Wertheimer

Myrton “Mert” C. Wertheimer was murdered, William “Bill/Curly” J. Graham ordered the hit and Frank “Frankie” Frost carried it out. This was hearsay from Los Angeles Mobster and made man, Aladena James “Jimmy/The Weasel” Fratianno, as documented in Ovid Demaris‘ biography of Fratianno, The Last Mafioso.

Page 173 (hardback version) contains a conversation relayed to Demaris by Fratianno, between him and two Chicago Outfit members, Sam “Momo” Giancana and Johnny Rosselli. The three were reminiscing after Rosselli was released from prison, and the topic turned to Graham, then deceased. Fratianno says, “‘In his day, [Graham] was a worker. He was telling me one time that he had Frankie Frost clip Mert Wertheimer in Reno. You know, the guy that had the Riverside Hotel.'”

Wertheimer in fact ran the Riverside Hotel casino, called the Riverside Buffet, from 1949 to 1955, first as a lessee then as the owner, and for the three previous years, was involved in the Nevada Club.

Fellow Mobster-gambler, Graham, controlled Reno gambling and organized crime and owned several Northern Nevada casinos, including the Bank Club and the Willows in Reno and the Cal-Neva Lodge in Crystal Bay, between the 1920s and 1940s.

Frost was a hitman, jewelry thief and friend of Graham, who lived in The Biggest Little City for some time.

Were these allegations involving Wertheimer, Graham and Frost true? It Really Happened! investigated.

Circumstances of Death: True Or False?

Mert Wertheimer, the eldest of four brothers, died at age 74 in Los Angeles, California on July 20, 1958. His demise was suspicious in that it happened only two months after his brother Lou’s passing.

At face value, Mert Wertheimer’s death certificate does not indicate homicide, but perhaps it was falsified to hide the truth. The document primarily was typewritten except for the cause of death, time of diagnosis and a few other details that Wertheimer’s personal, Beverly Hills, California-based physician (whose name is indecipherable) handwrote.

The pertinent data on Wertheimer’s death certificate are:

1) Wertheimer passed away in the Cedars of Lebanon hospital at 4:42 a.m.

2) He died from acute monocytic leukemia, diagnosed six months earlier. His obituary in the Los Angeles Times noted “he had been in failing health the last two years” and his wife Bertha flew in from the couple’s Michigan summer home to be by his bedside” (July 21, 1958).

3) Wertheimer’s physician provided medical care to him for seven years, since 1951. He also provided care to Wertheimer’s brothers Lou and Al and filled out and signed their death certificates.

4) The doctor last saw Mert Wertheimer alive the day before his demise.

5) An autopsy was performed, and the findings were  used to determine the cause of death.

6) At the time of death, Wertheimer was living in Reno’s Riverside Hotel but had been in Los Angeles County for 13 days beforehand. Why was he there, to visit family and/or friends or for a medical appointment because he’d been feeling unwell? Or had he been lured there on a false premise?

Many of the above death certificate facts could’ve been verified easily with a check of Wertheimer’s medical records. As such, it’s highly unlikely, though remotely possible, his physician doctored records and the death certificate. If he did, it was at the risk of losing his medical license and career, going to prison and paying a hefty fine.

Question Of Motive

At the time of Wertheimer’s death, Graham was 69 and had been out of the Northern Nevada gambling scene for three years.

Wertheimer and his partners held a 10-year lease on the Riverside Buffet, which they negotiated during a sale of the property in January 1958, six months before Wertheimer’s death.

If Graham had Wertheimer killed, why? Did Graham dislike, envy or have a grudge against him? Did the two gamblers have a longstanding rivalry? What was the point of rubbing out Wertheimer when he was 74 and ill?

Final Determination

After considering the available evidence and information, It Really Happened! deduced that Mert Wertheimer died of natural causes.

In defense of this conclusion, we argue that pulling off a murder and a cover-up secretly and successfully required perfect execution of all of the various steps involved, and that seems improbable. It would’ve needed more than just Wertheimer’s physician to be involved, and it’s unlikely numerous parties kept quiet and for so long. It’s hard to fathom that in perpetrating the cover-up, a physician risked so much and on behalf of the person(s) responsible for the murder.

Tell A Lie Once…

So who lied, Fratianno or Graham? And to what end? Was Fratianno trying to ingratiate himself with Giancana, who revered Graham, with this boast about Graham? Did Graham want Fratianno to think he’d ordered the killing?

Why did author Demaris include this misinformation in his book without at least qualifying it? (Fratianno sued Demaris for allegedly misquoting him in The Last Mafioso, yet at another time, admitted he never read it.)

If it was Fratianno who lied, it calls into question his credibility, which has greater implications. This is because after he became an FBI informant in 1977, he testified against numerous Mobsters, gamblers among them, and his insider testimony helped get 26 La Cosa Nostra members and 11 associates convicted.

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What do you think, was Wertheimer murdered or did he die naturally? If the latter, why would Graham or Fratianno lie about it?

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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

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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.

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