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1938 Esquire* Harry T. Clifton was a wealthy Englishman who owned racing stables and often visited Southern California. During his visit there in April 1938, he gambled with Lew Brice and Tommy Guinan in a…
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…
1948-1950 In between dispatch orders, a Las Vegas, Nevada taxi driver fleetingly picked up the announcement of horse racing information on his cab radio one day in mid-October, 1948. He informed Clark County Sheriff Glen…
1969-present When executives of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada hosted 12 people from Kansas City in 1969 as part of a gambling junket, it unexpectedly backfired. When their guests, after four days at the…
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…
1946 Two brothers — Edward P. and George Jones — freely controlled Chicago, Illinois’ policy* racket for 25 years, beginning in the 1920s. As a result, the two raked in money, $10 to $30 million…
1964 The Dunes in Las Vegas, Nevada switched from writing off unpaid IOUs to claiming them as income, allegedly to keep Internal Revenue Service agents from harassing its customers — asking guests in the hotel…
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…
1915-1935 James “Jimmy” Sidney Rogan, an active student and football player, was well liked by the principal of his high school in Tonopah, a mining boom town halfway between Las Vegas and Reno. In 1915,…
1958 Reverend Maurice D. Tulloch, 50, a Kansas man, gave up his Baptist ministry for shilling in a Nevada casino. Feeling as though his life was suffocating him, a month earlier he’d walked out of…
1948-1950 Tragedy struck when the wife of famed American novelist, John Steinbeck, was in Reno, Nevada for a quickie divorce from him after 5½ years of marriage. In 1948, while establishing residency in The Biggest…
1952 When Ernest J. Primm owned the Monterey Club, a poker house in Gardena, California (a Los Angeles suburb), he claimed on his state income taxes the losses of his shills, up to $500 ($4,500 today) a…