The Unholy Murder of Ash Wednesday (PDF)

Erie, Pennsylvania; January 3, 1983: Are you ready for some football? Frank "Ash Wednesday" Dovishaw was more than ready that bitterly cold Monday night. He didn't really care who won or lost the last National Football League game of the regular season. But the man also called "Bolo" did indeed care about local sports betting on the nationally-televised pro game, and more specifically about his "take" on the action. Frank—or "Ash Wednesday" or "Bolo." He had many nicknames and aliases. He was a bookmaker. Not just a garden variety illegal numbers and sports-betting bookie. In partnership with an admitted mob hit man, he ran Northwestern Pennsylvania's most lucrative bookmaking operation, one that easily handled hundreds of thousands of dollars over a busy college bowl and professional football weekend. He was king of the local action. Unfortunately for Bolo, he would never see football that night; nor would he take another bet. Just hours before kickoff, begging for mercy on his knees, Frank Dovishaw lost not a wager, but his life. The execution-style gangland murder set off a series of events for Erie's top homicide investigator that would span nearly seven years, touching upon virtually every aspect of the lakeside city's dark underbelly, and reaching from Pennsylvania to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia and Florida. Along the way, it became the story of dirty cops, hit men, drug dealers, crooked lawyers, and co-conspirators who abandoned omerta, their code of silence. Yet, despite the many obstacles and detours, DiPaolo's unrelenting quest to identify Dovishaw's killers could not be stopped. Many of the acts DiPaolo encountered were stunningly vicious. Yet other acts, and especially those who inflicted them, would be almost humorous if not so jaw-dropping, brutally true. Here is the extraordinary true story of Dominick DiPaolo, a persistent, unyielding veteran cop who refused to quit through death threats, bribery attempts, false leads and sidetracks, while tenaciously following clues and suspects, from "made" men and wannabes, burglars and armed robbers, arsonists and hired killers, cop and union leader killings, to culmination of the Unholy Murder of Ash Wednesday.