The Red Carpet in Biloxi was cheating its craps players by using a “juice joint,” a two-ton electromagnet that controlled metal-containing dice on a game table, in 1965. At the time, Mississippi prohibited all forms of clean, never mind dirty, gambling.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched an investigation. Agents learned that Harry Bennett, 63, had turned his three-bedroom home into The Red Carpet, which he ran. One room contained two roulette wheels, two blackjack tables and one Beat My Shake table. Another room housed two craps tables. The third room featured slot machines and a bar. The Red Carpet owner of record, however, was Dewey D’Angelo, 39, because Bennett had been under federal indictment in Iowa when he’d started the club.

A Widespread Network

Inquiries about the juice joint led federal investigators to Tulsa, Oklahoma businessman, Jack E. Kress, whose company had manufactured and had sold the contraption to Bennett for $15,000 ($125,000 today). Kress also helped install it in The Red Carpet’s concrete floor. The 1951 Transportation of Gambling Devices Act prohibited the crossing of state lines with any and all gambling equipment via any method (mailing, shipping, vehicle transport, etc).

Kress

Ultimately, as part of its query, which carried over into 1966, the FBI raided multiple illegal Mississippi casinos, in Biloxi, Mississippi City and Jackson, finding various cheating implements — magnets, weighted dice, marked cards and more. Agents also searched Kress’ factory, Kress Manufacturing Co. (see Part I).

Ultimately, the federal law enforcement agency arrested 15 people, including Bennett, D’Angelo and Kress, from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and Nevada.

Agents also collared Wilbur K. Sullivan (aka Pat Sullivan), 56. He owned and operated Christy and Jones Inc., a dice manufacturing firm in Las Vegas, Nevada and competitor of Kress Manufacturing. In 1965, FBI agents confiscated from Christy and Jones misspot dice, weighted dice and company records. Among them, they found evidence that Sullivan had manufactured and had shipped an order of crooked dice in June 1965 to illegal gambling operator, James L. Porter, in Gulfport, Mississippi.

In early April 1966, Sullivan renamed his enterprise to Las Vegas Card Co. and moved it to a different Sin City location. Two months later, he was arrested and sold the business to a former gambling equipment manufacturer.

Conspiracy, Aiding And Abetting

A federal grand jury indicted all 15 suspects on four counts related to illegal gambling. The first count was conspiracy to promote gambling (racketeering) through, one, transportation of a juice joint from Tulsa to Biloxi in a U-Haul trailer and, two, use of the U.S. mail. The second count charged aiding and abetting relative to the conspiracy. The final two counts alleged the use of two checking accounts to house funds collected for gambling debts.

About a month before the trial was to begin in January 1968, Bennett was found murdered outside his Biloxi apartment, having been shot eight times.

The Dice Reveal

The U.S. government reduced the number of defendants in the trial to seven, Kress and D’Angelo included. Sullivan testified on behalf of the government. A total of 56 witnesses took the stand during the eight-day proceeding.

The jury deliberated for four hours and returned an across-the-board guilty verdict. Twenty months later, the appeals court would uphold all of these convictions in its September 1969 ruling.

In the meantime, a federal judge punished Kress with two consecutive sentences: for count one, five years in prison and a $5,000 ($36,000 today) fine, and on count two, a $10,000 ($71,000) fine and five years of probation.

Sullivan, sentenced for the same charges as Kress, received one year in prison followed by five years’ probation.

D’Angelo got three years of prison on count one; two years on count two, the sentences to be served consecutively; and a $3,000 ($21,000) fine on count three.

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Was this FBI investigation a productive or nonproductive use of time, money and effort? What do you think and why?

Sources

1960-1963

Twins, Reginald “Reggie” and Ronald “Ronnie” Kray, gained notoriety as powerful and murderous gangsters in London, England in the 1950s and 1960s. During their reign of terror, their involvement in organized crime included protection rackets, drug running, money laundering and even gambling. (The 2015 movie, Legend, which features actor Tom Hardy as both men, depicts their story.)

By 1962, the Krays would own a casino, Esmeralda’s Barn, in the West End.

Typical Shady Activity

The events leading to it began when Reggie, the “more reasonable” of the two — Ronnie was a paranoid schizophrenic frequently off of his requisite medication — was serving a sentence in the prison at Wandsworth.

Ronnie crashed a party to extort Peter Rachman, a West London extortionist himself who was profiting off of charging tenants exorbitant rental rates. Ronnie demanded Rachman pay him £5,000 (about $14,000 then, $114,000 today) immediately or he’d take over Rachman’s Notting Hill territory; Ronnie would have his own heavies force out, violently of course, Rachman’s rent collectors and take their place. Rachman gave Ronnie a check for £1,000 (about $2,800 then, $23,000 today).

When Ronnie went to cash it the next morning, it bounced. He was irate; no one played him like that. With a Luger in hand, he went looking for Rachman but couldn’t find him. So Ronnie did as promised, and his men assaulted Rachman’s thugs.

The Olive Branch

Knowing his life was at stake, Rachman devised a way to make it up to Ronnie. He got word to him about a legitimately owned casino in the West End that just might be of interest. It was Esmeralda’s Barn, on the Knightsbridge end of Wilton Place. It’d begun in the 1950s as a nightclub but when the United Kingdom legalized gambling in 1960 via the Betting and Gaming Act, the owner, Stefan de Faye, had turned it into a casino.

Usurping The Business

On the veiled threat they’d might kill or maim de Faye if he refused, the Krays, through their soon-to-be full-time advisor Leslie Payne, forced de Faye to sell Esmeralda’s to them for £1,000.

De Faye and the other directors could maintain their positions and profits but essentially were stripped of any control. In reality, they wouldn’t get a penny, and in a short time, the Krays would oust those men entirely from the business.

(The twins’ older brother, Charlie Kray, who also was involved in their underhanded dealings, later said it was he who negotiated the purchase of Esmeralda’s, for £2,000 [about $5,700 then, $46,000 today], and Rachman never was involved.)

Start Of New Venture

After the one-sided deal was done, the Krays (Reggie then was out of prison on bail) with Payne, visited their new casino, in 1961, for the first time.

“It was an interesting evening; interesting for the twins, who gazed with mounting avarice and awe as the earliest of the night’s gamblers seated themselves at the rich baize of the tables and the chips began travelling; interesting for the club’s manager and principal shareholder who was waiting to meet the night’s big punters, ignorant of what had happened; most interesting of all for Leslie Payne, who held the company minutes of Hotel Organisation Ltd. [de Faye’s company] in his ever-present briefcase, and was waiting for a good moment to tell the manager and his co-directors that they had some new and unexpected partners,” wrote John Pearson in From The Profession of Violence: The Rise and Fall of the Kray Twins.

The casino boomed, thanks to the savvy manager, Laurie O’Leary, his rich friends and the way he ran the operation. The Krays gave O’Leary 50 percent of the profits and kept the rest.

This successful arrangement, however, wouldn’t last.

(As a bonus post, we’ll release Part II this Friday.)

Sources

Today

In the U.S. we call them slot machines and one-armed bandits.

In Australia, they’re pokies.

People in the United Kingdom call them fruit machines, or fruities. Other names?

Photo from freeimages.com: by Tijmen van Dobbenburgh