Bolt Appears in Bombing Hearing

Jim Bolt of Rogers repeated two things on Feb. 10 that he’s done a lot of in the last couple of years — appear in court and complain of chest pains.

Bolt, the former chief operating officer of Springdale’s troubled Golf Entertainment Inc., was called to testify in a preliminary hearing for the murder trial of Terry Nichols — the convicted co-conspirator in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

According to the Tulsa World, Bolt told U.S. District Judge Stephen Taylor that his employee, John Culbertson, had mentioned seeing a photographic slide of the Murrah Building taken at the moment it exploded nine Aprils ago.

Oklahoma detectives raided Culbertson’s Centerville, Va., home in January looking for the image.

Culbertson told the judge on Feb. 11 that a slide showing the Murrah Building just after the blast was “in transit to Oklahoma,” the Tulsa World reported.

Culbertson is allegedly an employee of the Arkansas Chronicle, a former Rogers newspaper now said to be based in Washington, D.C. Bolt testified he was the Chronicle’s managing editor from 1996 to 2000 and that he recently rejoined the business.

Bolt said he had not seen the photo, and that Culbertson described it as being shot from the front of the Murrah Building at a distance of between 100 and 150 feet. The slide, Bolt said he was told, shows a Ryder truck in front of the building.

Bolt Rebuked in Testimony

The Tulsa World stated that Jim Bolt was vague and appeared to contradict himself on the witness stand.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Taylor apparently rebuked Bolt several times during his testimony. Bolt suggested that hiding evidence of the possible photo wouldn’t be a crime if the images had been taken by law enforcement personnel conducting surveillance.

“I cannot imagine any circumstance of anyone taking a photo of the Murrah Building blowing up and sitting on it nearly nine years and that not be a crime,” the judge said. “This is serious business. It’s troubling to the court that I’m hearing these words.”

The Tulsa World reported that Bolt’s testimony was delayed and that he would have to be called back to the stand “after he complained of heart pains and was escorted from the courtroom by deputies. He was taken to a hospital and later released.”

Bolt is due to be back in the McAlester, Okla., courtroom on Feb. 18.

Following an in-depth report about Golf Entertainment by the Arkansas Business Publishing Group, Bolt and another principal in the story filed a libel suit against the company, two of its publications (the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal and Arkansas Business) and three employees. Litigation dragged for more than a year with delay after delay, some caused by Bolt’s complaints that he suffers from a rare heart condition.

Investor Melvin Robinson has since dropped his libel suit, and Bolt’s complaint is automatically stayed by virtue of his recent filing for bankruptcy. Additional litigation between the publishing company and an entity controlled by Bolt, is ongoing.

Bolt and former Golf General Counsel John Dodge have been involved in nearly a dozen legal actions in recent years against a litany of public and private entities and people.