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

1939

With the recent discoveries of dead bodies there, Lake Mead in Southern Nevada has been in the news.

The 1.5 million acres encompassing this water body and its environs have been a designated national recreation area since 1964, but a portion of them almost had become a Nevada state park three decades earlier.

The federal government quashed the effort to establish such an entity due to gambling, in part.

Piece Of The Pie

Nevada Senator Key D. Pittman introduced a bill to the U.S. Congress in early 1939 that would carve out about 10,000 acres (or 12 square miles out of 2,600) of publicly owned lands on the Boulder Dam National Recreation Area and authorize The Silver State to use them for a park.*

The recreation area, about 18 miles from Las Vegas, included the lake that Hoover Dam (previously called Boulder Dam) created, Lake Mead, named after Elwood Mead, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation commissioner at the time.

The National Park Service had gained responsibility for Lake Mead and the surrounding land in October 1936. About 10 years later, the name was changed to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. The attraction drew about 500,000 or more visitors each year.

All About Gambling

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes attacked Pittman’s state park idea, purporting that gambling and liquor interests were behind it. He argued that the 160 acres, allocated in the bill for the state park or “other public purposes,” likely would be used for saloons and gambling houses.

To support these claims, he alleged that, according to circulating rumors, gamblers being driven out of Los Angeles in a citywide cleanup intended to open shop in the Lake Mead area to capitalize on the numerous tourists visiting the lake and dam.

“I believe that the people of the United States want the integrity of their national park areas preserved,” Ickes said (Reno Evening Gazette, March 7, 1939).

Guy McAfee

Ickes didn’t name anyone but was referring to Guy McAfee, according to Charles “C.D.” Baker, president of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. McAfee was a former Los Angeles Police Department officer and gambler who’d moved from the City of Angels to Las Vegas due to heat from law enforcement in the former in 1938. The next year he’d acquired and renamed the Pair O’ Dice Club, on Highway 91 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, the 91 Club. Also, he’d debuted the Frontier Club in downtown Sin City. Baker refuted Ickes’ claims about gamblers, emphasizing McAfee had nothing to do with the proposed state park.

“That is a cooked-up charge to cloud the issues,” Baker said, referring specifically to Ickes’ assertion that Nevada wanted the state park so gambling establishments could be operated and liquor sold at it (Reno Evening Gazette, March 8, 1939).

Baker conceded, however, that Las Vegas wanted the state park so that Nevada, instead of the federal government, could control and benefit economically from the non-gambling/non-alcohol concessions there.

Ickes contended, too, that were Pittman’s bill to become law, it would set an unwise precedent and encourage other states to demand parcels of national parks.

Attempts To Appease

In response to Ickes’ opposition, Pittman expressed his belief that “western lands are rapidly becoming a barony, of the dictator at the head of the Department of the Interior,” but the senator also took steps to resolve the concerns.

He amended his bill. The new verbiage indicated Nevada would forfeit the federal grant for a state park if it “fails to put into effect and practice in said area laws, rules and regulations put into effect and practiced by the Department of the Interior within the Boulder canyon reclamation area relative to gambling, sale of intoxicating liquors, water pollution or sanitation” (Reno Evening Gazette, March 7, 1939).

Pittman also encouraged the Nevada State Park Commission (NSPC) to ban gambling and liquor sales in Nevada parks, which the agency did.

State Support

While Pittman worked in Washington, D.C. on the state park idea, Nevada legislators did so on the home front. They passed Senate Bill (SB) 133, which authorized the governor to accept a grant of land for a state park at Boulder Dam. They also approved SB 132, which authorized the NSPC to prohibit gaming and alcohol sales in the potential state park at Lake Mead.

The Finale

The fate of Pittman’s bill became known in August, when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt vetoed it. His reasons for doing so echoed Ickes’ voiced criticisms of the Nevada state park prospect except those related to gambling and liquor.

“I firmly believe the Boulder Dam/Lake Mead region in its entirety should continue to be administered uniformly by federal government in the interest of the nation as a whole,” Roosevelt said (Nevada State Journal, Aug. 13, 1939). He added that the area warranted consideration as a national park or monument site. (About 25 years later, the federal government officially made it a national recreation area.)

Angry at the decision by Roosevelt, specifically that he’d based it on Ickes’ input, as reported by the press, Pittman issued a statement. In it, he suggested the U.S. president might lose support in western states due to his public land policy.

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* At the time, Nevada had four state parks, including the Valley of Fire, all of which the legislature had established in 1935.

Photo by Tony Webster

Sources

1953-1959

Australian-American actor Errol Flynn was going to open one of the world’s largest casinos, one that would rival Monaco’s Monte Carlo, in the Virgin Islands when gambling was legalized there, he said in 1953. Were the enterprise to be successful, he’d move permanently to the Caribbean, where he’d open his own studios and continue producing movies.

The closest he ever got to that pipe dream, though, was playing a dealer in the 1957 film, The Big Boodle. In the role, he gets saddled with fake money a pretty lady gives him while working at the Casino, a gambling house in Havana, Cuba.

About two years after that movie debuted, Flynn passed away.

Barriers To Fruition

Perhaps what foiled his casino plan was that none of the three Virgin Islands legalized gambling during his lifetime. (That did change eventually, in 1994, when Saint Croix, not Saint John or Saint Thomas, passed a referendum to allow casino gambling.)

Maybe Flynn’s casino didn’t happen for other reasons. For instance, his financial situation was such he couldn’t have funded, even partly, such an undertaking himself. It’s possible, actually likely, he wasn’t even ever serious about it.

Sources

1950

In the morning, gambler Nelson Harris, 34, telephoned two Fort Worth, Texas criminal attorneys and said he was on his way over to discuss a life and death matter. He and his wife Juanita, 25 and pregnant, due in a week’s time, quickly loaded into the car to drive there, but didn’t get anywhere.

The car exploded after Harris pressed its starter, killing the three of them instantly.

Minutes after the blast, which shattered windows in nearby homes and apartments, the Harrises’ home phone rang, which a neighbor answered. According to him, a man on the other end said, “Tell the ______ ______’s friends they’ll get the same,” then hung up.

Harris had been a member of the Green Dragon narcotics syndicate, for which he’d served time, and after, had owned a gambling café, Nelson’s Place, on Jacksboro Highway, dubbed the “Highway to Hell” for all the houses of vice located on it.

Police investigated multiple possible motives for the assassination. Recently, Harris had been playing and wining a lot at floating craps games in Fort Worth and Houston, which had perturbed a gambler running them. A recent tip from Harris, an informant to the feds, had led to agents raiding a Dallas narcotics ring. Harris may have known too much, as a cache of business records found among his belongings after his demise detailed payoffs to police.

No one was convicted for the Harris murders.

——————–

Part I and Part II.

Sources

Faro stands out in U.S. gambling history. The imported card game dominated the industry here for a long time, about 100 years. “Tiger” was the country’s favorite gambling pastime during the 1800s, though played before and after. Men couldn’t get enough of it. It was ubiquitous.

Faro also is noteworthy for being the game in which the first rampant cheating at cards occurred in the States.

“No other card or dice game, not even poker or craps, has ever achieved the popularity in this country that faro once enjoyed, and it is extremely doubtful if any has equaled faro’s influence upon American gambling or bred such a host of unprincipled sharpers,” author Herbert Asbury wrote in Sucker’s Progress.

Shaving, Pricking, Sanding

The first cheating tricks in faro involved altering the playing cards. Sharpers could buy all types of prepared cards. However, the careful gamblers invested in shears, knives and trimming plates and modified the decks themselves.

One method was trimming certain cards in each suit in specific ways with shears. These cards are called strippers. The deck containing them was a stripped deck. The amount shaved off the cards was minute, about 1/16 or 1/32 of an inch in width.

Trimming shears

One type of strippers is wedges. Using shears, the sharper trimmed both long sides to make them narrower at one end, say the bottom, than at the other, the top. Ends are similar but instead of the sides being shaved, the ends, or short sides, were.

Then there are hollows and rounds, or bellies. With these, certain cards were cut using trimmer plates to be round, wider across the middle and tapered slightly toward the ends. The remaining cards were cut in the opposite manner, to be hollowed out, narrower in the middle and wider at the ends. Concave and convex are similar but their ends, instead of their sides, were modified.

Stripping plate

Cheaters also marked cards, known as readers. One way of doing this was making pinpricks in them, which the dealer could feel with a finger.

Sometimes cheaters roughened one side of certain cards. This made them better adhere to one another and, thus, easier to deal two at a time. This subtle texture was achieved with emery paper; spermaceti, a waxy substance sperm whales produce; a pumice stone; or a rosin-glass mixture.

Definite Advantages

With prepared cards, the cheater could stack the deck as desired and, thereby, know at all times which cards were where in it. Oftentimes in faro, he altered cards below seven and keep those separated at the top of the deck from the rest in the bottom. As needed, he took a card from the top and another from the bottom at one time. Sometimes, he hid one of two cards in his hand until he wanted to use it.

“Card sharping has been reduced to a science,” wrote John Maskelyne in Sharps and Flats. “It is no longer a haphazard affair, involving merely primitive manipulations, but it has developed into a profession in which there is as much to learn as in most of the everyday occupations of ordinary mortals.”

Advancement In Cheating

An American invention came along in the 1820s that allowed the sharper to better conceal his faro cheating tricks — the dealing box.

Faro dealing box

It led to a permanent change in how cards were dealt in the game. Beforehand, bankers dealt them from a face down deck in their left hand. Afterward, bankers dealt them from a face up deck in a dealing box.

“The motives for changing this game from the hand to the box were as base and nefarious as any that ever actuated the ingenious but wicked gambler; his object was nothing less than to be absolutely sure of stripping completely every man that should bet again him,” wrote self-described reformed gambler Jonathan H. Green in Gambling Exposed.

Evolution Of Dealing Boxes

A Virginian and notable card player named Major Robert Bailey designed the first dealing box in 1822. Made out of brass, it was a bit longer and wider than a deck of cards. The lid contained a small oblong hole in the middle for the dealer to insert his thumb or a finger and push a card out the slot on the side. This box didn’t catch on widely, though, because the top card couldn’t be identified.

Three years later, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based watchmaker, Joseph “Joe” Graves, debuted a variation in which the top card was fully visible. Casinos and faro dealers widely adopted this iteration, and over time, it became the standard.

Soon after Graves’ dealing box hit the market, a number of crooked ones appeared. The San Francisco, California-based company Will & Finck, for instance, manufactured 19 different kinds of boxes, only three of which weren’t rigged. Graves also made and sold crooked dealing boxes.

Variations Of The Device

Over time, these contraptions became more and more ingenious.

“Some were intricate contrivances of springs, levers, sliding plates, thumb screws and needle-like steel rods,” Asbury wrote.

The coffee mill, or crank box, for example, allowed the cheater to deal the second, rather than the first, card.

With the lever box, the cheater pushed an outside screw that activated a blade inside to thrust out the two top cards. Similarly, with a balance top, when the banker pressed down on one corner of it, the slot, or mouth, opened wider than usual, and he expelled two cards at once.

Yet another dealing box contained a spring mechanism that made a grinding noise only when it came into contact with a rounded card.

Other box variations included the tongue tell, sand tell, top sight tell, end squeeze, screw box, needle squeeze, lever movement and horse.

“Occasionally one of the gadgets got out of order and caused considerable embarrassment to the unlucky sharper who owned it, but as a result they worked perfectly in the hands of competent operators,” noted Asbury.

A Pretty Penny

Honest dealing boxes were about $20 a pop, but the rigged boxes cost as much as $200 for one. Louis David of Natchez, Mississippi, also a watchmaker, got wealthy in the 1840s selling his tongue-tell boxes made out of German silver for $125 to $175 apiece.

Wicked Combination

The use of altered cards in conjunction with gaffed dealing boxes took cheating at faro to a new level. With both, the sharper could deal two cards at a time, deal a card to lose when play on it to win was heavy and arrange the last turn such that it maximally benefitted the bank, among other tactics.

“The advantages thus given the dealer were so widely used that cheating soon became as much a part of faro in America as a pack of cards,” Asbury wrote.

Sources

1949

The Smiths, who owned and operated Harolds Club in Reno, Nevada appropriately named their casino Roaring Camp.

Generally, a roaring camp was “a gold-prospecting camp characterized by wild behavior, unrestrained drinking and gambling,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Specifically, Roaring Camp was an actual mining settlement in California’s Amador County, on the Mokelumne River where forty-niners prospected for gold.

Also, Roaring Camp was the name of the fictional California gold mining town in American author Bret Harte’s 19th century short story, “The Luck of Roaring Camp.”

Harolds’ Roaring Camp isn’t around anymore, but California’s Roaring Camp is, as a tourist spot, Roaring Camp Mining Co.

Source: Reno Evening Gazette (Nev.), March 30, 1949.

1928-1972

Samuel “Sam” F. Termini (1903-1972) was known as a small-time racketeer who worked at and operated gambling enterprises mostly for others.

Here are 10 interesting tidbits about him and his life:

Gambling History

1) Termini was associated with Kansas City Mobster Charles Binaggio. Born and raised in Missouri, Termini had worked for Binaggio before moving to California in 1939 and was one of his godsons.

2) Termini became involved in gambling in Kansas City, Missouri, where, reportedly, he owned and operated some type of business at 404 Independence Avenue where he offered illegal gambling

In Northern California, Termini managed the illegal gambling at the Willow Tree in Colma (San Mateo County), co-owned by Mobsters Emilio Giorgetti and Elmer “Bones” F. Remmer. He held this job from 1942 until the sheriff closed the club in 1947. Also, Termini owned a 10 percent interest in the operation.

Subsequently, in the same county, Termini, using the alias Sam Murray, rented some space in the Silver Saddle tavern-café, in which he debuted and ran the Skyline Club in Redwood City. The illegal gambling there included craps and blackjack.

Termini leased and managed the gambling concession at the Tahoe-Biltmore in Crystal Bay, Nevada during the warm weather season of 1949.

Starting around the mid- to late 1950s (see No. 9), Termini worked as a pit boss at the Horseshoe Club in Las Vegas, Nevada. At the time, his former associate Giorgetti owned it.

3) When Termini ran legal gambling at the Tahoe-Biltmore, Binaggio visited the financially troubled property and decided to bankroll his godson in what was to be “the biggest gambling joint west of the Rockies,” reported the California crime commission in its 1953 report. However, the assassination of Binaggio on April 6, 1950 ended the plan.

4) Police busted Termini for illegal gambling in 1928 at his Kansas City establishment and fined $25 (about $410 today).

Custom Home

5) Termini had a custom home built for him and his family in Hillsborough, California. Constructing a home at the time, in 1946, required veteran’s priority, which Termini didn’t have. So he transferred title of his property and obtained building permits for it in the name of a nephew, a World War II veteran living in Missouri, Jesse LaBoi. This was illegal.

6) Once completed, Termini’s home was an impenetrable fortress. A heavy electronic fence surrounded the property and was controlled from an underground room. This barrier was equipped with a ring of electric eyes linked to an alarm and motion activated floodlights. Gates allowed for entry but only through controls on the Terminis’ cars or by telephoning an unlisted number. The door to the wine cellar was armor plated. An house-wide intercom allowed Termini to hear any and all conversations taking place anywhere inside the home.

Suits Against Him

7) In 1951, the general contractor and the architectural firm that built and designed Termini’s house, respectively, sued him. The former asked for $103,000 ($1.1 million. The latter asked for $16,000 ($107,000 today). Both amounts were the unpaid balances owed them for their services. The case went to trial, and jurors ruled only in favor of Marshall. They awarded him $126,523 ($1.4 million), including interest and court costs.

8) The federal government tried Termini in 1952 for under-reporting his and his wife’s income and underpaying the amount of federal income taxes they owed. The years for which he was charged were between 1945 and 1949 for his taxes and 1945 and 1947 for hers. Termini was found guilty of tax evasion in the amount of about $92,000 ($976,000 today). The judge sentenced him to three years in federal prison and a fine of $20,000 ($212,000 today).

Last 20 Years

9) For the tax evasion, Termini spent three years in the McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. After getting released, he reportedly lived and worked in Las Vegas. Eventually, he moved to Reno, Nevada.

10) Termini passed away on June 12, 1972 at age 69 in Reno. His body was interred at Mountain View Cemetery.

Sources

1934

A man named Hans Brucksmer played about $15 worth of nickels (about $300 today) in a slot machine at a place of business in Seattle, Washington and got only four coins back. He lifted the machine and took it to the local police station.

There, holding the device under one arm, he filled out a complaint form, claiming the machine had cheated him! (It’s unknown what he thought the machine’s purpose was.) Of course, no recourse was given to Brucksmer as his claim was meritless.

What did happen, though, was the police arrested and jailed the owner of the establishment for possessing illegal gambling paraphernalia.

Source: Reno Evening Gazette (Nev.), “Loses Nickels So He Complains Against Machine,” April 6, 1934.

1913-1915

Circumstances of a lawsuit in the U.S. led to an unusual occurrence, even for Nevada: the federal government taking over and running a Silver State casino.

It was The Big Casino, a combination casino, dance hall, hotel and restaurant, in Tonopah, then one of the state’s few remaining true mining towns. At the time, William S. Johnson and G.W. Summerfield owned the business.

The Ball Starts Rolling

The impetus for this unprecedented action was a lawsuit William Johnson’s ex-wife Roxa S. Johnson filed in mid-1913, asking the court to set aside the former couple’s divorce decree. A Nevada judge had granted it about 3.5 years earlier, on Dec. 14, 1909, on grounds that Roxa had abandoned William.

The two had married in 1890 in Ohio, and their union had resulted in a son Clemmer, born in 1896. At some point, the Johnsons had moved to Tonopah, Following the legal split, Roxa and Clemmer had relocated to and lived in Los Angeles. William had stayed put.

Details Of The Suit

In her filing, Roxa claimed she’d been deceived under false pretenses into signing an agreement noting William would give her an existing $13,000 (about $369,000 today) note and pay her $76 ($2,000) per month. His estate, however, was worth multiple times that, an estimated $110,000 ($3 million today).

Roxa also alleged she’d been induced to sign another document that waived notice of the divorce and allowed the case to be heard within an hour. She’d noted that while she’d waited in the office of William’s attorney for him to return, he’d filed the action, and the judge had granted a divorce decree. Roxa had signed the forms at 12:30 p.m., and the case had concluded before 2 p.m.

Further, she claimed the divorce had come about through fraudulent means. Specifically:

• The agreement she’d signed had no legal standing
• Roxa hadn’t known anything about a divorce action until the judge issued the decree

  William’s abandonment claim and his testimony supporting it had been false; she and William had been living together up to three days before the divorce request was filed

• No mention had been made of there being a minor child
• William had claimed he lacked financial means
• A default hadn’t been entered in the case

Judge Hits Pause Button

As a result of Roxa’s lawsuit, in August, Federal Judge William W. Morrow issued an injunction and restraining order to William, barring him from disposing of any of his property until the case got resolved.

Along with The Big Casino, William’s assets included the one-year-old Green Goose Tavern and other real estate, in Tonopah; 27,498 shares of the Nye County Land and Livestock Company; securities in other commercial entities; and about $3,000 ($85,000) in cash and diamonds.

Morrow also appointed a receiver, T.F. “Frank” Bonneau of Tonopah, to take control of and maintain William’s assets until further court order. William sought to have the receivership vacated, arguing that it was detrimental to his casino business and that the order was illegal, given that William wasn’t the sole owner of The Big Casino. The co-proprietor’s efforts, however, were unsuccessful.

Uncle Sam Becomes Gambler

Thus, on Aug. 21, 1913 the U.S. government assumed control of and began operating The Big Casino. Joe Monahan was in charge of the gambling component.

“These were mad, merry days at the dance hall,” reported The Tonopah Daily Bonanza (June 10, 1915). “Uncle Sam enjoyed a splendid revenue … he took the roof off and let the blue sky shine in. He brought forth card tables and other gambling devices and told his patrons to go the limit.”

For about two months, the government was “raking in the money” from this popular enterprise.

That revenue ceased, though, in mid-November, when the Nye County Commissioners revoked the business’ liquor license.

“Finally local authorities decided that Uncle Sam was entirely too rotten in his methods for a God-loving, law-abiding mining camp,” the Bonanza reported.

Once it became a dry establishment, patronage plummeted, and Bonneau closed the place soon after.

The Resolution

A few weeks later, on Dec. 15, 2013, The Big Casino reopened under new, non-governmental management, that of Charles Enquist, a previous owner. Liquor was allowed to flow again and did.

As for Johnson v. Johnson, it dragged on for two years, into 1915, but William wasn’t around for most of it. He died in March 1914 from heart trouble.

Ultimately, the court found Roxa had a legal right to much more than what she’d agreed to, about $80,000 ($2.2 million), according to Court Master Lester J. Summerfield, who’d heard testimony about and had assessed William’s assets.  

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Sources