In the wee Sunday morning hours of May 4, employees closed The Tavern after a busy Saturday night of patrons gambling, dining and dancing to live music. The place was bereft of people except for the night watchman.

Suddenly, around 5:15 a.m., he noticed flames inside. He ran to the cabin behind the club and retrieved the orchestra’s saxophone player who was just about to go to bed. The two men battled the blaze with fire extinguishers, unsuccessfully, as it already had become unmanageable. They grabbed three saxophones and hurried outside.

The Devastating Fury

All of the city’s firemen arrived at the property, at the intersection of hen U.S. Highway 40, also called the Verdi Highway, and Second Street, seven minutes later. In the meantime, a strong wind had whipped the flames into a conflagration.

With the structure too far gone to be saved when they got to the scene, the firefighters focused on preventing the blaze from spreading to and igniting neighboring structures. They blasted the fire with water for 6.5 hours. Lookie-loos gathered and watched the demise.

“The dry, frame building, finished on the outside with pine slabs on which the original bark remained, burned rapidly,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (May 5, 1941). “One of Reno’s oldest and best known nightclubs” as described by the Nevada State Journal (May 5, 1941), was no more.

The fire destroyed the building and nearly everything inside. The unsalvageable assets included gambling tables and paraphernalia for craps, 21, roulette and slot machines; the bar and kitchen equipment; the $3,000 (about $54,000 today) liquor inventory in the basement; and numerous musical instruments, including three pianos, drums, a trumpet, guitar and clarinet.

Only the safe and its contents — sacks of silver and currency and documents — survived.

Victor Partipilo, The Tavern manager and co-owner with his wife Mary Dormio Partipilo, told the press the business’ current loss amounted to at least $30,000 ($541,000), but more than $100,000 ($2 million) had been spent on the club over the previous nine years.

Victor told the press he intended to rebuild and reopen the nightclub on the same site but didn’t. Instead, he and a partner, Brownie Paretti, debuted and ran the El Tavern Auto Court and Coffee shop there.

A Curious Trend

The Tavern wasn’t the only popular Northern Nevada gambling night spot that had burned down during the first decade of open gambling in the state.

Fire also annihilated the Willows, also on the Verdi Highway, in June 1932 when it was being renovated for a reopening, the Country Club in 1936 and the Cal-Neva Lodge, when closed during the off season, in 1937. Only the Cal-Neva was resurrected.

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Photo: from the Nevada Historical Society

Sources

In its July 1966 raid of Kress Manufacturing Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents seized a treasure trove of crooked gambling equipment that seemed headed to various Nevada casinos.

The haul included “hundreds of decks of marked cards and hundreds of pounds of crooked dice” (Nevada State Journal, July 27, 1966). The latter contained stamped logos of various major casinos in Las Vegas, Reno, Lake Tahoe and Elko along with smaller clubs throughout The Silver State. They included the:

Dunes — Las Vegas
Louisiana Club — Las Vegas
New Frontier — Las Vegas
Stardust — Las Vegas
Golden Bank — Reno
Riverside Hotel — Reno
Commercial Hotel — Elko
Crumley Hotel — Elko
El Bo Room — Wells
Cal-Neva Lodge – Crystal Bay (Lake Tahoe)

Agents also confiscated various other implements used to cheat at gambling. Among them were metal filings and discs used to weight dice; arm mirror manipulators and glasses used to read marked cards; holdout devices to secret away a desirable card for later use; magnets and magnetic coils used to control dice when rolled; and switches and relays used in rigging equipment like roulette wheels.

The search also turned up Kress invoices that showed the Tulsa gaming equipment manufacturer shipped its products to establishments throughout the U.S. Recipients included the Stardust and Riviera hotel-casinos in Las Vegas and the Citizens Club in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Casinos Deny Wrongdoing

As soon as the news of the search and seizure went public, proponents of Nevada gambling reacted.

Officials from the Riviera, Stardust, Louisiana Club, Riverside, Dunes and the Commercial Hotel all publicly denied using any kind of cheating device. They never ordered gambling equipment from Kress Manufacturing, they said. In fact, they never heard of it.

“I never knew [Kress] existed until right now. This comes to me out of the clear blue sky,” said James Lloyd, president of Riverside Hotel Inc. However, he continued, “This happens lots of times. Some of these companies make crooked equipment to sell to crossroaders who try to cheat the house.”

State Agency Weighs In

Edward “Ed” Olsen, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), the state’s gambling investigative arm, publicly made four points.

1) This happened before (which was true) and, thus, there is no cause for alarm. 

2) History shows that such cheating paraphernalia is not for Nevada casinos to swindle their customers with but, instead, it’s for individual career cheaters, or crossroaders, to use to cheat the gambling houses

3) To err on the side of caution, though, the NGCB will look into whether or not any of the state’s casinos ordered rigged equipment, but sending gaming agents to Tulsa isn’t necessary.

4) The Golden Bank Club, the El Bo Room and Crumley Hotel, the logos of which were on some of the found dice, no longer offer gambling or are out of business (this was true). The El Bo has been closed for 10 years.

Newspapers Take Side

When the Las Vegas Sun reported the news of the found cache of illegal gambling devices, it used the biased headline, “Foil Plot to Cheat Casinos.” It explained what that meant with a slanted lead, or opening line: “A national plot to cheat top casinos throughout Nevada was uncovered yesterday by the FBI in Tulsa, Okla.” (July 27, 1966).

Reno’s Nevada State Journal published an op-ed piece that refuted any possible merit to the notion some Nevada casinos cheated their customers. It read: “The gamblers and the state gaming officials know that the Tulsa dice were intended for use against the Nevada casinos. So, from a standpoint of the casinos being innocent of buying cheating gambling devices, there is no question. They just simply don’t do it” (July 18, 1966).

“Anyone who knows anything about gambling, however, knows immediately that the implication that the bigger Nevada gambling houses may be buying crooked dice or cards to cheat their patrons is just plain ridiculous,” the writer went on. “That the casinos, and particularly the big casinos, would risk, their licenses, representing millions of dollars in investment, by using crooked playing equipment is beyond comprehension.”

Also, the writer called out the FBI for intentionally misleading the public to think, by not saying otherwise in its report of the Kress raid, that the crooked equipment was intended for casinos not crossroaders.

An Opposing View

Op-ed writer Paul Harvey for The Ada Evening News in Oklahoma purported that Nevada’s gambling industry wasn’t as squeaky clean as it wanted the country to believe. In a published piece titled “No Gamble,” he wrote:

“Las Vegas is not going to incriminate itself. We are going to learn nothing new from this recent self-investigation. A hearing where the bosses are not subpoenaed and the witnesses are not under oath and the sessions are secret could hardly be anything but a whitewash. Accusers say the games are rigged and the cream is skimmed by the underworld before the casinos compute their taxable income, but you can hardly expect the State Gaming Commission to indict itself.

“We’d all heard the naive say, “Mathematical odds on cards, craps and roulette favor the house: they don’t have to cheat!’ Now the FBI has shown us that they do anyway. But the swindle goes on and the suckers stand in line and the casinos continue their business as usual” (Sept. 13, 1966).

Next week in Part II, read about the gambling investigation that led to the Kress raid, the indictment of 15 people including a Las Vegas-based dice maker and the legal outcomes for the key players.

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Louisiana Club chip photo: from the Museum of Gaming History’s Chip Guide

Sources

1936

A man walked into the Greenleaf & Crosby jewelry store in New York’s Rockefeller Center at about 11 a.m. on Monday, January 6. Two others followed through the other entrance. “This is a stickup,” one of them said.

He ordered the two salesmen there, Walter Gibson and Robert Mercadal, to sit and not turn their heads. With the other person present, a colleague from another company, he had his accomplices bind, gag and handcuff him to a table leg in the back room.

The thieves took from the cases the most valuable diamond pieces — one, a pendant, was valued at about $35,000 ($652,000 today). The trio got away with about $125,000 ($2.3 million today) worth of merchandise.

After the six minute long robbery, Gibson and Mercadal identified Frank Frost, by picking his photo out of mugshot books, as being one of the robbers and the trio’s leader, the one who gave the orders.

The Law Comes A-Calling

Three months later, Reno, Nevada police arrested Frost at his home on April 8 and confiscated an unloaded revolver they found in his wife Dorothy’s room. Before Frost went willingly and unarmed, he telephoned Jack Sullivan, the manager of the Bank Club casino, owned by local gambler-Mobsters William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay.

Sullivan, a close Graham and McKay associate, arranged for an attorney for Frost (William McKnight) and raised and paid his $10,000 ($186,000 today) bail. A now free Frost was to be taken to New York to answer to charges there, but detectives couldn’t find him. Frost had chosen to hide such so that could stay in Reno for an upcoming habeas corpus hearing* that his attorney had requested and, simultaneously, protect his bail and stay out of jail. After some clever legal moves, Frost turned himself in and, again, was released on bail.

A Constructed Alibi?

At the hearing start on Monday, April 20, Frost kicked off a parade of about 40 people who would testify on his behalf. In contrast, the state of New York would present a single witness. The defendant recounted what he’d done up to, including and after January 6, 1936, the day of the heist, in which he claimed he hadn’t been involved.

Frank Frost

January 4: According to Frost, he and Graham left Reno’s Grand Central Garage in the morning and headed to Sacramento, California. They put chains on their vehicle’s tires in Truckee and later removed them at Baxter’s Camp. Once at their destination, they hung out at the Equipoise Club and stayed the night at the Senator Hotel.

January 5: Frost and Graham visited the Capital Clothing Company, where Frost bought three hats and, later, the two bet on some horse races. In the afternoon, they set out for Reno, first stopping on the way at the Rainbow Tavern and later at the Soda Springs Hotel for dinner with two of Graham’s friends. There, Frost phoned Dorothy to check in. Back in Reno, the men drove to Graham’s house, where Dorothy was staying with Graham’s wife. The Frosts drove in Graham’s car to the George Wingfield, Sr.-owned Golden Hotel, their place of residence at the time.

January 6: Frost walked to the Riverside Hotel to pick up some papers and while there, ran into Charles Mayer, a mining prospector with whom Frost had visited various properties. The two discussed possibly meeting up later to take another trip. Frost then went to the Bank Club, bet on a horse named Tamalpais racing at Santa Anita and when it won, collected his winnings. Afterward, he received the lease on a house he and Dorothy were interested in and later discussed it with rental agent, Maurice Burman. At night, Frost, back at the Golden, played cards in the bar room, and chatted with two men.

January 7: Frost signed the lease at Burman’s office, paid two months’ rent and applied for phone and electricity at the house. 

“Were you in New York on January 6,” McKnight asked him.
“No, sir,” Frost answered.
“Were you in New York any time after that?”
“No, sir.”

Graham testified next, saying he’d known Frost for years, having met him in New York. Frost had come to Reno in 1931 for the Baer-Uzcudun boxing match and, subsequently, the two met up a few times in San Francisco. Graham corroborated Frost’s account of their Sacramento trip and said he’d seen Frost at the Bank Club on January 6.

Next, six witnesses from California testified, at Graham’s request. He paid their expenses and even gave one an additional $20. The slew of others who took the stand collectively confirmed details Frost had testified to, and several reported having seen him at various times between January 4 and 7.

On the hearing’s third and final day, Gibson, one of the Greenleaf & Crosby salesmen, testified against Frost. He described the start of the robbery, saying, “I turned and faced him, and my eyes never left him. He directed me what to do — go over to a table and sit down,” he recalled (Reno Evening Gazette, April 23, 1936). Then “I was warned not to turn my head; what went on behind me was a matter of conjecture. My reaction [to the robbery] was not one of fear but was more of bewilderment— I was slightly stunned.”

When Gibson pointed out Frost in the courtroom, Frost interjected, “Look me in the eye when you say that. Look me straight in the eye.”

Gibson continued, “but it was apparent that he was very nervous. He spoke rapidly, and while he related his story, Foster continued to glare at the witness,” the Reno Evening Gazette reported (April 22, 1936).

After two hours of cross-examination by McKnight, Gibson looked right at Frost and said, “I know the man sitting before me is the man who came into the store that morning” (Nevada State Journal, April 23, 1936).

Judge Thomas F. Moran

The opposing attorneys presented their final arguments, and Judge Thomas F. Moran ruled. He made the writ of habeas corpus permanent.

“From the evidence introduced by some reputable citizens of Reno,” he said, “I am led to believe the petitioner was not in New York on the morning of January 6.”

“Frost’s extradition to New York was blocked by a habeas corpus procedure,” noted the Nevada State Journal (Sept. 11, 1953). “It was the first of several legal moves which in later years prevented numerous notorious figures from being returned from Nevada to other states to face criminal charges.”

Eventually, New York dismissed the charges against Frost. The federal government could’ve pursued the charge they previously had filed against him of fleeing across a state border to avoid prosecution of an alleged felony, but it didn’t.

Had Frost been involved in the robbery of Greenleaf & Crosby, he got off scot-free.

Shady Intervention For Frost

Seventeen years later, in 1953, Frost wanted to explain away to Nevada gambling regulators his prior arrests for carrying an unconcealed weapon and for the jewelry store robbery. Regarding the latter, he had in his possession a letter that Sullivan had obtained when recently in New York and, by happenstance, Cartier’s, the jewelry store where former Greenleaf & Crosby salesman, Gibson, now worked. The letter was written by Gibson and indicated when he’d identified Frost as one of the 1936 robbers, he’d mistaken him for someone else and was sorry for his error.

Frost explained to the Nevada State Journal that Sullivan, while in Cartier’s, mentioned he was from Reno, and this led to the subject of the robbery, Gibson volunteering he’d misidentified Frost and then him giving Sullivan the letter.

Underhanded Tit For Tat?

Why did Graham and Sullivan seemingly go out of their way to help Frost? Yes, they reportedly were friends, but the extent to which they went for Frost suggests something larger at play. Perhaps Graham and/or Sullivan had put Frost up to robbing the jewelry store. Maybe one or more people in the Reno Mobsters’ circle owed Frost, perhaps for one or more favors or unpleasant jobs he’d done for them.

Two mysterious events occurred in Northern Nevada that fit the timeline and that might’ve been the outcome of those favors.

Suspicious Vanishing Of Key Witness

The first was the March 23, 1934 disappearance of Renoite Roy Frisch, who was to be the prosecution’s primary witness in Graham and McKay’s upcoming trial for swindling investors out of thousands of dollars via the mail. Frisch was the head cashier at Wingfield’s Riverside Bank, through which Graham and McKay had made their exploitive transactions.

The duo’s initial mail fraud trial resulted in a hung jury. (The two would be convicted in their third trial in 1938 and would go to the U.S. Penitentiary, Leavenworth in August 1939.) The prevailing theory about Frisch’s going missing is that “Baby Face Nelson,” né Lester Gillis, friend of Graham and McKay, killed Frisch and disposed of his body. Perhaps, instead, Frost had been the actual perpetrator. Murder seemed to be part of his criminal repertoire. In 1934, Frost allegedly had been living in Los Angeles at the time, an ideal cover for Frisch’s disappearance as Reno police wouldn’t have known about Frost and, thus, wouldn’t have suspected he’d been involved.

Sketchy Demise Of Miner, Gambler

The other suspicious happening was the death of Reno resident Art Zeller, in his 50s, who never returned from a trip to meet up with Nevada prospector, Tom Dalton, and Dalton’s mining camp near Winnemucca Lake on March 16, 1936. Before he set out that Monday morning, he told Frank Golden, the manager of Wingfield’s Golden Hotel, where Zeller lived, where he was going and that he’d return in the afternoon. However, Golden didn’t notify police that Zeller was missing until 10:30 p.m. Thursday; by that time, he was dead already, it would turn out.

On Friday, Washoe County Sheriff Ray Root and others began searching for Zeller. They discovered his abandoned Buick about 500 yards northeast of Winnemucca Lake and noted its clutch was damaged. From there, they traced footprints, presumably Zeller’s, for 30 miles but lost the trail.

The sheriff discovered Zeller’s frozen body about 10 miles to the southeast of the lake on Monday morning. The lawman hypothesized that Zeller had gotten stranded in the deep sands, had begun walking southward but after a few miles, perhaps confused and/or lost, had started wandering, “the trail sometimes leading to the shore of the lake, and at other times far into the desert” (Reno Evening Gazette, March 23, 1936). Root calculated that Zeller had traversed about 55 miles on foot.

Among the expected items in his pockets — cash, car keys, notebook, etc. — was a small, unlabeled brown pharmacy bottle containing a few drops of amber-colored liquid. Had someone replaced his medicine with something that would render him confused or delirious or, worse, slowly take his life?

Though Root ruled out foul play and the coroner’s jury determined Zeller succumbed from exposure, his death didn’t make sense entirely. For one, he had several years of experience scouting out mining properties. Two, Dalton had given Zeller a detailed map of the route to his property, which included the mile count at every turn. Dalton also had warned Zeller about the sand, telling him his car had stalled in it two weeks earlier. Further, one could see the highway from the place Zeller’s car was found, Dalton said.

“If he had walked west for 17 miles, he would have gotten on the Gerlach Highway,” Dalton told the Reno Evening Gazette (March 27, 1936).

When Zeller died, Frost had been living in Reno for four months and hadn’t been arrested yet for the New York jewelry heist. Oddly, since the Chicago Mobster had moved to Reno, he’d taken regular trips to mining properties with Zeller’s partner, Charles Mayer. Why suddenly had Frost been so interested in mining?

At the time of his passing, Zeller had been funding the excavation of a tunnel on the Manitouwoc property south of Quartz Mountain in Nevada’s Nye County. In the early 1920s, Wingfield, a miner, too, had expressed interest in Quartz Mountain after a new silver-lead discovery had been made there. That reportedly had led to a mad rush to the area, but mining had been short-lived because the deposit had been deemed shallow. Had Wingfield wanted Zeller out of the picture for some reason related to Manitouwoc or to mining?

Zeller also had been running roulette at Incline Village’s Cal-Neva Lodge, then owned by Graham and McKay and the casino run by Northern California Mobster, Elmer “Bones” Remmer. Police discovered a roulette wheel rigging device and a large opium supply in Zeller’s hotel room after his death. Had Zeller been murdered over something to do with gambling or drug dealing?

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* A writ of habeas corpus, which translates in English to “produce the body,” is a court order mandating that an official, such as a warden but in this case, the Washoe County district attorney, deliver an imprisoned individual to the court and show a valid reason for their detention.

Photo from Pond5.com: Diamonds by ivan_kuprevich

Sources