A Look Back

In 1970, when Nathan “Nate” S. Jacobson debuted the Kings Castle resort in Incline Village, Lady Godiva, naked and atop a horse, greeted visitors at the property’s arched entrance.

Five years later, Hyatt Hotels Corp. acquired Kings Castle. The new owner removed and auctioned off all of the themed décor and donated the proceeds to charity. Godiva was among the items.

William “Bill” Anderson, who owned the now defunct Ponderosa Ranch, snatched her up. Sadly, he passed away in 2008, and what happened to Godiva, if anything, between that time and when she moved to the capital city, is a mystery.

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Do you know where she was during that period?

In case you missed it, Part I is available here.

1978-1984

Paul Michael Kodelja, who was about to stand trial on January 4, 1978 for his role in the kidnapping of Reno and Polly Fruzza and the theft of $1.22 million in cash from the First National Bank of Nevada in Las Vegas, was in trouble again. This time it was for purchasing a weapon while under indictment.

He bought the gun for his girlfriend, Linda Naomi Bruno, 36, for her to protect herself from her husband, Thomas Joseph Bruno. Linda said that in August 1977, because of her association with Kodelja, Thomas had beaten her to the extent that she was hospitalized, and he’d threatened to kill the two, the Las Vegas Sun reported (Dec. 3, 1977). Linda also noted that Thomas was involved in “syndicate-type work.”

Previously, Thomas had been the bodyguard of Kings Castle hotel-casino owner Nathan “Nate” S. Jacobson for about two years starting in September 1971. During that stint at the Incline Village-based resort, Thomas had been charged, along with Jacobson, of kidnapping, coercion and false imprisonment for allegedly beating up and holding the keno supervisor, suspected of cheating the keno game, against his will, overnight. (This story is covered at length in the book, A Bold Gamble at Lake Tahoe: Crime and Corruption in a Casino’s Evolution.)

In Las Vegas, Kodelja again was jailed and his bail set at $100,000. To cover it, Linda used her and Thomas’ two homes as collateral.

When the new year came, Kodelja was gone and so was Linda.

Craig Otte

Craig Otte, Kodelja’s reported accomplice in the Nevada crimes, remained in the wind.

Across The Border

A year later, on January 5, 1979, Toronto Metropolitan Police officers arrested a man for exposing himself to women at a local shopping center. In his possession were IDs for five different males with addresses in Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick. A fingerprint check, however, revealed the suspect’s true identity — Paul Michael Kodelja — and that he was wanted by the FBI.

In Kodelja’s Canadian apartment, the police spotted a map on which five banks were circled. That led them to $244,500 in cash ($872,000 today) and about $60,000 worth ($214,000 today) of diamond, gold, silver and platinum jewelry — 11 rings, seven sets of earrings, seven bracelets, four brooches, four necklaces and three sets of cufflinks — in safety deposit boxes. Officers also found Linda in Toronto and $10,000 ($36,000 today) in cash in her purse.

While in the Great White North, “to hide his identity, [Kodelja] paid cash for everything — $8,660 for a new car, $215 a month for the apartment and $1,001 for season tickets to baseball games,” noted The Lethbridge Herald (Jan. 15, 1979). “His next step was to be plastic surgery in Switzerland, and finally a life of luxury on a South Sea island.”

After a year on the run, Kodelja and Linda were extradited to Nevada. Subsequently, Kodelja pleaded guilty to the robbery and extortion charges and, ultimately, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

As for Linda, whether she was charged and/or convicted of any crime(s), is unknown, but she and Thomas got divorced in November of that year.

Aloha From Hawaii

Kona police arrested Craig Otte at the island’s airport in June 1980 and returned him to The Silver State. He’d evaded capture for three years.

The fugitive accepted a plea deal and received two consecutive sentences, one for the Nevada kidnapping-robbery and the other for the 1975 Los Angeles bank robbery. He appealed, asserting that his sentences should’ve been concurrent based on the recommendation in the plea agreement. However, in 1984, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disagreed, and thus, his back-to-back prison terms stood.

Sources

Hostess (princess)

1970-1975

The doorman was a knight in armor; the maître d’, a prince; the dining room hostess, a princess … Each and every one of the 900 or so employees at Kings Castle, even the phone operators, wore a costume while at work.

Kings Castle, the brainchild of Nathan “Nate” S. Jacobson, debuted in Incline Village on Lake Tahoe in Nevada in 1970. The work uniforms were just another extension of the English royalty motif that permeated the resort.

Eye-Catching Fashion

The costumes boasted vibrant colors — deep orange, Gainsborough blue, gold and silver — and , according to their famous designer Michel Fresnay, a “mod-medieval” style  (Reno Evening Gazette, July 7, 1970).

Fabrics primarily were crêpes and an imported French silk cotton used on both its shiny and matte sides. Embellishments included pearls, brass, horsehair, gold braided headdresses for the men, tiaras for the women, faux chain mail and leather.

Maître d’ (prince)

Tommy Papagna recalled wearing a court jester costume, a long-sleeved lavender top with a large collar and cuffs shaped like crowns, both yellow. He was a roulette, 21 and baccarat dealer in Kings Castle’s casino during 1973 and 1974.

“I liked wearing the costumes because they were comfortable,” he said (March 2018).

Not Just Any Designer

Jacobson chose and commissioned Fresnay to create the costume series. Fresnay, age 39 at the time and a graduate of the Beaux Arts Academy in Paris, France, had become renowned after designing Marlene Dietrich’s gowns for her appearance at the Olympia Theatre in 1962. 

Sources

1970-1975

More than nine centuries after her purposeful and likely shocking stunt* in Coventry, England, Lady Godiva provoked controversy at a hotel-casino on Lake Tahoe’s North Shore.

When Kings Castle debuted in Incline Village in 1970, a nude Lady Godiva astride a horse and flanked by two medieval, sword-wielding sentinels (all replicas, of course) welcomed guests at the resort entrance. Situated in the archway of a tall, stone wall, the long-haired beauty appeared to be about to pass through a gate and cross a drawbridge.

In Poor Taste

A contingent of Northern Nevadans considered the Lady Godiva statue offensive, presumably because the subject was naked. That sentiment extended to other elements of Kings Castle, too, including the nude revue FLESH featuring topless showgirls performed there and the “Thy Kingdom Come” sign outside the hotel.

The Nevada resort, inside and out, bore the look and feel of England’s royal architecture during its Tudor period, about 1485 to 1603, however, the real Lada Godiva had predated that by hundreds of years, having made her splash in 1040. As such, she wasn’t emblematic of the Tudor era, so why she was at Kings Castle in the first place isn’t clear. Perhaps the fact that both she and the Tudor dynasty were English was enough for then proprietor Nathan “Nate” S. Jacobson to connect the two.

Minimizing Her Effect

When Kings Castle came under new ownership, that of Jud D. McIntosh, in 1973, he sought to change the resort’s image to a family-friendly one and, thus, had Lady Godiva clothed.

Even clad in apparel, the English noblewoman only remained there two more years.

Doesn’t Fit In

After The Hyatt Corp. acquired Kings Castle in 1975 and renamed it Hyatt Lake Tahoe, it eradicated all signs of the royalty motif, transforming the facilities back to one that blended with the natural surroundings; their first iteration The Sierra Tahoe (1964 to 1966) had been designed with that very intent.

Only 1.5 months after assuming control of the hotel-casino, Hyatt auctioned off all of the medieval décor, including Lady Godiva, and donated the proceeds to the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society. As a result, Lady Godiva’s new home became Bill Anderson’s Ponderosa Ranch, a nearby theme park based on the television show Bonanza (it closed in 2004).

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* In 1040, Lady Godiva implored her husband Leofric, the Lord of Coventry, to reduce or eliminate the taxes he’d levied recently, as she found them oppressive. Knowing she was modest, he agreed to lift them if she rode her horse naked through the town’s streets. To his surprise, she did just that, after getting the local citizens to agree to not watch her carry out the challenge.

Sources

1975

In the spring, Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, a Las Vegas oddsmaker and bookie, punched, knocked down and kicked casino magnate, Nathan Jacobson, in a Caesars Palace hallway in a confrontation over a debt he claimed Jacobson owed him, so alleged Jacobson in his battery lawsuit against Snyder.

A witness told police they saw Snyder hit Jacobson’s jaw with a right hook, felling him. Jacobson had been part owner and president of the hotel-casino in the mid-1960s; Snyder had done public relations for the property then. The disputed debt was for a business deal — perhaps past gambling monies or wages owed.

The week after filing his suit, the 125-pound, 60-year-old Jacobson publicly challenged Snyder, 58, who weighed 185 pounds, to a boxing match, proposing the event’s proceeds go to charity.

Snyder’s response? “I’ll have no comment concerning anything as asinine as him or that.”

Two years later, after Snyder began his stint on the CBS Sunday morning show, “The NFL Today,” predicting the results of each week’s upcoming football games, a hearing concerning the charges took place in Sin City. Jacobson, however, at the time lobbying for a new $60 million hotel-casino in Spain, didn’t show.

The judge dismissed the misdemeanor charges against Snyder.

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