McDonough

1934-1935

An argument between two underworld men devolved into violence during a dance endurance competition in Hollywood, California on April 14, 1934.

Explosion Of Rage

At 7 a.m., the 21th consecutive hour of the walk-a-thon,* competing dancers sluggishly moved about the Winter Garden Auditorium floor. Mobster James “Socks” McDonough, among the spectators, sat at a table in a far corner, playing craps with some buddies.

Suddenly, angry shouting erupted and soon after, gunshots rang out, seven of them.

McDonough slumped in his chair. Chaos ensued.

Emergency personnel rushed the critically injured man to Georgia Street Receiving Hospital where he received emergency treatment for through-and-through bullet wounds to the chest and thighs. After, he was transferred to General Hospital. Reportedly, he had 15 scars from previous gunshots.

The Criminal Life

He likely had gotten those during his years as an alleged member of the Dean O’Banion** (né Charles Dean O’Banion) and Bugs Moran’s (né George Clarence Moran) North Side Gang in Chicago, Illinois. At the time of the walk-a-thon, McDonough had been in Los Angeles for about three years and continuing his criminal ways. At one point he’d been the city’s Public Enemy No. 1.

As such, police had questioned him frequently in connection with various crimes. In 1932, McDonough had gone to trial for allegedly participating in the $50,000 ransom kidnapping of E.L . “Zeke” Caress, betting commissioner at Agua Caliente, but the case again the Chicagoan was dismissed.

Hints Of Mob Involvement

Three to four hours after the potentially fatal incident, a citizen and former U.S. deputy marshal, H.W. Ballard, reported to police a car driving erratically in his neighborhood, about three miles from the Winter Garden.

An officer dispatched to the area discovered the reported car, parked, with actor Thomas O’Rourke, 37, behind the wheel. Lee Moore, 35, bookmaker, former prizefighter and previous bodyguard for professional boxer Jack Dempsey, was passed out in the back seat. When searched, Moore was found to have a small automatic pistol on his person. The officer took both men to the police station.

Faulty Memory, Denial

By this time, detectives working the McDonough case deduced, after hearing witness accounts, that Moore probably was the perpetrator. (McDonough knew who’d shot him but wouldn’t name the man.) On questioning, Moore said he was drunk and didn’t remember anything. O’Rourke relayed he and Moore had gone to the Winter Garden after attending the Hollywood Legion Stadium prize fights, but he didn’t recall a fight or shooting.

Moore was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon with the intent to commit murder and O’Rourke, for drunk driving. While in jail, awaiting trial, Moore served a previously received 30-day sentence for illegal gambling.

Underhanded Tactic

A few days after Moore’s arrest, Ballard received an anonymous phone call in which a man told him, “You better lay off if you don’t want to get yours.” Later, while the local resident was driving, a car pulled up alongside him, and the men inside verbalized a similar threat.

Meanwhile, McDonough remained alive, though barely.

“The shock from the seven wounds, police surgeons stated, probably will prove fatal unless the victim has unusual recuperative powers,” reported the Los Angeles Times (April 16, 1934.)

Mum’s The Word

By the time of Moore’s trial, in July, McDonough defied the odds and pulled through.

In court, nine witnesses, on the stand, suddenly couldn’t remember any specifics of the shooting despite having provided detailed accounts to detectives before. The Times described this phenomenon as “gangland’s shadow” dogging the witnesses. One of them recanted his entire former statement. O’Rourke pleaded the fifth. McDonough testified he didn’t know who’d shot him and denied ever having seen Moore before court.

Who’d gotten to these witnesses? It seems Moore was connected to a criminal entity, but which one? The Los Angeles Mob?

Because of their silence, none of the witnesses placed Moore at the scene of the crime. However, ballistics experts, determined the gun found on the defendant was the weapon that had been used, after comparing it to slugs and the bullet retrieved from the Winter Garden.

The defense countered this fact by having Moore claim he’d purchased the gun at 7:30 a.m., roughly a half-hour after the shooting, “from a guy about 6 feet 8 inches tall in a Hollywood Boulevard beer hall” (Los Angeles Times, July 31, 1934).

Out Of Bogus Stories

Despite the setback for the prosecution, and no motive for the shooting made apparent, Moore was found guilty. The judge sentenced him to one to 14 years to be served in San Quentin State Prison.

The convicted man appealed the court’s decision and lost. He continued to fight, though, taking his case to the Supreme Court of California.

Best You Move On

In September, Los Angeles Captain of Detectives Bert Wallis called McDonough into his office. There, Wallis suggested the Mobster might want to leave the city or he’d likely get arrested for vagrancy. McDonough agreed to go. Wallis helped him procure a train ticket.

That night, he left on the Santa Fe, headed to Chicago. The press captured his departure.

What Comes Next

The following year, 1935, in May, the California supreme court reversed the lower court’s decision, on grounds the evidence on which Moore had been convicted had been insufficient. He was freed.

It wasn’t long, though, until he was in trouble again. He was arrested a year later for involvement in the July 1935 robbery of the Monte Carlo gambling ship.

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* Jack Kearns, current and former manager of professional boxers Mickey Walker and Jack Dempsey, respectively, promoted the event.

** Dean O’Banion headed Chicago’s North Side gang during the 1920s until rival Mobsters murdered him in 1924. Bugs Moran took over for O’Banion. Throughout the decade, the North Side Gang violently fought the South Side Gang, helmed first by Johnny Torrio then Al Capone. In 1929, seven of Moran’s men were duped and gunned down by Mobsters dressed as policemen, suspected to be South Side Gang members, in what is known as the Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Sources

“Clint Stone” — Who am I really? / Photo by Geno Munari

In the autobiographical book, Cheater, the author Clint Stone (most likely an alias), paints himself as a lifelong gambling cheat. His specialty is mucking, using sleight of hand, one hand in his case, to introduce a card into play while removing another. A self-proclaimed crossroader, he’d plied his craft around the world.

“I was a cheater. A predator. Casinos my prey. I was hunter and hunted,” Stone described.

The book covers a brief period in midlife for Stone, in the early 1990s, following his release from federal prison, where he served five years “because I wouldn’t drop a dime,” he wrote. Once out, he makes Las Vegas his home and plans the ultimate casino heist of his decades-long career. In the meantime, he and various associates pull off various cheats, of gambling houses and high rollers. All are fully detailed, from prep to conclusion.

The book is fascinating and a fun read, but is it true? It Really Happened! investigated, and here’s what we learned.

The Real Deal

Las Vegas businessman, Geno Munari, watched Stone demonstrate his card skills, when the two met to discuss Munari possibly publishing Cheater. Munari subsequently published the book on Amazon.

Stone’s performance impressed Munari, a former dealer and magician well-trained and -experienced in detecting card cheats.  

“His one hand muck for blackjack, making a total of 12 into a total of 20 or even a blackjack (ace and a 10 valued card) is undetectable,” Munari wrote in Cheaters‘ introduction.

Munari videotaped Stone in action. Watch it here and decide for yourselves. DB: Find the video.

Down To The Nitty-Gritty

Many of the specific places and dates in the book aren’t accurate. For instance, Stone mentions a significant life event involving the Humboldt Hotel in Winnemucca at a certain point in time, which can’t be true as it had burned down prior and hadn’t been rebuilt. He didn’t use people’s real names either.

Perhaps Stone changed these details to keep himself and his accomplices from being identified or worse. This is understandable, but if so, perhaps he should’ve informed readers this is the case.

***SPOILER ALERT*** More significantly, the book climaxes with Stone and crew taking a casino for a multimillion slot machine jackpot. Did that really happen?

It may have!

Similar Jackpot Win

In Cheater, Stone describes his target as a $25 million jackpot slot machine in an unnamed casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

“I wanted that jackpot,” he wrote. “My desire to take off a multimillion dollar slot machine score was a slice of my reality. That same desire was also part of my non-reality, which would remain an undeveloped, negative image until I beat the machine.”

Stone claims to have rigged the slot to pay off and prearranged for an African American surgical nurse from Los Angeles to come forward and collect the money. He alludes to carrying out the theft in 1993.

In that year, though, the amount of Nevada’s slot jackpots was nowhere near that large. They didn’t reach $25 million until 2003, when a player won a $39.7 million jackpot at the Excalibur Casino in Las Vegas.

In 1992, as reported in local newspapers, an African American surgical nurse from Sacramento, named Delores Adams, landed a $9.3 million progressive Megabucks slot jackpot, a huge and all-time record amount in The Silver State at the time. For the win, she reportedly lined up four symbols on a $1 slot machine in Harrah’s Reno Hotel and Casino in Northern Nevada.

The similarities between the newspapers and Stone’s accounts suggest this event involving Adams is the one he describes in Cheater. They don’t, however, confirm the win actually was a heist.

If this was the career-topping cheat Stone asserts it was, why did he embellish the dollar amount?

Sources

Duffin

1959-1960

William “Bill” E. Duffin, co-owner of the Senator Club in Carson City, Nevada, was murdered on Christmas morning of 1959 (see Part I). He left behind his wife Gladys, his sister, his nephew, a business partner and many employees to whom he was like a father.

Duffin moved to Nevada in 1943. Before acquiring the Senator with Stella C. Vincent, the two had operated the Wild Horse Hunting Lodge in Elko for 14 years. Prior to that, the Salt Lake City native had operated pinball machines in San Francisco.

The Suspect

Carson City police quickly honed in on Nicholas “Nick” V. Goodman as the likely perpetrator. He was the former Senator Club dealer whom Duffin had fired for cheating customers during 21 games. As a result, Nick’s casino work card had been revoked.

Investigators learned that when Nick had lost that job in mid-1958, he’d threatened Duffin and then-pit boss, Thomas Scarlett. Since, the dealer had harbored a grudge against Duffin.

Throughout those 18 months, Nick had remained unemployed except for a fleeting stint in January 1959. That was when he’d worked for two hours at the Holiday Hotel in Reno and was let go, when this new employer learned about his alleged past cheating.

Senator Club workers told police Nick repeatedly had asked Duffin to “sign a statement clearing him of the cheating charge,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Dec. 29, 1959). Each time, Duffin had refused. This had happened most recently two weeks before the business owner was slain.

Vincent reported Nick had badgered her as well to get his work permit reinstated. She, too, though, had told him again and again she wouldn’t. Their most recent interaction had been on December 21, when Nick had showed up at her home, uninvited, and warned her, “Get my card back or else” (NSJ, May 28, 1960).

Goodman

The Evidence

When investigators questioned Nick, he had gunshot residue on his hands. He explained that by saying he’d fired a gun on Christmas Eve but as a test.

The suspect didn’t have a strong alibi for when the shooting of Duffin had occurred. Nick said he’d been away from home, but had been looking for his wife Genevieve Goodman, as they’d gotten separated when they’d been out earlier. (The time of the murder was 3:20 a.m.)

Some days later, the California Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification determined the bullets fired from Nick’s rifle matched those removed from Duffin’s body.

The Help

Police also arrested a Carson City handyman named Jack Armstrong for allegedly having hidden the murder weapon. They charged him with being an accessory after the fact.

Genevieve also wound up in jail, for allegedly having directed Armstrong to get rid of the gun and later, when she’d learned police were searching for it, having told him to move it.

All three suspects were going to be given lie detector tests.

The Admissions

They all came clean, one at a time, on December 28, three days after the crime.

Armstrong conceded he’d repaired the 0.22-caliber rifle Nick had used and had hidden it in a manure pile after the shooting.

Genevieve gave up Nick. Her hot-tempered husband, she added, had been growing increasingly angry at and preoccupied with Duffin for more than a year. that She also admitted her role.

Then Nick himself confessed he in fact had shot Duffin.

“I just went wild … berserk, I guess. I kept pulling the trigger,” Nick told police (NSJ, May 27, 1960).

The confessed murderer also revealed he’d tried to kill his ex-boss six months earlier one day when he’d spotted him inserting coins into a Carson City parking meter. When the gun had misfired, Nick had aborted the attempt.

Police let Armstrong and Genevieve go. The district attorney charged Nick with murder, for which he pleaded not guilty.

The Trial

When Nick’s trial got underway in mid-May 1960, he faced a potential death penalty if convicted.

District Attorney John Tom Ross and special prosecutor Emile Gezelin called a handful of witnesses to testify and played, for the jurors, the tape recording of Nick’s confession. Overall, the prosecutors laid out a strong case for Nick being guilty of the murder.

Nick’s defense attorneys, Samuel Francovich of Reno and Jack B. Tenney of Los Angeles, conceded the defendant had killed Duffin but argued he’d been insane when he’d done it. To save him from capital punishment, the team attempted to prove “Goodman went insane after 18 months of brooding and trying to prove his innocence in a cheating episode which cost the club its gaming license and himself his right to work at Nevada’s legal card tables,” the NSJ reported (June 1, 1960).

The bottom line for the jurors was whether or not Nick had been of sound mind when he’d shot and killed  Duffin. The prosecution asserted yes, he had been. They called for a first degree murder verdict and demanded the death penalty. The defense argued no, he hadn’t been sane. They demanded acquittal.

The Verdict

After nearly eight hours of deliberating, the jury of eight women and four men found Nick guilty of second degree murder. This conviction carried a prison term, not capital punishment, as a penalty.

“Defense attorneys Sam Francovich and Jack Tenney, together with Goodman’s wife, were jubilant over the second-degree finding. But Goodman was angry,” the NSJ reported (June 4, 1960). “‘For what?’ he snapped when newsmen congratulated him.”

Judge Frank B. Gregory sentenced Nick to a statutory 10 years to life term in Nevada State Prison.

After serving six years, Nick was granted early parole and released. 

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Sources

1958-1959

Two major impactful events occurred, one in 1958, the second 1.5 years later, involving the Senator Club, which offered the game 21 and slot machines. Near the Nevada capitol in Carson City, this casino-restaurant-bar was popular among state legislators and politicians.

At the time, Stella C. Vincent and William “Bill” E. Duffin had co-owned the business, 63 percent and 37 percent, respectively, for about two years. Duffin, though, ran the place.

Impetus For First Upset

Cheating at the Senator Club came to light in January 1958 when Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) investigator William Walts witnessed Nicholas “Nick” V. Goodman dealing seconds, using the second versus top card in the deck, during 21 games. The NGCB called Goodman in for a chat. Agents told him they’d received unfavorable reports about his conduct and warned him he better deal cleanly.

Four months later, three Reno insurance salesmen filed a complaint with the tax commission, alleging a dealer named Nick had swindled them at the Senator. They’d seen Nick burn a card in the middle of a hand (take it from the top and put it face up on the bottom of the deck). This is usually only done after each shuffle. Nick also allegedly turned the deck or dealt from the bottom mid-game, so he could access cards used in earlier hands.

Also in April, Michael MacDougall, a gambling detective the Nevada Tax Commission hired to survey the industry in The Silver State, reported he witnessed cheating at the Senator Club (and at the New Star in Winnemucca).

Hammer Comes Down

To address the alleged cheating at the Senator, the NGCB held a hearing, per protocol, in June, for Vincent and Duffin to explain why they should be allowed to keep their gambling licenses.  

At the proceeding, NGCB agents questioned all of the witnesses, the co-owners and Goodman. Duffin and Vincent asserted they didn’t know cheating was taking place. Goodman denied he’d knowingly cheated, ever.

In late July, the Nevada Tax Commission, on the NGCB’s recommendation, revoked both gambling licenses associated with the Senator Club. All gambling activity ceased there. This was the first big blow to the gambling business during the Duffin-Vincent time.

Picking Up The Pieces

The co-owners made the best of it. They kept open the restaurant and bar and installed a dance floor in the casino space. Later, in early 1959, they leased the gambling concession to an outside operator.

Goodman, however, didn’t fare so well. He was fired from the Senator Club, for starters.

“The case washed up Goodman as a Nevada dealer, although he has steadfastly maintained he was not cheating,” wrote the Nevada State Journal (Dec. 27, 1959).

Shocking, Irreversible Loss

At the end of shift early Christmas morning in 1959, Duffin invited the Senator Club employees leaving work and some patrons still there to join him for breakfast at the nearby Silver Spur café-casino. Reportedly, Duffin often showed such kindnesses, including driving home employees so they wouldn’t have to walk or take a taxi in the dark wee hours.

Following the meal, the group dispersed. Duffin, on his way through the parking lot, stopped to wish several Silver Spur employees Merry Christmas.

Once at his car, after he opened the driver’s side door, a handful of bullets hit him in the back and drove him to the ground.

Duffin died then and there.  

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It Really Happened! will publish Part II next Wednesday, April 20, 2022.

Sources

Hands Up! by The Cowboy Artist, Joachim Lüdcke

1891-1935

“No matter in which position you face it, whether from front, above, below or at either side, the subject has you constantly under his eyes and his ‘gun.’ In fact, as you move, the figure appears to move with you.” This is how Reno Chief of Police John “Jack” M. Kirkley described the gunman in Hands Up!, the painting that adorned a wall of his office during his tenure, from 1919 to 1935.

Kirkley

The work of art was more than eye candy. An actual 19th century gambling-related crime in Nevada had inspired it.

In And Out

On Thursday, April 9, 1891 at about 11:30 p.m., “a tall man with a black silk handkerchief with eye-holes in over his face” armed with a six-shooter entered the faro room of Al White’s Palace Hotel and robbed the dealer, James Conroy, of about $800, a significant amount back then, reported the Daily Nevada State Journal (April 10, 1891).

Soon after, the police arrested a man who had $270 in gold coins and a 0.48-caliber revolver in his valise. He identified himself as Thomas Hale, a detective for the Chicago, Illinois-based Pinkerton National Detective Agency. His real name was Thomas H. Horn, Sr., but because he was working undercover in the area on a railroad wrecking case, he was reticent to tell it to them. Horn didn’t have the full $800 on him, so police theorized he’d had an accomplice, but they never identified or found one.

Horn went to trial for the crime, but the jury couldn’t decide one way or the other.

A Strong Defense

The state of Nevada retried Horn in September. During the proceedings, witnesses identified him as having been the robber. They described how he allegedly had come on the scene and yelled, “Hands up!” Then he’d held at bay numerous employees and gamblers, known to be gunfighters, and while doing so, had gathered the money and fled.

During cross-examination, Horn’s attorney highlighted these claims as ludicrous. He noted it was incredulous to think one person could control a dozen, gun-trained and -toting men for a period of time during which not one of them would resist or make a move.

Horn

Pinkerton

William A. Pinkerton, superintendent of the agency bearing his name, testified that Horn in fact was a detective employed by him and had been working a case in Northern Nevada at the time of his arrest. The jury acquitted the defendant.

Supposedly, the actual bandit remained on the loose and continued robbing people throughout the western states.

It Is Possible

Joachim Lüdcke, known in the American West as The Cowboy Artist, watched Horn’s trial in court. He boasted he could depict a man covering, with a pistol, numerous people simultaneously. Using an experienced Spokane scout and trapper nicknamed Death on the Trail as a model, Lüdcke created a watercolor version of Hands Up!.

H.G. “Doc” Brown, the owner of the The Owl Club in Spokane, Washington who knew Lüdcke, displayed this original in his gambling-saloon. Pinkerton spotted the artwork there. Given his connection to the story behind it, he asked Brown if he’d have Lüdcke paint a life-sized version for him in oil. The Cowboy Artist did, and Pinkerton hung the piece in his office.* The Pinkerton agency later used the image in its advertising.

A copy of this oil painting is what Kirkley displayed in his city hall office.

The Actual Perpetrator

Two years later, the Pinkerton agency tracked down and arrested the actual person behind the Reno faro bank robbery and many other similar crimes, newspapers reported. He was one Ed Wilson of Gifford, Iowa (according to The Jewelers’ Circular & Horological Review), aka Frank Shercliffe (or Shercliff), aka Kid McCoy, aka James Burke. Detectives caught up with him in Colorado.

The 20-something-year-old with several aliases was “one of the most daring, desperate, uncompromising of highwaymen and  general robbers,” described The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette (Sept. 23, 1893). “The number of his crimes can only be guessed at, but their quality and the character of the man himself are so thoroughly well known that the police of the entire west say he is the hardest man they ever had to cope with.”

Wilson’s known offenses included robbing faro banks in Tacoma, Washington and San Bernardino, California in addition to the one in Reno and forcefully relieving two women of their diamonds in Salt Lake City.

Ultimately, the desperado was convicted of robbing a traveling jewelry salesman of $15,000 worth of uncut diamonds in November 1892 on a train going from Omaha, Nebraska to Sioux City, Iowa. A judge sentenced him to 17 years in the Iowa State Penitentiary.

Subsequently, Wilson was released on parole, which he then violated by leaving the state. His next run-in with law enforcement was in 1901 in Kansas City, Missouri, when police there arrested him on suspicion of stealing men’s traveling bags. During the takedown, Wilson tried to escape, and officers shot him in the foot. They returned him to Iowa.

The Final Twist

It may have been Horn after all who perpetrated the Reno faro bank heist, and he and the Pinkerton agency conspiratorially pinned it on Wilson, a known jewel thief.  

According to podcaster Simone Whitlow, “After this incident [in Reno] other Pinkertons began to view Horn as a ‘dirty cop,’ and would coerce him to move on to greener pastures – quite literally. His next role [was] officially a farm hand – unofficially an enforcer – for the Swan Land and Cattle Company, Wyoming.”

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* The original Hands Up! oil painting sold for $9,440 at auction in 2019.

Sources

Cadell

1947-1950

Starting in 1947, Wiley “Buck” H. Cadell used his governmental position to build a statewide system of protection for illegal gambling operations in California, the first such concerted effort of this kind in the state. At the time Cadell worked as a gambling investigator, and previously an undercover agent, for California Attorney General Frederick N. Howser. Prior to that, he worked for 20 years as an officer for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Howser

Howser was in on (and perhaps the mastermind of) the conspiracy. His role was covering it up and shielding Cadell and his other agents — Charles Hoy and Walter Lentz — from external investigation and prosecution.

Hoy

Lentz

How It Worked

One part of setting up the protection racket involved getting all of the gamblers in a county to pay a monthly fee or close shop. In exchange, law enforcement wouldn’t interfere with their illegal business.

From gambling house owners, the colluding agents demanded anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of their enterprise’s gross earnings. For slot machine operators, the fee was $4 apiece. For punchboard users, it was $2. (A different group of men was involved in organizing a punchboard monopoly and protection system in The Golden State. They, too, did this with Howser’s blessing.)

For the protection scheme to work, the conspirators also had to get the police chief or sheriff in the same county on board. This meant the officers of the law had to agree to ignore the commercial gambling happening in their jurisdiction. For doing so, they’d receive a portion of the collected payoff monies. Another part of the graft went to Howser.

To sway these law enforcement heads, Howser’s representatives emphasized they had powerful friends in Sacramento. They even often outrightly stated they “had the approval and the authority of the attorney general’s office,” the California Crime Commission reported in its Final Report (Nov. 15, 1950).

Progress Made

Howser’s agents worked on expanding the scheme for over a year. During that time, they approached many of California’s counties. The crime commission knew of at least 16, including Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo and San Bernardino. There may have been more.

Unraveling Begins

Cadell’s involvement ended in June 1948 when he was indicted for related activity (and thus, quit working for Howser). The ensuing charges were for organizing a slot machine protection racket and for plotting to bribe Mendocino County Sheriff Beverly Broaddus.

Howser publicly announced he fully supported Cadell. The elected official also claimed the charges against the agent had been trumped up to frame him.

Despite the AG’s position, a jury convicted Cadell (and two others, a former police officer and a resident, both of Los Angeles), each on five counts of bribery and gambling conspiracy. The judge sentenced Cadell, whom he identified as the “arch conspirator,” to three consecutive prison terms (The Modesto Bee and News-Herald, Dec. 18, 1948). They were 1 to 14 years followed by another 1 to 14 years and, lastly, 1 to 3 years.

“This was not a case of operation of an isolated slot machine,” the judge told the defendants, “but the crimes with which you are charged are more serious, about as dastardly as any crimes that are committed” (The Modesto Bee, Dec. 18, 1948).

As for Howser, no irrefutable evidence linked him to the payoffs. However, “he was tainted by the association,” author Ed Cray wrote in Chief Justice.

Impact Of The Unwilling

Not every person Howser’s men approached on both sides, law enforcement and gambling, was keen on the scheme. Some rejected the proposal outright.

One gambler, Tiny Heller, an Alameda County bookmaker, refused to pay any graft. He was told by a member of the protection racket, Mobster-gambler Dave Kessel, that he could keep operating through the end of the football season but not afterwards. Heller continued taking bets. Soon after, before the deadline to close that Kessel cited, Heller’s business was raided, and Hoy arrested him.

Many other targets filed complaints or informed the crime commissioners about various people having tried to recruit them into the scheme. The crime agency detailed and published all such reported events in its 1950 report.

That exposure, combined with Cadell’s conviction and Howser’s failure to get re-elected in 1950, caused the system to crumble.

Sources

1946

A Reno, Nevada casino hired a man, new to the city and gambling, as a shill. (A shill is paid to play games in a gambling house to entice others around to do the same.) The floor manager gave him $20 (about $300 today) to gamble with at a specific game, which he did for a while. Then the shill disappeared.  

Just when the manager thought employee and cash were gone for good, the shill showed back up.

“Here’s $800” ($11,500 today), he said. “I couldn’t win in here, so I went into the club across the street and had a little better luck!”

The two guys split the winnings 50/50.

Source: Nevada State Journal, “Nevada Story: This Couldn’t Be Elsewhere,” March 3, 1946.

1938-Today

Bets placed, spectators occupy the stands, waiting. Anticipation, excitement fill the air. Finally, the get-ready bell dings, and the crowd quickly quiets.

The start signal sounds. The gates open. Out lunge the competitors, into an immediate sprint. Hunting instinct kicks in. They deftly chase a single lure, sometimes a hare, unaware it’s fake.

Muscles in their lithe bodies bulge as they round the track. Their stride is wide, their motion smooth. They run as fast as 45 miles per hour.

In a flash, 30 seconds or so, they finish the lap. The winner is announced. Payouts are made.

This described activity, live dog racing as a gambling form, never really took off in The Silver State like it did in others, such as Florida and Oregon.

Today, it’s illegal, per Nevada Revised Statute 466. The law dictates that running such an operation is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and/or a jail term up to six months. Anyone with such a conviction also could be disqualified from obtaining or maintaining a gambling license. (Dog racing without gambling, that doesn’t violate any animal cruelty laws, is legal in Nevada.)

Maiden Races In Nevada

The first dog racing with gambling in Nevada took place in 1938 and 1939 at the Reno Speedway at Lawton’s Hot Springs just west of Reno. (The first dog track was built in the U.S. in 1919, in California.) Presumably, these races at Lawton’s were held illegally because existing Nevada laws that legalized gambling didn’t cover dog racing or optional betting. At the same time, no law specified either as being prohibited. With optional betting, wagerers purchased options on dogs of their choice, and winners redeemed their options for cash.

All was quiet on the Nevada dog racing front until 1947.

The Pot Gets Stirred

In September of that year, some Los Angeles-based promoters doing business as the Nevada Turf and Kennel Club applied to the Nevada  Racing Commission for a license to conduct dog racing in Reno. Three members comprised the commission — Ernie W. Cragin and J.K. Houssels, in Las Vegas, who opposed dog racing, and Tom G. Wheelwright, of Ely, who didn’t.

The racing commissioners denied the permit for a few reasons. Primarily, they believed the applicants were more interested in the gambling element than the racing one. Also, commissioners declared dog racing to not be in Nevada’s best interest.

With the assistance of Reno attorney Douglas Busey, the race promoters filed a writ of mandamus that would make the racing commission grant them the license they’d requested.  

Judge Merwyn Brown of Winnemucca heard arguments on the petition in December and announced his ruling two months later.

He determined the license denial lacked merit, given the commissioners had failed to provide any evidence to support their reasons for it. Brown stated, too, the commissioners had overstepped their bounds in that the question of whether dog racing was good or bad for Nevada was a public policy matter, and thus under the Legislature’s purview, not theirs.

Thus, Brown ordered the commission to issue a license to the Nevada Turf and Kennel Club, and in doing so, essentially declared dog racing with gambling legal.

Despite the green light, the license recipients never followed through with a track and races, for unknown reasons.

Pros And Cons

With the issue fresh in Nevadans’ minds, during the 1949 Nevada legislative session, the Senate introduced bill 103, which sought to ban dog racing by classifying it as a public nuisance.

Proponents of the measure claimed dog racing wasn’t clean (doping was prevalent), not established in The Silver State and without state laws to control it.

Opponents argued dog racing would bring more tourists to Nevada and increase much-needed revenue for it. At the time, dog racing was legal in eight states, including California and Oregon. At least four lobbyists from California aggressively sought to get the bill defeated. According to Nevada Assemblyman James Johnson (D.), White Pine County, some of their tactics were unacceptable.

“One of them even intimated to me that they didn’t have any money now but that if we killed this bill they might have some within a year or two and they intimated they might be able to pay off later,” Johnson said (Reno Evening Gazette, March 12, 1949).

Assemblyman Harry Claiborne (D.), Clark County, argued that allowing dog racing wasn’t worth any amount of money and if it was permitted, “you’re going to have in two years the biggest mess in Nevada that you’ve ever had with gambling” (Nevada State Journal, March 13, 1949).

Governor Vail Pittman signed SB103 into law in early April 1949. (Interestingly, while the bill added dog racing as a public nuisance, it removed prostitution as one.)

The Issue Revisited

Walking back its longtime stance on dog racing, the Nevada Legislature passed a bill in 1973 allowing greyhound racing but only in Henderson and only when held in conjunction with horse racing.

In December 1976, the racing commission granted a license to Las Vegas Downs Inc. to hold dog racing 200 days a year and horse racing, 100 days, once the track is built. The commission also waived the horse racing requirement for the first season.  

In August 1977, the same agency granted David J. Funk & Associates a gambling license to manage the proposed (it still hadn’t been built) Henderson dog and horse race track. Funk and his family had lots of experience in this area, having run multiple dog tracks in Arizona.

Financing problems delayed dog track construction time and time again, but it finally happened in 1980. The track opened in mid-January 1981, offering daily racing and parimutuel betting.

For the second season, by law, the track had to be modified for horse racing, another expense, and it wasn’t done. This ended dog racing in Henderson.

No More Wavering

Starting in the 1990s, many U.S. states reversed their laws that legalized live dog racing plus betting. Nevada was the eighth state to do so. It lowered the final curtain on this gambling form in 1997. The pertinent statute, NRS 466.095 reads: “Issuance of license to conduct dog racing or pari-mutuel wagering in connection with certain dog racing prohibited.”

The law remains in effect today, nearly a quarter-century later.

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Top greyhound photo: By Matt Schumitz, from Wikimedia Commons

Sources

Joseph “Doc” Stacher (born Gdale Oistaczer, 1902-1977) was a “a genial, shrewd, witty gent” who could be “homicidally tough,” wrote “Voice of Broadway” columnist Jack O’Brian (Monroe News-Star, March 17, 1977). Closely aligned with fellow Jewish Mobsters, Meyer Lansky and Abner “Longie” Zwillman, this immigrant had “galvanic” power and extreme wealth.

Here are some facts about Stacher that provide insight into the man and his life in organized crime.

1) Stacher was involved in various gambling businesses in North and South America, from slot machine distribution and bookmaking to casino ownership and management.

2) Throughout the years Stacher owned various pieces of real estate and commercial enterprises. His many assets included two homes, one in Beverly Hills, California and the other in Orange, New Jersey; nightclubs in California; hotel-casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada and New York (oftentimes, as a silent partner); and assorted other businesses. He even owned a hidden stake in Columbia Pictures. With Zwillman, Stacher owned Runyon Sales Co., which manufactured and distributed automatic coin-operated machines.

“[Stacher] was worth many millions (some experts’ estimates say he still can put his canny hands on upwards of $100 million at any given, or taken, moment,” wrote O’Brian (Monroe News-Star, 1971).

3) Between ages 22 and 26, while an active member of the Bugs and Meyer Mob during the 1920s, Stacher racked up a slew of arrests and charges:

1924, November 26:     breaking, entering and larceny
1926, April 21:               assault and battery
1926, August 18:           assault and battery
1927, June 7:                atrocious assault and battery
1927, July 11:                atrocious assault and battery
1927, August 15:           robbery
1927, December 4:       interfering with an officer guarding a still for federal authorities
1927, December 9:       atrocious assault and battery
1928, May 29:               an “open charge,” which later was dismissed

4) At Lansky’s request, Stacher organized a 1931 meeting, at the Franconia Hotel, of all of the top New York-area Jewish mobsters. They decided, at the conference, to join forces with the U.S.-based Italian Mafia. Charles “Lucky” Luciano, representing the Italian Mafioso, agreed, and the National Crime Syndicate was formed.

5) Stacher first got in tax trouble in 1952, when the Internal Revenue Bureau (IRB) claimed he owed $340,000 (about $3.6 million today) in unpaid taxes for the nine years between 1933 and 1941. After the IRB issued liens against him, Stacher paid the amount in full.

6) In the same year, a federal grand jury in New York indicted Stacher on charges of illegal gambling and conspiracy in connection with the Arrowhead Inn (which he’d owned with Lansky during the 1920s). After successfully fighting extradition from Nevada for a year, Stacher eventually returned to The Empire State in 1953 and pleaded guilty to 20 charges. He was fined $10,000 ($104,000 today) and given a one-year suspended jail sentence.

7) The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) revoked Stacher’s citizenship in 1956 and sought to deport him. This was because he hadn’t not disclosed his criminal record on his citizenship application 26 years earlier. The INS could not return Stacher to his homeland (what now is Poland), however, because federal law forbade deportations to Communist countries.

8) Stacher pleaded guilty, in 1964, to two counts of evading payment of federal taxes. He was fined $10,000 and given the choice of going to prison or leaving the country. He opted for the latter and sought refuge in Israel. Its Law of Return, passed in 1950, granted every Jew the right to immigrate there and become an Israeli citizen.

9) A rabbi/member of the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, defrauded Stacher. Worried that Israel would refuse him citizenship, Stacher asked friend Frank Sinatra to seek help from this politician who owed the crooner a favor. Also, Stacher donated to the same man $100,000 ($897,000 today) to be used for charitable purposes. The rabbi/Knesset member, though, used the money to build the Central Hotel in Jerusalem.

“Outraged at being ripped off, Stacher sued in a court case that drew headlines and laughs throughout the country,” reported Mafia Stories. “Israelis were amused that such a giant figure in American crime could be so taken by a meek-looking rabbi.”

Eventually, Stacher recouped the money.

10) Stacher passed away in a Munich, West Germany, hotel room on February 28, 1977, reportedly from a heart attack, and his body was transported back to Israel. There, only eight people, all men, attended his funeral. He was buried secretly and the name on his grave was changed to conceal his interment site.

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Sources

When police arrived at the alley behind the Carlton Bar in Reno just after midnight on May 16, 1946, they found an unconscious man lying on the ground, covered in blood. An American Legion ambulance rushed him to Washoe General Hospital, where a medical team worked to save his life. Their efforts unsuccessful, though, and the physician there pronounced Joseph Vaughn Spratt dead at 1:15 a.m.

Grave Injuries

Spratt, in his early 30s, a World War II veteran and pharmacy student in Denver, Colorado, was in the “Biggest Little City” with a handful of schoolmates to take the Nevada Board of Pharmacy exam. With the test behind them, the group went to the Carlton Bar that fateful night, for music, drinks and gambling before returning home. (The saloon offered 21, craps, roulette, poker and slots.)

All of the students but Spratt eventually left the bar. One of them, Roy Spencer, who exited out the back, was struck immediately after, in the dark alley.

One or more of the establishment’s personnel tossed Spratt out of the rear door into the same unlit area. Somehow, he wound up with a 5-inch-long skull fracture that caused a subdural hemorrhage. He also suffered bruising on the back and one side of his skull and three facial cuts, on his chin, above his eye and on his nose.

The events leading up to him dying on the pavement differed, depending on who relayed them.

Spratt

Someone Must Pay

The police arrested the Carlton Bar’s co-owner, Sam Delich, and its bartender, Guido “Gene” DiIullo. (The other two proprietors were Sam’s brother George Delich and Franz Gersich). Sam Delich and DiIullo were charged with voluntary manslaughter.

Their trials didn’t take place until November of that year. In the interim, the Carlton Bar owners sold their business for $20,000 (about $284,000 today) to Stan Hanson, in June.

Manslaughter V. Self-Defense

At the joint trial of DiIullo and Delich, the prosecution argued that the two were responsible for killing Spratt. They’d beaten him when evicting him from the bar, had tossed him out the back door and had left him for dead in the alley. One prosecution witness, Colonel William Steer, testified Spratt had been unconscious inside the Carlton bar after being struck several times by either DiIullo and/or Delich and, therefore, couldn’t have advanced toward DiIullo, a weapon in his hand, outside.

The defense contended that only DiIullo had hit Spratt, twice, and had done so in self-defense because Spratt had pulled a nail file or other sharp object on him when the duo had escorted him out of the bar. The defense also asserted that it’d been his head hitting the ground that had resulted in Spratt’s

demise. Nevada’s governor at the time Vail Pittman testified to the good reputation of Delich and DiIullo.

The jury acquitted Delich of manslaughter, but was hung, 10 to 1, regarding a verdict for DiIullo.

Dilullo As Defendant Again

In March of the next year, 1947, the district attorney’s office tried DiIullo a second time. He again took the stand and recalled his version of the events.

“The three-day trial was featured by conflicting testimony regarding how and when the fatal blow was struck,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (March 21, 1947).

After deliberating 11 hours, the jurors returned a not guilty verdict.

No one but Spratt paid, after all.

Time and time again, in these fatal historical incidents, the perpetrators were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense, and one has to wonder why. What do you think? Should DiIullo and/or Delich have gotten off like they did or not? Why?

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