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.

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Wyatt Earp, age 21

Iconic American figure, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (1848-1929), is heralded for his courageous exploits as a lawman, but he was a gambler first and foremost, often relying on the then-respectable profession to earn income throughout his lifetime. He’s earned a spot in U.S. gambling history.

Earp’s Gambling Education And Practice

At age 20, the tall, slender native Illinoisan landed a job in Wyoming grading track for construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. During time spent at the railhead, Earp learned how to play and deal faro and run monte. Over the next several years, he honed the craft in various gambling houses, saloons and brothels of the frontier and became proficient. Eventually, he operated table games, too.

As a gambler, Earp reportedly was honest and garnered high repute wherever he went, and he traveled a lot.

“Earp rarely stayed in the same place for long, frequently becoming broke, bored, unwelcome or some combination of the three,” wrote John Caldbick in a History Link essay.

The nomad typically moved from boomtown to boomtown, and in every one he hustled as a faro banker. He did own some brick-and-mortar gambling establishments, too. Here are some of them:

It Was Westward Ho For Lawman

After a roughly decade-long stint as a law enforcement officer, most recently as a deputy U.S. marshal, Earp relocated to San Diego, California in the mid-1880s.

“There was another Wyatt Earp seldom remembered — an older, wiser gentleman who lived in San Diego and operated gambling halls; bought and sold urban property; refereed [bull and cock] fights and owned racehorses,” reported the San Diego Union (Oct. 17, 1978).

During his roughly decade of living off and on in America’s Finest City, Earp leased and operated four gambling saloons there, all four simultaneously at one point, reportedly. All of them were in the red light Stingaree district that teemed with con men, shifty gamblers and criminals.

They offered faro, monte, blackjack, poker, keno, pedro, monte and other games. Not much else is known about Earp’s gambling enterprises there except for their locations and that they were profitable, particularly during the city’s boom years, 1885 to 1888, during which the gambler could net as much as $1,000 a night.

His most famous and most popular gambling spot was the Oyster Bar, in the Louis Bank Building at 835 Fifth Avenue. The others were at:

• A corner of 6th and F streets (where he ran high stakes faro)
• The northeast corner of 6th and G streets
• 951 4th Street

On Sundays, Earp promoted and ran all types of gambling, including the big wheel, rouge et noir, faro, monte and even thimblerig in Tijuana, Mexico.

Businessman Strikes Gold With New Saloon

After the rush to Nome, Alaska Territory for gold began in 1899, Wyatt moved there. He and partner Charlie Hoxie built and operated the luxurious Dexter Saloon, the town’s hotspot for travelers, miners and locals to drink, gamble, discuss politics and do business. The establishment was hugely successful thanks, in large part, to Earp’s notoriety.

Dexter Saloon

Gamblers Disgruntled by Big Name Newcomer

While still a co-owner of The Dexter, in 1899, Earp debuted another gambling house: The Union Club. That one was in Seattle, Washington’s tenderloin and was a partnership with a local man, Thomas Urquhart.

The move was risky because The Emerald City prohibited gambling and the men running places offering games of chance regularly paid off the local officials to let them operate. Those gamblers were displeased with the famous lawman moving in on their territory and then, with the Union’s immediate success, having to compete with him.

Law enforcement erratically enforced Seattle’s anti-gambling ordinance and this created ongoing trouble for the Union’s co-proprietors. Consequently, within six months of opening, Earp pulled out of the joint venture.

Nomad Stakes Out Mining Camp

Earp sold his share of the Dexter to Hoxie and headed to Nevada, Tonopah specifically. There, in 1902, he opened the The Northern with partner Al Martin and ran a successful business. 

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Know anything more about Earp’s gambling career? Let us know about it, please.

Sources

Faro game in progress, 1800s

1832-1860

Elijah Skaggs, nè Eli Harrison Skaggs (1818-1890) stands out in U.S. gambling history. He was one of the country’s cleverest card tricksters and a hugely successful gambler. More significantly, he created a franchise system for the business of crooked faro.

“He probably had more to do with the spread of gambling in this country than any other one man,” wrote Herbert Asbury, author of Sucker’s Progress.

Soaking It All Up

After leaving the Skaggs family farm in Kentucky, the young man visited several of the country’s gambling centers in the mid-Atlantic states. During these stops, he learned all of the intricacies of dealing faro, cleanly and crookedly. When he witnessed a new trick, the student compelled the dealer to show him how it was done, paying significant sums for the information if necessary.

“He was greatly impressed by the popularity of faro, by the opportunities it offered for chicanery, by the fact that the deal remained always in the hands of the man who ran the game, and by the expedition with which the artists emptied the pockets of the local sports,” Asbury wrote.

The Business Model

Beginning in the early 1830s, Skaggs made New Orleans his business headquarters. There, he recruited young men in gambling halls to help him build a gambling empire. The mastermind trained them extensively, paid their expenses and supplied money for their bank.

Once they became proficient, the gambling visionary sent pairs of them to different towns to ply their craft together, supervised by one of his many cousins. Skaggs gave each of his proteges 25 percent of the profits from their individual operation.

“If luck ran against them and they somehow lost their bankroll, they returned to Skaggs for replenishment and reassignment,” wrote Roll the Bones author David G. Schwartz.

Eventually, other professional gamblers called Skaggs’ practicing pupils “patent-dealers.” They came to be considered fraudsters at the gambling table.

Additional Ventures

As for other industry-related investments, Skaggs financed gambling houses in New Orleans and helped one of his brothers set up a gambling enterprise in California. He funded inventors who had a new idea for faro chicanery in exchange for being able to use their innovation exclusively for a year before they commercialized it. Consequently, Skaggs played a role in the development of some of the crooked faro dealing boxes that hit the market in the 1830s and 1840s.

His Business Attire

Skaggs himself was called “Brother Skaggs, the preaching faro dealer” because of his zeal for the card game and because of his regular attire, a uniform for gamblers of the period. He donned a white high standing-collared shirt and cravat, the color of which contrasted his black silk vest, trousers, frock coat, stovepipe hat and patent leather gaiters.

“These somber garments covered a long, gaunt and awkward frame and emphasized a sour and saturnine physiognomy,” described Asbury.

Prosperity For All

The ambitious entrepreneur kept the franchise alive for nearly two decades. At one time, Skaggs had about 100 of these gamblers scattered throughout the States. Business boomed.

“Skaggs’ patent-dealers prospered exceedingly, and the money rolled like an avalanche into the pockets of the Master in New Orleans,” Asbury wrote.

Through his massive gambling enterprise, other business interests and investments, the Kentuckian had become a millionaire.

Winding Down

He dissolved his gambling franchise and retired from the industry at age 40 in 1858. Afterward, he settled down on the Louisiana cotton plantation he’d purchased years earlier.

Little information is available about how he spent the remaining roughly 30 years of his life. He may have returned to working in the gambling industry at some point.

Reportedly, Skaggs lost about $3 million he’d invested in Confederate money and bonds, which became worthless after the Civil War.

The gambling maverick died at age 72 in Texas in 1890.

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Hands Up! by The Cowboy Artist, Joachim Lüdcke

1891-1935

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

Kirkley

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

In And Out

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

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

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

A Strong Defense

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

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

Horn

Pinkerton

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

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

It Is Possible

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

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

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

The Actual Perpetrator

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

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

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

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

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

The Final Twist

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

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

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

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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.

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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

Accardo

1935-1965

Tony Accardo, né Antonino Leonardo Accardo (1906-1992), is credited with reviving and expanding the Chicago Outfit’s gambling business in the 1940s after the organization’s head Paul “The Waiter” Ricca named him underboss. Accardo himself had his hand in various gaming enterprises before and after, too.

Accardo is the great-grandfather of the National Football League’s Bosa brothers:* Nick, defensive end for the 49ers and Joey, outside linebacker for the Chargers.

Individual Participation

As early as 1940, Accardo and some Outfit partners owned and operated the prosperous Owl Club, an illegal casino-nightclub in Calumet City, Illinois, on the corner of Douglas and Plummer avenues.

The Mobster-gambler also ran book, oftentimes under the name Joe Batters, a nickname Al “Scarface” Capone had bestowed upon him for his prowess in thrashing people with a baseball bat. In the early 1940s, for example, Accardo conducted a bookmaking enterprise out of the Ogden building at 192 N. Clark St. in Chicago’s Loop.

Not only was Accardo an operator of games of chance; he also was a player and thus, a gambler in both senses of the word. Reportedly, he was one of the best patrons of his own joint, the Owl Club. Even when he older and less mobile, he kept up the activity, placing bets via the telephone.

Group Activities

While underboss, Accardo shifted the Outfit out of labor racketeering and into other areas of organized crime, including gambling. He pushed the syndicate into three specific areas: slot machines, wire service and casinos.

Slots: The Chicago Mob broadened its footprint by placing slots in various establishments beyond the main street gambling house. These included gas stations, restaurants and bars and the group’s favorite targeted outlet, social clubs and fraternal organizations. The Catholic War Vets, the American Legion Posts, the CIO Steel Workers Club, the Polish Democratic Club, and the Italian American Republican Club, are just some of the many local ones.

After successfully flooding its territory in and around Chicago with slots, the Outfit expanded geographically. It hit the neighboring cities first, then nearby states and eventually Nevada.

“Accardo made sure that all the legal Las Vegas casinos used his slot machines,” wrote John William Tuohy in the article “Accardo.”

Wire Service: During the mid-1940s the Outfit took over the Continental Press Service, the wire service that distributed race results throughout the U.S. It did so by killing the operator, James Ragen, after he’d refused to partner with the Chicago Mob.

Once under its control, Continental “became so big and lucrative that an investigating Senate committee later called it the ‘life blood’ of the syndicate,'” reported the Chicago Tribune (Nov. 18, 1984).

Casinos: Three, during the 1950s, the Outfit pursued gambling in a bigger scale. It moved into owning stakes in and skimming millions from casinos. It stuck primarily to legal gambling jurisdictions, first Havana, Cuba, while that lasted, and then Nevada. For instance, by 1961, Chicago owned controlling interests in the Riviera, Stardust, Fremont and Desert Inn, in Vegas.

Despite having a major hand in the Outfit’s gambling (and other lines of business), Accardo always denied being one of the organization’s members never mind a boss. Instead, he claimed he merely was a beer salesman for a Chicago brewery.

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* How Accardo and the Bosa Brothers Are Related

Sources

1952

The life of wealthy, prominent businessman with several connections to the gambling industry, Thomas “Tom” A. Keen, 56, was abruptly ended at about 10:07 a.m. on Tuesday morning, February 5. 

After giving some duck eggs to a neighbor, this San Mateo, California resident walked back home. He grabbed his coat, kissed his wife good-bye and went to their detached garage to leave for work.

Once in his green Cadillac Fleetwood, he stepped on the starter. Dynamite hidden under the floorboards ignited and blew up. The fatal explosion propelled Keen’s body into the car’s back seat and sheared off his legs.

Car parts took flight. One side of the garage blasted apart. Windows of the Keen’s 16-room mansion shattered, covering the driveway and sidewalk with glass. Two windows of a home across the street also broke into pieces.

“The terrific explosion scattered flesh, metal and wood over a wide area,” reported The Humboldt Times (Feb. 6, 1952). “It was heard for blocks by residents.”

Connections To Gambling

Example of a more modern dog racing tote board

The San Mateo, California resident had worked for the past couple of decades years in the field of dog racing and horse racing. First, he’d built and operated the dog racing tracks in Belmont and Bayshore City in The Golden State. He’d co-invented the mechanical hare used in the sport. When California outlawed dog racing, he’d shifted his business focus to manufacturing and supplying totalizators,* also called totalizers and tote boards, for race tracks. Currently, he was president of the International Totalizer Company, based in Belmont.

Keen’s work took him around the U.S., to states where dog and horse racing were legal. Most recently, he’d been to Phoenix, Arizona to install one of his totalizators at a dog track. One month earlier, he’d installed five of his quinella** machines in the Miami Beach Kennel Club for purposes of demonstration.

Keen had ties with many dog and horse track operators, many of them connected. At the time, Mobsters controlled many such tracks in the country.

The Tucson-born track betting equipment mogul owned stakes in many tracks, including Sportsman’s Park in Cicero, Illinois; the Multnomah Kennel Club in Portland, Oregon; and the Mile High Kennel Club in Denver, Colorado.

“He had no one to fear,” said Keen’s friend and sports shop owner Joe Darcy. “He was never afraid. He did nothing but good for hundreds of people. Who could have done something so horrible?”

Keen

Theory No. 1

According to San Mateo Police Chief Martin McDonnell, Keen likely was killed because he took business into a territory out of which he’d been warned to stay. His department’s investigation led McDonnell to deduce Keen had been killed because he’d tried to place his quinella machines in a certain Florida hotel. The chief also surmised there most likely had been two killers, carrying out the assassination on behalf of a Mobster boss somewhere on the East Coast.

Theory No. 2

The second hypothesis was put forth by the California Crime Commission, which had held an unprecedented closed hearing in early May 1952 to investigate the Keen case. In its final report, the commission purported that Keen had been murdered because he’d owed the Olmo Group bookmaking enterprise about $20,000 (roughly $210,000 today).

Allegedly, Keen had been an Olmo customer and a heavy bettor and had refused to pay his debt even after the group’s enforcer Richard “Big Dick” C. Trabert had tried “persuading” him to do so. As a result, supposedly Mobster-gambler Emilio Giorgetti and John O’Neil, also part of the Olmo ring, had been forced to cover the loss. (Keen’s estate at the time he passed away was worth $204,000 (about $2 million today).

The San Mateo County District Attorney Louis B. Dematteis, who wasn’t corrupt, didn’t give the bad debt theory much credence, he said. The timing — Keen being murdered two years after the Olmo Group had disbanded — didn’t make sense. Dematteis thought it more probable the murder was tied to more recent events.  

The actual motive behind the murder of Thomas Keen remains a mystery; the crime still is unsolved.

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* A totalizer is the system for running parimutuel betting. It’s an electrically operated board that flashes the changing odds and total bets before dog and horse races and the payoff amounts after.
** A quinella, or quiniela, is a bet in which the first two places in a race must be predicted, but not always in the correct order. Quinella machines, which displayed these types of bets, were used in dog, but not horse, racing.

Part II and Part III.

Sources

1938-Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maiden Races In Nevada

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

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

The Pot Gets Stirred

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pros And Cons

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Issue Revisited

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

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

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

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

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

No More Wavering

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

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

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Top greyhound photo: By Matt Schumitz, from Wikimedia Commons

Sources

The Louvre and Oberon Saloons in Reno, Nevada

1900-1906

A snapshot of six early years of one popular gambling-saloon in Reno, Nevada spotlights some of the problems these establishments routinely faced: on-site crime, financial troubles, crooked games and changes in both owners and gambling operators.

Though the Louvre debuted in May 1897* at 22 E. Commercial Row in the then-called Marshall Building, it wasn’t until 1900 that any gambling associated with the enterprise was mentioned in the local newspapers. All earlier Louvre reports touted its unique beer offerings, fine cigars, music and lunches, but this new news brief was that “two new games are running there.” One was faro, the other one, unknown, perhaps craps.**

Thus, we begin our presentation of events then, just after the turn of the century, when the firm of Robinson & Matson owns the Louvre and remodels its interior.

1901

October: Burglars attempt to rob the Louvre’s safe, but it doesn’t go as planned. They successfully blow off the door with explosives but fail to penetrate the inner vault. They abort their plan.

1902

April: C.C. Cox, from Texas, acquires the Louvre for $6,500 (about $180,000 today).

December: Alex Aguayo assumes management of the Louvre’s gambling.

1903

Bookmaking becomes legal in Nevada.

January: Thomas Ward joins Aguayo in management.

February: For unknown reasons, Aguayo “retires” from the Louvre (Nevada State Journal, Feb. 23, 1903).

April: A.L. Mason & B.F. Bailey, of Red Bluff, California, purchases the Louvre for $7,000 ($196,000 today), gives it a front facelift and adds a second story for gambling, per Nevada law.***

June: While playing faro in the Louvre, a 59-year-old man, Frank Fusselman, dies from a heart attack.

September: Bailey retires, leaving Mason to run the Louvre on his own.

November: Bert and Grant Crumley take over running the gambling and upstairs bar.

December: Leading up to Christmas and then, New Year’s Day, the Louvre gives away a turkey to every patron who pays 10 cents to spin the Big Wheel.

1904

April: Charles Dreyer, proprietor of the adjoining Oberon gambling saloon, secures the top floor of the Louvre. (His plan is to combine it with the Oberon’s, creating one large space in which to offer gambling, but he never does).

1905

Slot machines now are legal in Nevada.

April: Dreyer purchases the Louvre’s building from Mrs. Marshall for $18,000 ($505,000 today). Mason remains the Louvre’s proprietor.

May: Charles Stout and Mart Johnson take over management of the Louvre. Stout has a stake in Reno’s Arlington Hotel. Johnson is the proprietor of The Ingleside roadhouse and former co-owner of the Palace Hotel, both in Reno.

June: The Louvre bank goes broke, and Stout and Johnson temporarily shut down the faro and craps. They restart them the next day, though, with a new, $20,000 bank roll.

September: Stout and Johnson again close the Louvre’s games, this time due to a dissolution of the duo’s partnership. Johnson bows out.

October: At the Louvre, a former Reno department store clerk, Joe Mitchell, cashes some checks, for which he has no money.

1906

March: C.J. Miller, who previously owned the International Hotel in Nevada’s Virginia City, joins Stout in managing the Louvre’s gambling.

“The change is of interest to Reno and Nevada sporting circles on account of the prominent part taken by the new owners in square games,” reported the Nevada State Journal (March 30, 1906).

This quote suggests someone was operating crooked games at the Louvre. It may have been Johnson, given the local newspaper described him once as “the ‘smooth’ man of the Louvre” and given he stepped down seemingly over a disagreement with Stout (Reno Evening Gazette, Aug. 11, 1905).

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* The Louvre ended its run in 1939 when it became the Martin Hotel Bar.

** In 1900, Nevada allowed some forms of gambling, only these games: faro; monte; lansquenet/rouge et noir; keno; fantan; 21; Diana; stud poker; red, white and blue; and banking games (ones in which there is a fund against which all players may bet). Per state law at the time, any and all commercial gambling had to be conducted in an establishment’s back room(s) so that passersby out front wouldn’t see, through the windows, the action inside. State legislators amended this statute in 1903 (see ***).

*** The new version of law required that gambling establishments in more populous Nevada counties (in which at least 2,000 votes had been cast in the previous general election) confine games of chance to their location’s second floor.

Sources