Evening's Empire: The Story of My Father's Murder

When Zachary Lazar was just six years old, his father was shot dead by hit men in a Phoenix parking garage. The year was 1975. How did Ed Lazar, a fun-loving but meticulous accountant, become enmeshed in a multimillion-dollar real-estate scandal? Why had he chosen to testify against his former business partner, a mystery man widely known as "the Godfather of land fraud?" The day before Ed Lazar was scheduled to appear in front of a grand jury, he was killed in a "gangland-style murder," as reported by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News. Evening's Empire, based on interviews and archival research and clarified by scenes imagined in the context of this evidence, is a singular and haunting story of American ambition and its tragic cost.