Frost, 1936

1906-1967

Frank “Frankie” Frost (1898-1967) spent about two decades working in Reno’s gambling scene and had close relationships with those in power locally, including gambler-Mobsters William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay and banker and businessman, George Wingfield, Sr. Frost had a checkered past, which eventually got him blacklisted from Nevada’s gambling industry.

Here we present the “work” (criminal) highlights of Frost, tracking him geographically through Illinois, then California and, finally, Nevada.

Chicago, 1906-1930: Murder Charge By Age 30

Though Frost was born in California, he spent most of his youth in Chicago and eventually became part of its North Side Aiello–Moran gang (Giuseppe “Joe” Aiello and George “Bugs” Moran), which was involved heavily in bootlegging during the 1920s. Frost, who used the aliases Eddie Ryan, Frank Bruna and Frank Citro there, was arrested three or four times for disorderly conduct but wasn’t charged.

Also, Frost was the primary suspect in the November 16, 1928 machine gun murder of John G. Clay, head of the Laundry and Fyehouse Chauffeurs’ Union. Police theorized that Moran ordered the hit because Clay was thwarting Moran’s attempts to muscle in on the cleaning and dyeing racket in The Windy City’s West and South Sides, Alphonse “Scarface” Capone’s territory. Though Frost was arrested for the murder, he wasn’t charged.

In a supposed act of retaliation by Capone, some of his soldiers, disguised as police officers, lined up and machine gunned down six of Moran’s men on February 14, 1929, nearly wiping out his crew. Initially, Frost was thought to be among the victims of what was dubbed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Afterward, Frost switched his allegiance to Capone.

When Chicago Tribune crime reporter, Alfred “Jake” Lingle was murdered June 9, 1930, police traced the gun, left at the scene, back to Frost but determined that a Leo V. Brothers was the shooter.

Frost

Los Angeles, 1930-1934: Not Staying Out Of Trouble

Frost was indicted by a grand jury for accessory to the Lingle crime because he presumably had guilty knowledge of the killer(s) and their motives, but he was in Los Angeles at the time, using the alias Frank Foreman. He was captured there on July 1, 1930, arrested, returned to Chicago and placed in the county jail. After five months, though, he had to be released by law, so he got out on a $20,000 ($309,000 today) bond.

In March of the next year, Frost testified at Brothers’ trial. Also called to the stand was a witness who said he saw Frost and Brothers flee the scene in different directions after Lingle was shot. One detail the witness recounted was seeing Frost help Brothers light a cigarette afterward so Brothers didn’t have to take one of his hands out of his pocket.

The trial of Frost, for his alleged involvement in Lingle’s murder, was scheduled for April 28, but it never took place because the witnesses disappeared. Frost was back in Los Angeles when he learned, in June, that charges against him were dropped.

In September, Frost was arrested on suspicion of extortion in connection with a scheme to extort money from the widow of soap magnate, Leo Bergin. Bergin racked up a gambling debt of at least $6,000 ($102,000 today) in a days-long dice game run by representatives of New York gambler-Mobster Arnold Rothstein. Bergin wrote some checks for what he owed but later stopped payment on some. Before Rothstein’s men could collect in full, Bergin died, so they went after Gladys Bergin for payment. Due to lack of evidence, Frost wasn’t charged.

The following year, 1932, in February, a patrol officer pulled over Frost, who was working at the time as a bail bondsman. A search of the new car he was driving yielded a fully loaded, 0.45-caliber automatic pistol. Frost also had with him a letter from a “Ben” in New York, possibly Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, which read in part, “Other people out there are trying to keep out of trouble, but are always in touch with New York. Glad you have gone into the bonding business, as that is good cover for the business you are in.” Frost was found guilty of carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor. Because he then failed to appear at a hearing of arguments concerning a possible new trial, the judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

A month later, police in San Francisco raided an apartment in their investigation of a $100,000 ($1.8 million today) jewelry robbery and took the four men inside to the station. Frost was among them. It resulted in a vagrancy charge (that later would be removed) and him being returned to the City of Angels. He was sentenced to six months in the county jail for the concealed weapon offense. Frost, though, disappeared, and a nationwide hunt for him began. Before he could be found, the appellate court reversed his conviction.

Presumably, the man who repeatedly had gotten away with crimes laid low in Southern California for the next few years.

Reno, 1935-1967: Focus On Gambling, Business

Frost next turned up living with his wife in The Biggest Little City. Only five months later, in April 1936, he was arrested for allegedly stealing $125,000 ($2.3 million today) worth of jewelry from a New York City store that January. For the story, see next blog post, Reno Mobsters Aid Gangster From Chicago, Raising Suspicions.

In 1938, the owner of a New York clothing store, Cy Kronfield Inc., sued Frost for $630.85 ($11,500 today) for not paying for goods and services it provided to him between 1933 and 1939.

Using the name Frank Foster, Frost was arrested in Elko, a city about 300 miles northeast of Reno, in May 1940 for attempted burglary of the Reinhart general merchandise store. Two months later, he was arrested and served 30 days in jail in Reno for “prowling through parked automobiles” (Reno Evening Gazette, Dec. 10, 1940). In June 1941, he was arrested for petty larceny after getting caught trying to sell children’s clothes he’d stolen from somewhere.

Frost reportedly ran or helped run the race horse pool at Graham and McKay’s Bank Club for several years, after which he opened and operated his own book, the Reno Turf Club.

In 1947’s first half, Frost applied for another gambling license from the city, this one for a new entity, Washoe Sports News, which was to supply race results from the Trans-America News and Publishing Co. wire service to local outlets. On behalf of Capone, Siegel was tasked with forcing bookmakers on the West Coast to switch to Trans-America from Continental Press. While the city council was mulling over whether or not to eliminate the existing cap on the number of race pools allowed in Reno, because granting Frost the license would’ve exceeded it, Trans-America went bankrupt and folded after its primary owner-operator was murdered. Soon afterward, Siegel was killed, too, and Frost withdrew his gambling application.

In 1951, Frost sold the Reno Turf Club. Afterward, he returned to working at the Bank Club, supposedly wrapping money. However, members of the Nevada Tax Commission, the entity which in 1947 gained the task of issuing state gambling licenses, saw him overseeing a game of faro there once. Because of his criminal background, the commissioners didn’t want Frost involved with running the gambling in any Silver State casino.

However, they spotted him again doing just that, counting money and giving orders at Reno’s Palace Club. After a related brouhaha, the casino banned him from working there in 1953, and after that, according to Frost, he no longer could get a job in the state’s gaming industry.

Dorothy Frost

In 1955, Frost’s wife Dorothy, a Manitoba, Canada native, took her life by overdosing on sleeping pills.

His Final Years

The widower remained in Reno and was involved subsequently in some shady business dealings, which came to light through various lawsuits. Frost held and breached the lease on the Mt. Rose Sawmill. In an incident that led to a lawsuit, Frost physically prevented a competing lumber firm (Frost owned the Nevada Pine Mill and Lumber Co.) from taking from the sawmill wood it purchased. Also, he was sued for failing to pay for lumber he bought from a Lake Tahoe man.

In another arrangement, Frost was a co-partner with McKay and Marion T. Weller in F.M.W. Drilling Co. In 1957, an employee sued F.M.W. for not paying him $1,650 ($15,000 today), the remainder of wages due him for building an oil derrick.

In 1961, a Frank Frost appeared to be working at the local Buick dealership as the assistant general sales manager. It may or may not have been him.

The Mobster Frost, who’d left a trail of crime in his wake, passed away on April 1, 1967 at age 68 in Nevada.

Sources

Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, Stateline, Nevada, 1973

1972-1973

Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to read is true. No names have been changed, as there were no innocents.

This is the city, Stateline, Nevada. It’s the gambling mecca of Lake Tahoe. Most people visit it to recreate, but some go there to commit a crime.

It was Tuesday, September 19, 1972. It was a chilly night.

Douglas County sheriffs were working the late shift when they got the call. At 10:40 p.m., five employees at Harrah’s hotel-casino were making a routine money transfer from the basement to the casino floor when an armed man stopped them on the stairs and shouted, “Give me the money, or I’ll blow your heads off.”

The suspect was described as roughly 5 feet 8 inches tall, 170 pounds, stocky, in his 30s, long haired and wearing dark glasses, a cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes and possibly a fake beard. His weapon was a .45-caliber automatic Colt pistol.

He grabbed the two bags from the workers, ordered them to back off and fled through the casino and out the door into the dark. He purposely dropped the bag containing chips, $4,500’s worth, ran about two blocks and crossed Highway 50 and then the state line into California. 

At a nearby motel, he hopped on a motorcycle, whose rider had been waiting for him. The bike didn’t start, again and again. The two dismounted, pushed it, finally got it going, jumped on and rode off.

The thief had stolen $178,500 ($1 million today), at that time the largest robbery ever involving a Nevada casino.

Quartet Of Suspects

The crime became a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) matter when the stickup man crossed state lines. Investigators had the motorcycle’s license plate, captured by a witness, to go on as well as possibly the testimony of an informant, Barbara White, who’d been in on the planning of the crime but had backed out before execution.

Agents found $125,000 of the stolen money, the wig, beard and gun buried shallowly in the backyard of the motorcycle driver. Four days after the crime, they arrested:

• Donald Leroy Rice, 35, of Stateline, Nevada, unemployed dealer, married, four-year resident
• Larry Joseph Swinberg, 36, of South Lake Tahoe, California, Harrah’s employee, married, resident of fewer than 30 days
• Jack Andrew Cozad, 37, of Stateline, Nevada, recent Harrah’s employee, separated, 12-year resident
• Thomas Richard Norman, 36, of Reno, Nevada, poker dealer in Reno’s Cal Neva Club, single, 8-year resident

The FBI tagged Rice as the stickup man; Swinburg, the getaway driver; and the other two, lookouts, one inside and one outside the casino.

The four faced federal charges of conspiracy and transporting stolen goods across state lines, and all but Rice, with aiding and abetting. State charges were conspiracy to commit armed robbery and robbery. Bail, mandated by federal and state courts, totaled $125,000 or $150,000 for each suspect.

One Turns Against Others

Legal wrangling began, with defense attorneys filing numerous motions, asking for separate trials, change of venue and more, all of which the judge denied.

Trials were held in 1972 (federal) and 1973 (state). Swinburg testified for the prosecution at both, giving up his accomplices and admitting to commandeering the motorcycle. He said that of the $178,500, he, Rice and Cozad were to get $52,000 apiece, Norman was to get $1,000 and White was to get $17,850.

The suspects were found guilty and were sentenced, in federal (1972) and state (1973) courts, respectively, to:

• Rice: 5 years’ prison, 8 years’ prison — to be served concurrently
• Cozad: 5 years’ prison, 5 years’ prison — to run concurrently
• Norman: 5 years’ probation, 3 years’ prison — the latter was suspended so he was to serve 6 months in jail then 5 years’ probation
• Swinburg: Probation (the state hadn’t charged or tried him)

An Unexpected Twist

Later in 1973, Douglas County sheriff’s deputies recovered what they believed to be the remaining $52,000 from the Harrah’s heist a year earlier.

When investigating an armed robbery of the people living in Rice’s former house in Stateline, officers zeroed in on four suspects, all South Lake Tahoe residents, and found the cash.

“Authorities did not disclose the evidence to support the statement the money might be part of the Harrah’s loot, nor would they say how much was reported taken in the Rice residence robbery,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Sept. 8, 1973).

Sources

1947-1953

Harolds Club bustled on Christmas Eve in 1947 with revelers enjoying the gambling and camaraderie when an unexpected event instantly silenced the din. Panic followed.

Since the previous morning, Reno, Nevada police had been trying to locate a suspect: white male, approximately 20 years old, 5 feet 8 inches, 150 pounds. He’d robbed two taxicabs at gunpoint — one for $17 and one for $5 (about $184 and $54 today, respectively) — and had failed a third attempt.

At around 12:30 a.m., detective sergeants Francis Quinn and James Franklin spotted the alleged criminal entering Harolds Club. They followed him inside, where they informed patrolman William Reeder, working his regular beat there, of the situation. The three quickly fanned out then closed in on their target.

“Take your hands out of your pockets,” Quinn ordered.

The young man shot at the officers. All three fell, wounded. They didn’t fire back for fear a bystander might get hurt. Meanwhile, casino guests darted under tables or ran. Amazingly, none was hit.

Pursuit Of Fugitive

The suspect fled out the door. He got into a taxicab and after riding for a few minutes, pulled a gun on the driver (who hadn’t heard about the shooting), robbed him of $20 ($216 today) and got out.

About an hour later, 15 policemen, sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents traced the gunman to a used car lot where they cornered him. Again, he tried to shoot his way free, but that time a gun battle ensued. A bullet entered his shoulder and another grazed his head behind his ear. At that point, he gave up willingly.

He was arrested and processed then taken to the local hospital for medical treatment.

The culprit, Bobby Carter, originally was from Kentucky. He’d deserted the Navy a few months earlier, having abandoned his post in an Eastern state. He’d gone to Reno from San Francisco.

Of the hurt police officers, Franklin suffered the severest injuries as a bullet entered his abdomen, ruptured his spleen, passed his internal organs then lodged in his back. Reeder sustained a gunshot wound to his hand and an abrasion on his torso. Quinn was hit in the right thigh. Physicians said they expected them all to recover fully.

Punishment Delivered

In January of 1948, Carter was found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and was sentenced to a prison term of 1 to 14 years. (Strangely, at the time, the penalty for shooting someone was more lenient than that for grand larceny; 1 to 14 years was the maximum punishment for assault with the intent to kill whereas 2 to 14 years was the minimum for grand larceny!)

After serving about 5½ years, Carter was paroled, in May 1953.

Sources

1948

Arthur T. Morgan belligerently stormed into the Big Hat casino on Highway 91 (outside Las Vegas, Nevada) at about 1:30 a.m. on a Friday night in spring. He immediately began heckling, threatening to shoot and goading the proprietor, Sam Baker, into a gunfight.

“When we go, we’re going to go all the way, Sam, because I’m going to kill you,” Morgan, 40, said. “Shall we shoot it out at four paces” (Nevada State Journal, March 27, 1948)?

“You’re always this way when you’re drunk, Art — forget it,” Baker, 43, responded.

Baker had moved to Las Vegas from Chicago and purchased the Big Hat in spring of 1947. Prior to that, he’d been a politician in the Windy City under William “Big Bill” Hale Thompson, one of America’s most corrupt mayors. Further back, he was involved in minor gambling activities in Albuquerque and Shreveport, Louisiana.

Morgan, who’d been picking fights elsewhere in the Las Vegas area in the previous 24 hours, had opened and sold a nightclub west of Albuquerque years earlier. At the time he was in Las Vegas (only for a few days), he owned both a home and a package liquor store in New Mexico, and was ill with an unknown ailment.

The two were acquaintances from Albuquerque, where they’d gotten into “trouble with a woman,” said Clark County Sheriff Glen Jones, based on reports from New Mexico (Nevada State Journal, March 27, 1948).

The Feud Escalates

On the night of the confrontation, Morgan continued trash talking for two hours, with Baker trying to calm him.

Suddenly, at 3:57 a.m., both men drew their weapons, bullets flew and Morgan fell, never having gotten off a shot. Hit five times, his dead body lay sprawled on the casino floor, his .380 Beretta automatic at his side, his feet pointing toward the bar.

“I beat him to it,” Baker later told police.

The half-dozen or so witnesses to the taunting denied seeing the shooting take place.

Baker informed police officers he’d shot Morgan in self-defense but refused to discuss his prior relationship with the man or his own background. He was booked for investigation then released on $5,000 cash bond.

The subsequent inquest into the shooting found Baker’s claim to be valid. He only was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and fined $50 ($494 today) for that offense.

Consequently, the state tax commission pulled his gambling license, in September, without which he couldn’t turn a profit, he said. Instead, he ran the place as the Villa Venice, a restaurant without a casino.

Sources

Illustration from pond5: “Dueling Pistols” by lineartestpilot

Charles Cora’s headstone

1855-1856

Charles and Arabella “Bell” Cora were a colorful, rich and well-known San Francisco couple whose lives jolted into misfortune one Saturday night in 1855.

He, 39, had made his money from dealing faro in Northern California mining camps and the city during The Gold Rush. Prior, he’d broken numerous faro banks in Louisiana and Mississippi, consequently, was banned from many gambling houses. He was “the foremost faro player on the Mississippi,” R.K. DeArment wrote in his article, “Gambling in the Old West.”

She, 27, had earned her wealth as a madam of a high-end brothel on Dupont and Washington streets. Though the two weren’t married, Bell used his last name.

“At the pinnacle of their professions, they were the elite of the sporting crowd, well acquainted with the top political and professional leaders of the city,” wrote Charles L. Convis, author of True Tales of the Old West: Gamblers.

Mutual Provocation

On Thursday, Nov. 15, the Coras were watching the play, Nicodemus, at the American Theater when during intermission, some men seated below recognized and shouted out to Bell. She playfully acknowledged them, after which both parties gestured bawdily to one another.

Sitting in front of the Coras, the wife of General William Richardson, a U.S. marshal, took great offense and asked her husband to make them stop. William, 33, demanded the Coras leave, but they wouldn’t. He asked the manager to force them out, but he, too, refused.

“The Richardsons stalked out, bitterly denouncing [Charles] Cora and Bell,” Convis reported.

Can’t Let It Go

The following night, Charles and William encountered one another again, first on the street then in the Cosmopolitan Saloon, where they had words in between drinks.

The next afternoon, William loudly went from watering hole to watering hole looking for Charles and revenge. When he found him, though, he seemed to have forgiven him as both imbibed more alcohol together at two watering holes before parting.

Later, William approached Charles in front of Montgomery Street’s Blue Wing Saloon and together they walked down Clay Street.

When they stopped at the corner of Leidesdorff, Charles aimed and fired his pistol at William’s heart. Dead almost immediately, William slumped to the sidewalk.

“One version has it that [Charles] Cora slammed [William] Richardson against a building, pinning his arms, and, as Richardson screamed ‘Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed,’ Cora shot him in cold blood,” wrote Dr. Weirde in the article, “For Whom the Belle Toils.” “Another version: Cora collared Richardson, Richardson reached for his weapon, and Cora fired first in self-defense.”

The Daily Alta California noted, “Murders have been committed for robbery or from motives of revenge, but for this last there appears to have been no inciting cause but an unnatural thirst for blood” (Nov. 18, 1855).

Justice With A Twist

The police arrested Charles, whose trial took place in March of the next year. For his defense, Bell hired a slew of attorneys, two of whom later would become U.S. Senators — E.D. Baker (Oregon) and James A. McDougall (California).

Baker’s fee alone was $30,000 (a $725,000 value in 1913, the earliest year for which conversion is available). Bell paid him half, all of which he immediately lost while playing faro.

The jury was hung and Charles, beyond bars, awaited a second trial in April.

Before that could occur, about 3,000 citizens angrily stormed the jail, armed with shotguns, rifles, swords, knives, and revolvers. Agitated by a second recent murder — that of newspaper man James King by city supervisor James P. Casey over a disparaging editorial — the newly reformed Vigilance Committee demanded Charles and James Casey’s release. He and his men greatly outnumbered, the sheriff complied.

The mob held unofficial trials for both men, who were found guilty. The minimum for a majority found Charles guilty; as for James, the same verdict was unanimous.

The committee members allowed Charles to marry Bell, which he did inside “Fort Gunnybags,” the vigilantes’ jail. At 1:15 p.m. that day, Thursday, May 22, from poles they rigged on their office building’s roof, they publicly hanged both men and left them there for nearly an hour.

“Almost every man, woman and child in the city was either a spectator or participator,” reported California’s Sacramento Daily Union (May 24, 1856).

Sources

Photo from the San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

Against a backdrop of sagebrush and dust in Nevada’s early, remote mining towns, saloons drew men for drinking and gambling. That combination, along with contrarian/antagonistic personalities, sometimes led to disputes that turned violent.

Here are three stories in which tempers, as fiery as the summers, got the better of men and ended in grim, sometimes fatal, outcomes.

1) Belcher v. Field
Place: Sparks (Washoe County)
Date: Thursday, October 13, 1904
Time: 9:30 p.m.

After having dinner with a woman, W.S. Field played roulette at the Oberon saloon. He nearly had lost all his money when the game ball traveled the wheel and stopped without having fallen into a pocket. Field requested a do-over.

“Give me a show for my money,” he said. “There is enough percentage in this game without robbing a man” (Reno Evening Gazette, Oct. 14, 1904).

The dealer refused, and an argument ensued.

The drunken faro banker, Joe Belcher, who had “the reputation of being a bad man,” ran over to the roulette table and cold-cocked Field several times on the neck and jaw with a 0.38-caliber derringer, the final blow firing and breaking the weapon (Nevada State Journal, Nov. 2, 1904). The bullet lodged in Field’s right temple, half an inch from his eye. Fortunately, he survived.

Belcher was charged with intent to kill. In the preliminary hearing, he admitted to assaulting Field but his pistol going off was accidental, he hadn’t meant to kill him.

The judge, however, bound the perpetrator over for trial. In the interim, he was held in the county jail as he couldn’t make bail. 

In late October, the case took an unexpected turn. Field drove to Verdi, Nevada with the woman with whom he’d dined at the Oberon and got into a heated dispute with her there, during which he stabbed her several times. He disposed of the knife and hopped the first train westward.

The following month, with Field, the complaining witness, out of the state, Belcher was released on $600 bail.

A few weeks later, Field returned to Sparks, thus the trial was scheduled for February 1905.

With the court proceedings finally underway, Belcher was called but didn’t appear. He’d forfeited bond and had gone on the lam. Law enforcement’s immediate attempts to find him failed.

2) Armstrong v. Coski
Place: Goodsprings (Clark County)
Date: Sunday, June 27, 1915
Time: 1:30 a.m.

During a game of stud poker among six men— Paul Coski, Tony Dietrich, Roy Blood, F.J. Schroeder, Tom Lowe and J.C. Armstrong — at the Pioneer saloon, mayhem ensued.

Coski, a miner, was dealing. All but Lowe folded, but Armstrong stayed and announced he’d just seen Coski deal himself a card from the deck bottom. Armstrong, “quiet, self-possessed and gentlemanly on all occasions,” proposed the pot be divided between Lowe and Coski and the matter dropped (Las Vegas Age, June 27, 1915). Coski, though, who was known to be argumentative, refused, threatened them and yanked the pot his way.

Armstrong said he wouldn’t tolerate cheating and pushed him back. Coski, a former prize fighter, began to climb over the table to get at 60-plus-year-old Armstrong. The latter drew a six-shooter and clocked Coski on the head with it. Coski grabbed Armstrong’s wrist and once more tried to get at him. Armstrong fired. The shot passed through Coski’s hand and into his chest. When that didn’t stop him, Armstrong fired again, causing Coski to slide back off the table and onto the floor, dead.

Armstrong’s trial took place in Las Vegas in mid-October. It lasted a week, with 19 witnesses for the defense and three for the prosecution testifying. His attorney argued Armstrong had acted in self-defense.

The jury agreed and found him not guilty.

Elite Club on Main Street, Ely, c. 1940 (first on left)

3) Doyle v. Clifford
Place: Ely (White Pine County)
Date: Friday, August 28, 1936
Time: Unknown

William Doyle, a businessman well known in Elko, Mountain City, Tonopah, Ely and other Silver State towns, stopped into the Elite Club to see his former gambling partner, Mickey Clifford, the roulette dealer there.

The men began to bicker, supposedly over a previous gaming deal. Doyle threatened to retrieve his gun from outside, return and kill Clifford. Doyle left.

Then he returned. Clifford wasn’t in the building, though, so Doyle began chatting with the proprietor, W.L. Tuck, at the bar.

When Clifford appeared and resumed his spot behind the roulette wheel. Doyle drew his 0.44-caliber weapon, aimed and fired, but as he did so, Tuck grabbed his arm, causing the bullet to veer off target and hit only the roulette table. During the brief struggle between them, Doyle got off a second shot, which again hit the furniture.

Henry Marriott, Ely’s chief of police, quickly arrived and disarmed and arrested Doyle. Witnesses said Doyle had shot Clifford to assuage a grudge he’d carried against him.

The shooter was charged with assault with intent to kill and later released on $2,500 bond.

At the preliminary hearing, Doyle’s attorney, J.M. Collins, filed a motion for dismissal of the charges because his client was intoxicated at the time of the incident.

In September, the justice of the peace bound Doyle over for trial. However, before that could take place, another attorney for Doyle, Joe McNamara, successfully got the original charge vacated. He’d argued that the preliminary hearing had been conducted illegally in that:

• the court had failed to grant or deny dismissal of the charges upon request
• the defendant hadn’t been given the opportunity to make a statement

In October, Doyle was charged with the lesser infraction of maliciously firing a gun in a public place. He pleaded guilty, and the judge fined him $25 plus $25 for costs (a total of about $875 today).

Sources

1931

Robberies were plaguing Reno. The Capitol bar and the Henry Club, both offering games of chance, were hit inside of eight days. A rumor circulated that notorious gangsters were headed to the Northern Nevada city. It was May; gambling had been legal for two months.

Consequently, owners and operators of The Biggest Little City’s gaming and drinking establishments began arming themselves en masse, their weapon of choice being a sawn-off shotgun. One local gunsmith crafted 30 of them, mostly 10 and 12 gauge, in a two-week period.

Photo from freeimages.com