, he was comfortable with business executives and
politicians alike. Mr. Tully, an accomplished pilot, loved to regale
people with tales of his exploits flying jet fighters in the Korean and
Vietnam wars. His house and office were filled with photographs of him
alongside all manner of military aircraft.
''He'd point to his teeth and say, 'See these? They're steel. I lost
the others when I crashed,' '' recalled Pat Murphy, a former columnist
and editor at The Republic. . .
The Phoenix 40 was an unofficial group made up of the city's leading
businessmen -- bankers, partners from the largest law firms, chief
executives and, of course, executives of newspapers. The group was
created in the early 1970's by Eugene C. Pulliam, the conservative
founder of Central Newspapers and grandfather of former Vice President
Dan Quayle.
The goal was to promote policies that its members felt were good for
the city and state as Arizona expanded from a quiet rural state to a
Sun Belt powerhouse.
It was also the closest thing to a political machine in Phoenix, and
anointment by the Phoenix 40 almost invariably translated into victory
at the polls.
Mr. Merrill, the Arizona State professor and political observer, said
the power was exercised quietly and effectively.
''When you control the major newspaper, the TV stations and the people
who make most of the political contributions,'' Mr. Merrill said, ''you
have enormous influence''
Mr. Tully harnessed that influence to Mr. McCain's political career
from the outset, leapfrogging him over Republicans who had waited
patiently for a shot at Mr. Rhodes's seat in 1982.
''There was a lot of resentment among Mesa Republicans, none of whom
had ever heard of John McCain until he was suddenly the designated
hitter,'' said Terry Goddard, a Democrat and former mayor of Phoenix. .
.
But the newspaper publisher who had helped so much was not there to
savor the victory. The day after Christmas 1985, after rumors began to
circulate that Mr. Tully was not all he claimed, he acknowledged that
he had never served in the military, and he resigned from the newspaper
and left Arizona. But the war hero for whom he had done so much was
well launched on his political career.
The Arizona Republic, 1989 - Sen. John McCain had more than a
constituent relationship with Charles H. Keating, Jr. prior to 1987 . .
. The McCains - sometimes with their daughter and baby sitter - made at
least nine trips at Keating's expense from August 1984 to August 1986
aboard either Keating's American Continental Corporation's jet or
chartered planes and helicopters owned by Resorts International. Three
of the trips were for vacations at Keating's luxurious retreat in the
Bahamas."
Phoenix Gaztte, 1990 - The liquor case is particularly intriguing as it
resulted in criminal charges against Marley's subordinates, James and
Eugene Hensley. If the last name sounds familiar, it's because James is
papa to Cindy McCain, who is wife of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is
infamous lately as a member of the Keating Five . . . Marley also has
been a shadow figure in the 1976 slaying of Republic reporter Don
Bolles. Bolles wrote extensively about Marley's lucky past. And about
how the Hensleys (Marley's managers) bought Ruidso Downs racing track
in New Mexico. He wrote about Eugene Hensley spending five years in
federal prison for a skimming scam. And about the Hensleys selling
their track to a buyer linked with Emprise Corp. And about Marley's
liquor ties with Emprise . . . one of Bolles' final dispatches appeared
as Marley was about to become a member of the Arizona Racing Commission
- the agency that regulates racetracks, including those run at the time
by Emprise . . . the story dispatched Marley's appointment. Two months
later, a car bomb killed Bolles." "Bradley J. Funk, an antique dealer
linked to the 13-year-old Don Bolles murder case through his family's
former ownership of dog-racing tracks, has died of a heart attack,
authorities said Jan. 2 . . . Bolles, 47, a former investigative
reporter with the Arizona Republic, died June 13, 1976, about 11 days
after a dynamite-based bomb blew up beneath his car . . . in his last
statement before lapsing into unconsciousness, he mentioned the Mafia,
John Adamson and Emprise Corp., a Buffalo, N.Y. company with a
far-flung sports empire which once included ownership of the Boston
Bruins hockey team and the former Cincinnati Royals basketball
franchise . . . now known as Delaware North Cos., Emprise was convicted
in 1972 of a federal charge of conspiring to hide Mafia interest in a
Las Vegas, Nev., casino . . . Emprise and the Funk family were partners
in six dog-racing tracks in the state and the Prescott Downs horse
track, and Bolles had ripped their operations in print.
Arizona Republic, 1990 - When reporters called him with
questions last year about previously unknown ties to Keating, an
investment by wife Cindy McCain in a Keating shopping center and trips
to Keating's Bahamas home, McCain went into a rage
Phoenix Gazette, 1990 - Cars, homes and bank accounts of 18
people, including eight state legislators, were confiscated in a civil
racketeering lawsuit that paints a portrait of lawmakers eager to sell
their influence for as little as $660 and as much as $750,000 . . .
Richard Scheffel, another lobbyist indicted but not targeted in the
civil racketeering suit, is reputed to have been paid $20,000 to
identify and approach lawmakers interested in trading votes for money .
. . in a bid to establish his professional credentials with Stedino,
Scheffel is reported to have boasted that '(U.S.) Sen. John McCain's
father-in-law gives money to politicians through him' . . . Bauer, in
his report, said Scheffel claimed that 'each January he receives
$30,000 from the local Anheuser-Busch distributor, Jim Hensley,' adding
that Hensley also supplied him with names of people to list as
contributors
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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