Arizona House passes bill to create memorial for slain journalist Don Bolles

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The Arizona House passed a bill on Monday to honor slain journalist Don Bolles, who was assassinated nearly 50 years ago in Phoenix while investigating a shady land deal.

The proposal, which passed with strong bipartisan support, clears the way for constructing a Bolles memorial at Wesley Bolin Plaza.

The area sits directly across the street from the state Legislature and is home to monuments that remember key parts of Arizona’s history, such as the USS Arizona and the Navajo Code Talkers.

The bill now heads to the Arizona Senate, where a similar proposal stalled last year amid some strong Republican resistance. But this time around, Rep. Selina Bliss, a Republican from Prescott, said she has the support to get the bill passed and sent to the governor’s office for her approval.

Bliss is trying to finish what former state Rep. Jennifer London, a Democrat from Phoenix, started several years ago.

As a lifelong Arizonan, Bliss said Bolles’ murder is an important part of the state’s history that should be remembered.

“When that happened, it rocked our world. It really affected our families, our communities, the fact that this could happen in the United States of America,” Bliss said.

Bolles died in 1976, 11 days after his car was blown up in the parking lot of the Clarendon Hotel in Phoenix.

In response, dozens of reporters from newspapers across the country launched an investigation into organized crime in Arizona.

If the bill is signed into law, public money cannot be used to pay for the monument’s construction. The money would have to come from private sources.

See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it.

Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send it to us here with a brief description.

Copyright 2025 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.