Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa and Casino (Incline Village, NV)

Tahoe Biltmore (Crystal Bay, NV)

What do you think about these acquisitions?

In its July 1966 raid of Kress Manufacturing Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents seized a treasure trove of crooked gambling equipment that seemed headed to various Nevada casinos.

The haul included “hundreds of decks of marked cards and hundreds of pounds of crooked dice” (Nevada State Journal, July 27, 1966). The latter contained stamped logos of various major casinos in Las Vegas, Reno, Lake Tahoe and Elko along with smaller clubs throughout The Silver State. They included the:

Dunes — Las Vegas
Louisiana Club — Las Vegas
New Frontier — Las Vegas
Stardust — Las Vegas
Golden Bank — Reno
Riverside Hotel — Reno
Commercial Hotel — Elko
Crumley Hotel — Elko
El Bo Room — Wells
Cal-Neva Lodge – Crystal Bay (Lake Tahoe)

Agents also confiscated various other implements used to cheat at gambling. Among them were metal filings and discs used to weight dice; arm mirror manipulators and glasses used to read marked cards; holdout devices to secret away a desirable card for later use; magnets and magnetic coils used to control dice when rolled; and switches and relays used in rigging equipment like roulette wheels.

The search also turned up Kress invoices that showed the Tulsa gaming equipment manufacturer shipped its products to establishments throughout the U.S. Recipients included the Stardust and Riviera hotel-casinos in Las Vegas and the Citizens Club in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Casinos Deny Wrongdoing

As soon as the news of the search and seizure went public, proponents of Nevada gambling reacted.

Officials from the Riviera, Stardust, Louisiana Club, Riverside, Dunes and the Commercial Hotel all publicly denied using any kind of cheating device. They never ordered gambling equipment from Kress Manufacturing, they said. In fact, they never heard of it.

“I never knew [Kress] existed until right now. This comes to me out of the clear blue sky,” said James Lloyd, president of Riverside Hotel Inc. However, he continued, “This happens lots of times. Some of these companies make crooked equipment to sell to crossroaders who try to cheat the house.”

State Agency Weighs In

Edward “Ed” Olsen, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), the state’s gambling investigative arm, publicly made four points.

1) This happened before (which was true) and, thus, there is no cause for alarm. 

2) History shows that such cheating paraphernalia is not for Nevada casinos to swindle their customers with but, instead, it’s for individual career cheaters, or crossroaders, to use to cheat the gambling houses

3) To err on the side of caution, though, the NGCB will look into whether or not any of the state’s casinos ordered rigged equipment, but sending gaming agents to Tulsa isn’t necessary.

4) The Golden Bank Club, the El Bo Room and Crumley Hotel, the logos of which were on some of the found dice, no longer offer gambling or are out of business (this was true). The El Bo has been closed for 10 years.

Newspapers Take Side

When the Las Vegas Sun reported the news of the found cache of illegal gambling devices, it used the biased headline, “Foil Plot to Cheat Casinos.” It explained what that meant with a slanted lead, or opening line: “A national plot to cheat top casinos throughout Nevada was uncovered yesterday by the FBI in Tulsa, Okla.” (July 27, 1966).

Reno’s Nevada State Journal published an op-ed piece that refuted any possible merit to the notion some Nevada casinos cheated their customers. It read: “The gamblers and the state gaming officials know that the Tulsa dice were intended for use against the Nevada casinos. So, from a standpoint of the casinos being innocent of buying cheating gambling devices, there is no question. They just simply don’t do it” (July 18, 1966).

“Anyone who knows anything about gambling, however, knows immediately that the implication that the bigger Nevada gambling houses may be buying crooked dice or cards to cheat their patrons is just plain ridiculous,” the writer went on. “That the casinos, and particularly the big casinos, would risk, their licenses, representing millions of dollars in investment, by using crooked playing equipment is beyond comprehension.”

Also, the writer called out the FBI for intentionally misleading the public to think, by not saying otherwise in its report of the Kress raid, that the crooked equipment was intended for casinos not crossroaders.

An Opposing View

Op-ed writer Paul Harvey for The Ada Evening News in Oklahoma purported that Nevada’s gambling industry wasn’t as squeaky clean as it wanted the country to believe. In a published piece titled “No Gamble,” he wrote:

“Las Vegas is not going to incriminate itself. We are going to learn nothing new from this recent self-investigation. A hearing where the bosses are not subpoenaed and the witnesses are not under oath and the sessions are secret could hardly be anything but a whitewash. Accusers say the games are rigged and the cream is skimmed by the underworld before the casinos compute their taxable income, but you can hardly expect the State Gaming Commission to indict itself.

“We’d all heard the naive say, “Mathematical odds on cards, craps and roulette favor the house: they don’t have to cheat!’ Now the FBI has shown us that they do anyway. But the swindle goes on and the suckers stand in line and the casinos continue their business as usual” (Sept. 13, 1966).

Next week in Part II, read about the gambling investigation that led to the Kress raid, the indictment of 15 people including a Las Vegas-based dice maker and the legal outcomes for the key players.

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Louisiana Club chip photo: from the Museum of Gaming History’s Chip Guide

Sources

Ad in the Nevada State Journal, June 26, 1935

1929-1941

In the early decades of legal gambling in Nevada, Reno’s McKay/Graham combine expropriated legitimate business owners’ casinos in Washoe County.

The local Mob, headed by William “Bill” Graham and James “Jim” McKay, strove to dominate and control gambling in Reno without competition. Thus, anyone who wanted to open a gambling club had to seek their permission first, and the duo may or may not have granted it. Those who failed to ask for entry into the exclusive fraternity suffered dire consequences. Most times, McKay and Graham stole the business outright, but sometimes they infiltrated it and caused its demise.

Here are the stories of some gambling clubs that fell victim to Graham and McKay:

1) Country Club (in Reno)

With the backing of an ex-Nevada investor, Charles Rennie opened the Country Club in June 1935 on Plumas Street (between what today are Moana Lane and Urban Road).* At the time, Rennie was the gambling licensee for the Town House in downtown Reno.

“It was one of the most dazzling, exciting, and glamorous clubs ever opened in Reno,” wrote Dwayne Kling in The Rise of the Biggest Little City.

The $250,000 (a $4.7 million value today) establishment featured a restaurant, dance floor, polo grounds and tennis courts. The Bridge Room casino offered  roulette, craps, 21 and slot machines. Following a debut for which 600 people made reservations to attend, the County Club was doing great business.

Graham and McKay sent one of their henchmen, Jack Sullivan, several times to tell Rennie he should talk to the duo, but Rennie refused, according to Al W. Moe in The Roots of Reno.

Then, only 1.5 months after the Country Club’s premier, Rennie announced he was abandoning it and returning to the Town House full-time. Eighteen days later, the Country Club closed. It reopened soon after with a Graham/McKay man, James Merrell, as the new general manager.

The next year, Rennie tried to take back his Country Club from the Mobsters, without success. Subsequently, on May 15, a fire erupted at 3:40 a.m., under a serving table in the kitchen according to the steward, the only person on the premises at the time. Fueled by strong winds, the conflagration reduced the facilities to rubble within two hours. The fire chief said the fire looked to have been set, but it never was proven. Despite promises by Merrell that the Country Club would be rebuilt, it wasn’t.

2) Monte Carlo (in Reno)

The Monte Carlo opened on June 19, 1931 at 216 N. Virginia Street and boasted varied casino games, 12 in all, including hazard, roulette, big six, craps, 21, draw and stud poker, panguingue, klondike and chemin de fer.

By the end of that year, it was shuttered. According to Harold Smith, Sr., who co-owned nearby Harolds Club, “No warning went to its owners. The clique simply infiltrated its thieves among the employees and stole the bankroll. The Monte Carlo Club was broke in three months.”

3) La Boite Amusement Palace (in Reno)

Clarence Shockey launched La Boite Amusement Park, a keno-pool parlor, on July 21, 1932, to great success. Three days later, a fire broke out in the garbage behind the building but was extinguished quickly, saving the business. On the eighth day after opening, Shockey uncharacteristically failed to show up at La Boite that night, and he never was heard from or seen again. The club re-opened under new management three days later. The full story is here.

4) The Cowshed (in Reno)

Shortly after Belle Livingstone opened The Cowshed, a nightclub offering gaming (21,  roulette, craps), dining and dancing, Graham and McKay sent in their goons to drive her out. They did. The full story is here.

5) Harolds Club (in Reno)

Graham and McKay tried to close down Harolds Club in 1937, about two years after it opened.

One day, William A. Justi, third ward city councilman and police committee chairman, showed up at Harolds with two other councilmen, Harolds co-owner Harold S. Smith, Sr. described in his book. “They were there to examine our big roulette wheel hanging from the ceiling,” Smith, Sr. wrote. “The city’s ordinance imposed a tax on each gaming wheel. The Third Ward councilman was trying to persuade his colleagues to collect the tax instead on each of our 43 roulette layouts since they were placed from a single wheel. Fortunately, he wasn’t able to sell his plan. Forty-three licenses would have put us out of business.

“The real showdown came just before 10 AM a few days later when Raymond [Harold’s brother and co-owner] and I were alone in the place. Seven men sauntered in, all big, all sashaying from side to side to knock over whatever, or whoever, got in their way. I had heard through the grapevine our place was going to be wrecked. I was ready, though I would have liked to have had more witnesses. The men headed straight for Raymond standing behind the crap table, when I reached under the roulette counter for my loaded .38.

“‘You’re not going to shoot any dice,’ I declared, ‘so just turn around walk out that door.’ Not a tremor of vibrato was in my voice. I simply couldn’t stand there, aware of Raymond’s vulnerable mastoidal ear, and let them tear my brother apart or wreck the store. Had any of them taken another step, I’d have put a bullet near his feet and the next one into him.

“They halted and turned to face me. Anyone, I believe, knows when an armed man means to use his gun. They could see by the line of my lips I would use mine. They knew, furthermore, as I knew, that unless I faced them down, Harolds Club was through in Reno. Every hoodlum in the area would take his turn at clobbering us.  We would be their mirth, out in the street dodging our furniture. If, on the other hand, they retreated before a gun, the psychological advantage was ours. We would have made our stand and the word would be all over town by noon. Public opinion might save us from further rough stuff. The seven men put their heads together in solemn pow-wow, turned stiffly and marched out the door. I took my clammy hand off the pistol grip and murmured a silent prayer.

“We were in Reno to stay though I continued to carry the gun and watch every shadow as I drove home nights.”

6) Cal-Neva Lodge (in Incline Village)

“Graham and McKay swept over Cal-Neva at Lake Tahoe in 1929,” Moe wrote in Nevada’s Golden Age of Gambling. As soon as they did, they offered gambling there, which was illegal until 1931.

The Cal-Neva also burned down in a blaze thought to be arson, in mid-May 1937, just before the start of the summer tourist season (the enterprise typically was closed between September and June). It was rebuilt and quickly, however. If Graham/McKay had the fire set, why did they choose that time? It may have had something to do with the opening of the nearby Ta-Neva-Ho.

7) Ta-Neva-Ho (in Crystal Bay)

When John “Johnny” Rayburn opened the Ta-Neva-Ho,** the Cal-Neva Lodge fire had raged two weeks earlier. “The opportunity to own his own club and enter the Nevada gambling scene caused Rayburn to sell the Buckhorn [restaurant]” at North Lake Tahoe,” wrote Bethel Van Tassel in Wood Chips to Gambling Chips.

However, suddenly McKay’s people were running not just the gambling at the Ta-Neva-Ho but the entire place. McKay himself got a gambling license for the casino for 21, craps, roulette, panguingue, slots and a race book.

The Mobsters’ thinking behind taking over the Ta-Neva-Ho likely was that gambling revenue from it would make up for monies lost during the Cal-Neva Lodge rebuild.

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* On the former Country Club property today is the Classic Residence by Hyatt senior living community.
** Rayburn later renamed the Ta-Neva-Ho the Crystal Bay Club.

Sources

Bones Remmer

An unpleasant, self-described “big gun,” Elmer “Bones” F. Remmer was “once one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s flashiest and most successful gambling czars,” having owned numerous clubs in which he offered illegal games of chance, noted the Oakland Tribune (June 12, 1963). Before solely working in Northern California, Remmer worked in Northern Nevada for the Wingfield syndicate, the local Mobsters who then controlled gambling there.

He likely is most associated with his Menlo Club in San Francisco, which he operated during the 1940s, and the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe in Crystal Bay, Nevada, which he ran in the 1930s in association with the Wingfield Syndicate. He also owned, during the 1940s, the 21 Club in El Cerrito, the Oaks Club in Emeryville, and the 110 Eddy and B&R Smokeshop in San Francisco — all in California.

Here are 10 true tidbits about Remmer:

1) He was shafted by “It Girl,” actress Clara Bow in September 1930, when she stopped payment on three checks totaling $13,900 (about $198,000 today), which were meant to cover the gambling debt she’d racked up at the Cal-Neva Lodge. (This was even after he’d gifted her with a bottle of whiskey when she’d arrived at the property.)

2) His wife divorced him the following month on grounds of physical and other cruelty. She claimed she’d given Remmer $15,000 ($220,000 today) to buy into the Cal-Neva Lodge and quoted him as telling her, “I got so much publicity out of Clara Bow’s bum checks that now I know everyone and am hobnobbing with the elite. You’re no help to me now — just a detriment.” In the divorce settlement, Remmer had to pay her $15,000 ($270,000 today) in cash and $150 ($2,700 today) per month as alimony.

3) Remmer freely paid off state and local politicians to ignore his illegal gambling operations in the Golden State’s Bay Area. For one, he donated $170,000 ($1.9 million today) in campaign contributions to California Attorney General Frederick “Fred” N. Howser.

4) He was arrested and charged with intoxication, along with three others, following a drunken fight in the Encore bar-restaurant in West Hollywood one early morning in December 1950. The other brawlers were Edmund M. Scribner, a Bakersfield gambler who’d worked for Remmer before; Thomas J. Whalen, St. Louis gambler, and his companion, actress Vici Raaf.

5) While in police custody following the melee, he was served by federal agents with a subpoena, which he’d been dodging, to testify at the upcoming Kefauver Committee hearing. During the hearing in 1951, Remmer couldn’t be found, as he allegedly was waiting it out in Mexico, and never testified. One that threat was gone, he returned to Northern California.

6) Remmer went to trial twice, in 1948 and 1949, in San Francisco for operating illegal gambling houses and using business fronts to do so. Both cases ended in hung juries.

7) Jury tampering was alleged during Remmer’s first tax evasion trial in 1951-1952. An outsider, who claimed to know Remmer, approached and suggested to one of the jurors he make a deal with Remmer, insinuating Remmer would pay for a vote in his favor. The juror refused and notified the judge. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated but concluded nothing untoward had occurred. Ultimately, on appeal, the conviction of Remmer stood, and no charges against the reported interloper were pursued.

8) He was found guilty of federal tax evasion in 1952, but the appeals court ordered a retrial because of the alleged jury tampering. Tried again in 1958, he was found guilty a second time, and the higher court upheld the decision. He was sentenced to a $20,000 fine (about $185,000 today) and five years in prison. He served 2.5 of those, at the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island in San Pedro, California, getting paroled in 1961.

9) He had money problems later in life. Before prison, Remmer paid the requisite pieces of casino income to various mob bigwigs, including Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, New York mobster; Johnny Rosselli, member of the Chicago Outfit; and Jimmy Lanza, head of the San Francisco crime family. Remmer also freely gave money to various local and state politicians. After paying the Internal Revenue Service his tax arrears of $63,000 (about $530,000 today), finances were tight. After prison, he sold cars, until his death four years later, for his brother William Remmer, who co-owned a lot in Oakland, California.

10) Nicknamed “Bones” as a joke because of his fluctuating, 225- to 300-pound size, he is said to have struggled, all of his adult life at least, with an endocrine disorder. Remmer passed away after “undergoing treatment following surgery for a glandular ailment” at age 65 in 1963 (San Mateo Times, June 12, 1963).

Sources

Reno Evening Gazette, July 15, 1931

1945-1947

Ray Wherrit and Austin K. Wright of San Luis Obispo, California set out in 1945 to build a $120,000 hotel-casino in the Crystal Bay Park subdivision on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. The two had purchased five lots there for that purpose.

In November, after hearing the details of the project, the Washoe County Commissioners approved it.

A number of property owners in the tract petitioned the commissioners to withdraw their approval. Instead, the authoritative body stood by its original decision to greenlight the resort.

The Move To Plan B

For whatever reasons, perhaps due to the protests, Wherrit, with Wright no longer as a partner, downscaled the proposed development to a casino-bar to be built on his lots that, according to the deed, could be used for such a commercial enterprise.

At the time, the town of Crystal Bay already contained some casinos, including the Ta-Neva-Ho and the Cal-Neva Lodge.

Wherrit went before the county commissioners a second time, in February 1946, for permission to proceed. Despite  major grumblings from some, construction was approved.

Again, some Crystal Bay Park residents were unhappy with the ruling, which galvanized them to abort the project.

Their efforts, including public objections to such an enterprise being built in their neighborhood, eventually succeeded in getting Wherrit to scrap his plan. At that point, he conveyed the land back to John J. Heffernan, from whom he’d purchased it.

Permanent Solution Sought

In February, about ten residents sued Heffernan and the Crystal Bay Corp. (CBC), the company that originally had subdivided the acreage. The purpose of the suit was to place development restrictions on Heffernan’s property and any unrestricted, CBC-owned land, thereby forever preventing the erection of any similar entities in the future.

The defendants fought back to keep their parcels restrictions free.

The Final Answer

After a delay of more than a year, a non-jury trial finally took place in May 1947 and lasted two days.

Judge A.J. Maestretti ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor. He determined the same limitations on development and use should apply to the entire subdivision and ordered that, accordingly, all property in Crystal Bay Park be built out only for residential purposes.

Sources

1939

1935

Singer and actress Judy Garland (neé Frances Ethel Gumm) was discovered while headlining with her two older sisters at the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe in Nevada.

Theatrical agent Al Rosen was in the audience when The Garland Sisters sang, their mom Ethel on the piano. “Get that kid over here,” Rosen told the casino manager, Elmer “Bones” F. Remmer, referring to Judy (Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1982).

Rosen instructed the youngest sibling to sing Dinah to assess her chops, and Judy did. After, Rosen told Ethel, “I want to sign her.”

Subsequently, Rosen had Judy study with a Jewish cantor to develop soul, he said — “that’s how she could sing Over The Rainbow.”

1938

To draw guests, a 1938 newspaper ad for the new casino resort at Lake Tahoe in Crystal Bay touted the cinematic history of the land.

It read, “All America enjoyed the beloved Will Rogers in the screen version of Frank Bacon’s Lightnin’. Cal-Neva Lodge is built on the original location of this masterpiece — half in California, half in Nevada.” (The 1930 movie also starred Louise Dresser, Joel McCrea, Helen Cohan, Jason Robards, Sr. and Luke Cosgrave.)

Ad from the Nevada State Journal