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

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.

Sources

Street photo of 2nd Street Reno in 1950, with Club Cal-Neva

In a likely unprecedented event, with all of the necessary equipment on hand, demonstrations of how a local casino operated its race horse keno game were provided to the judge and jury in a Reno, Nevada courtroom in 1950.

These presentations were part of the defense strategy during the three-day February trial regarding the civil court case, Leon Pierce v. Club Cal Neva.

Hedging His Bets

In his suit and when testifying in court, Reno resident and sporting goods store worker Leon Pierce alleged that the Club Cal Neva casino owed and refused to pay him $5,000 (about $60,000 today) for a winning race horse keno ticket he played in January 1949. Pierce claimed that the 10 horse numbers he chose to be winners, on a $1 ten-spot ticket, actually were. Pierce was the only witness for his side.

(A similar case involving plain, not race horse, keno would happen a decade later at the Nevada Club in Las Vegas.)

Going for the Win

The Club Cal Neva and its defense team sought to prove that Pierce’s keno ticket had been filled out after the winning race was called. They alleged that Pierce’s ticket had been for race number 126, as shown by his receipt, but the winning race had been 127. For some reason, his marked ticket was in the pile of tickets for 127 not 126. Because Pierce’s ticket was for a non-winning race, the casino didn’t owe him any payout, its attorneys argued.

To help jury members understand, Club Cal Neva casino manager Samuel “Sam” A. Boyd* explained the bookkeeping and other operations of race horse keno, using the game implements brought into the courtroom for this very purpose. He showed how tickets were written and payoffs were made.

He said the ticket mixup could’ve been the dealer’s fault or an incidence of Pierce “capping the book.” If the latter, Pierce likely distracted the dealer and slipped a blank race 126 ticket on top of the blank tickets for race 127 then asked him to write a ticket for him. The dealer grabbed and filled out the top ticket.

The Double Whammy

The defense presented two additional witnesses. The first was Emmet Shea, a former, local race horse keno writer now living in Montana. Shea testified that when he’d worked at Harolds Club previously, Pierce had asked him two different times whether he’d be willing to collude with Pierce to produce a winning ticket.

“I told him he was nuts,” Shea testified (Nevada State Journal, Feb. 17, 1950).

Shea added that some time after that, when he’d managed keno for the defendant, he’d instructed his writers to ban Pierce from the game.

Next up on the stand was Rudy Stanch, a current Club Cal Neva employee. He said that in July 1949 Pierce had offered him $200 to testify in court that his employer had operated keno illegally. Stanch said he’d refused.

On cross-examination, Pierce denied all of the witnesses’ allegations. He didn’t know how his ticket wound up in the wrong pile, he said.

Out of Luck

The jury, comprised of seven women and five men, deliberated the case for about two hours.

The verdict was in favor of the Club Cal Neva. Ten jurors voted for the casino, one voted for Pierce and another voted for neither side (civil suits didn’t require a unanimous jury vote).

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What do you think about this case? Did Pierce have a legitimate claim or was he trying to scam the casino?

* Sam Boyd went on to co-found Boyd Gaming and grow it into one of the world’s largest gambling empires. The stadium at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is named in Boyd’s honor.

Sources

Duffin

1959-1960

William “Bill” E. Duffin, co-owner of the Senator Club in Carson City, Nevada, was murdered on Christmas morning of 1959 (see Part I). He left behind his wife Gladys, his sister, his nephew, a business partner and many employees to whom he was like a father.

Duffin moved to Nevada in 1943. Before acquiring the Senator with Stella C. Vincent, the two had operated the Wild Horse Hunting Lodge in Elko for 14 years. Prior to that, the Salt Lake City native had operated pinball machines in San Francisco.

The Suspect

Carson City police quickly honed in on Nicholas “Nick” V. Goodman as the likely perpetrator. He was the former Senator Club dealer whom Duffin had fired for cheating customers during 21 games. As a result, Nick’s casino work card had been revoked.

Investigators learned that when Nick had lost that job in mid-1958, he’d threatened Duffin and then-pit boss, Thomas Scarlett. Since, the dealer had harbored a grudge against Duffin.

Throughout those 18 months, Nick had remained unemployed except for a fleeting stint in January 1959. That was when he’d worked for two hours at the Holiday Hotel in Reno and was let go, when this new employer learned about his alleged past cheating.

Senator Club workers told police Nick repeatedly had asked Duffin to “sign a statement clearing him of the cheating charge,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Dec. 29, 1959). Each time, Duffin had refused. This had happened most recently two weeks before the business owner was slain.

Vincent reported Nick had badgered her as well to get his work permit reinstated. She, too, though, had told him again and again she wouldn’t. Their most recent interaction had been on December 21, when Nick had showed up at her home, uninvited, and warned her, “Get my card back or else” (NSJ, May 28, 1960).

Goodman

The Evidence

When investigators questioned Nick, he had gunshot residue on his hands. He explained that by saying he’d fired a gun on Christmas Eve but as a test.

The suspect didn’t have a strong alibi for when the shooting of Duffin had occurred. Nick said he’d been away from home, but had been looking for his wife Genevieve Goodman, as they’d gotten separated when they’d been out earlier. (The time of the murder was 3:20 a.m.)

Some days later, the California Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification determined the bullets fired from Nick’s rifle matched those removed from Duffin’s body.

The Help

Police also arrested a Carson City handyman named Jack Armstrong for allegedly having hidden the murder weapon. They charged him with being an accessory after the fact.

Genevieve also wound up in jail, for allegedly having directed Armstrong to get rid of the gun and later, when she’d learned police were searching for it, having told him to move it.

All three suspects were going to be given lie detector tests.

The Admissions

They all came clean, one at a time, on December 28, three days after the crime.

Armstrong conceded he’d repaired the 0.22-caliber rifle Nick had used and had hidden it in a manure pile after the shooting.

Genevieve gave up Nick. Her hot-tempered husband, she added, had been growing increasingly angry at and preoccupied with Duffin for more than a year. that She also admitted her role.

Then Nick himself confessed he in fact had shot Duffin.

“I just went wild … berserk, I guess. I kept pulling the trigger,” Nick told police (NSJ, May 27, 1960).

The confessed murderer also revealed he’d tried to kill his ex-boss six months earlier one day when he’d spotted him inserting coins into a Carson City parking meter. When the gun had misfired, Nick had aborted the attempt.

Police let Armstrong and Genevieve go. The district attorney charged Nick with murder, for which he pleaded not guilty.

The Trial

When Nick’s trial got underway in mid-May 1960, he faced a potential death penalty if convicted.

District Attorney John Tom Ross and special prosecutor Emile Gezelin called a handful of witnesses to testify and played, for the jurors, the tape recording of Nick’s confession. Overall, the prosecutors laid out a strong case for Nick being guilty of the murder.

Nick’s defense attorneys, Samuel Francovich of Reno and Jack B. Tenney of Los Angeles, conceded the defendant had killed Duffin but argued he’d been insane when he’d done it. To save him from capital punishment, the team attempted to prove “Goodman went insane after 18 months of brooding and trying to prove his innocence in a cheating episode which cost the club its gaming license and himself his right to work at Nevada’s legal card tables,” the NSJ reported (June 1, 1960).

The bottom line for the jurors was whether or not Nick had been of sound mind when he’d shot and killed  Duffin. The prosecution asserted yes, he had been. They called for a first degree murder verdict and demanded the death penalty. The defense argued no, he hadn’t been sane. They demanded acquittal.

The Verdict

After nearly eight hours of deliberating, the jury of eight women and four men found Nick guilty of second degree murder. This conviction carried a prison term, not capital punishment, as a penalty.

“Defense attorneys Sam Francovich and Jack Tenney, together with Goodman’s wife, were jubilant over the second-degree finding. But Goodman was angry,” the NSJ reported (June 4, 1960). “‘For what?’ he snapped when newsmen congratulated him.”

Judge Frank B. Gregory sentenced Nick to a statutory 10 years to life term in Nevada State Prison.

After serving six years, Nick was granted early parole and released. 

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Sources

1958-1959

Two major impactful events occurred, one in 1958, the second 1.5 years later, involving the Senator Club, which offered the game 21 and slot machines. Near the Nevada capitol in Carson City, this casino-restaurant-bar was popular among state legislators and politicians.

At the time, Stella C. Vincent and William “Bill” E. Duffin had co-owned the business, 63 percent and 37 percent, respectively, for about two years. Duffin, though, ran the place.

Impetus For First Upset

Cheating at the Senator Club came to light in January 1958 when Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) investigator William Walts witnessed Nicholas “Nick” V. Goodman dealing seconds, using the second versus top card in the deck, during 21 games. The NGCB called Goodman in for a chat. Agents told him they’d received unfavorable reports about his conduct and warned him he better deal cleanly.

Four months later, three Reno insurance salesmen filed a complaint with the tax commission, alleging a dealer named Nick had swindled them at the Senator. They’d seen Nick burn a card in the middle of a hand (take it from the top and put it face up on the bottom of the deck). This is usually only done after each shuffle. Nick also allegedly turned the deck or dealt from the bottom mid-game, so he could access cards used in earlier hands.

Also in April, Michael MacDougall, a gambling detective the Nevada Tax Commission hired to survey the industry in The Silver State, reported he witnessed cheating at the Senator Club (and at the New Star in Winnemucca).

Hammer Comes Down

To address the alleged cheating at the Senator, the NGCB held a hearing, per protocol, in June, for Vincent and Duffin to explain why they should be allowed to keep their gambling licenses.  

At the proceeding, NGCB agents questioned all of the witnesses, the co-owners and Goodman. Duffin and Vincent asserted they didn’t know cheating was taking place. Goodman denied he’d knowingly cheated, ever.

In late July, the Nevada Tax Commission, on the NGCB’s recommendation, revoked both gambling licenses associated with the Senator Club. All gambling activity ceased there. This was the first big blow to the gambling business during the Duffin-Vincent time.

Picking Up The Pieces

The co-owners made the best of it. They kept open the restaurant and bar and installed a dance floor in the casino space. Later, in early 1959, they leased the gambling concession to an outside operator.

Goodman, however, didn’t fare so well. He was fired from the Senator Club, for starters.

“The case washed up Goodman as a Nevada dealer, although he has steadfastly maintained he was not cheating,” wrote the Nevada State Journal (Dec. 27, 1959).

Shocking, Irreversible Loss

At the end of shift early Christmas morning in 1959, Duffin invited the Senator Club employees leaving work and some patrons still there to join him for breakfast at the nearby Silver Spur café-casino. Reportedly, Duffin often showed such kindnesses, including driving home employees so they wouldn’t have to walk or take a taxi in the dark wee hours.

Following the meal, the group dispersed. Duffin, on his way through the parking lot, stopped to wish several Silver Spur employees Merry Christmas.

Once at his car, after he opened the driver’s side door, a handful of bullets hit him in the back and drove him to the ground.

Duffin died then and there.  

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It Really Happened! will publish Part II next Wednesday, April 20, 2022.

Sources

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.

Sources

The Rhythm Boys were all about patterns of sound and movement but in relation to slot machines, not music.

Danny Foster, Johnny Pugh and Robert E. Black made $1,000 (about $11,800 today) from playing the slots for a few hours at the Club Cal Neva in Reno, Nevada in late 1950. Casino management asked them to leave. They did.

Sometime after, they were making money off of the El Cortez Hotel’s slots. During that spree, two Reno policemen approached and ordered them to leave the city by the next night or there’d be “blood on the streets,” Foster later reported to the press (Reno Evening Gazette, Oct. 31, 1951). In their threat, the officers referenced the trio’s continued, local slot playing. The Rhythm Boys moved on, to Lewiston, Idaho.

Trail Of Winnings

Wherever the Rhythm Boys played slots, they won. They used a method for beating the machines that tipped the odds heavily in their favor, boosting slot payoffs by more than 10 percent, reportedly. Morrie Brodsky, manager at the Club Cal Neva, told news reporters he estimated that each of the Rhythm Boys had hit a jackpot once in every 15 plays in his casino.

More distressing to slot operators was that the rhythm method was legal. That fact made them “physically ill,” wrote The Lighter Touch columnist Frank Johnson (Nevada State Journal, May 4, 1958).

“Even today the mere mention of [Rhythm Boys] sends a chill through the gambling fraternity,” Johnson added. “It was that bad.”

Tricks Of The Trade

The Rhythm Boys were nicknamed after their technique. It involved first determining a slot machine’s timing cycle, by the sound the device’s air governor made. Next was repeatedly pulling the slot handle according to a certain rhythm, letting a specific amount of time pass between yanks. Doing so interfered with the timing, slowing it down or speeding it up, such that the reels then “literally floated,” Johnson wrote.

He explained that proficient rhythm players could land the first and third reels in the position they wanted them in and hold them there. Then they could wait for the middle reel to spin to the needed position for a winning row and once there, stop it.

“It’s in the way they pull the handle of the slot. You get it going with a rhythm to it, the right rhythm. And it’ll jackpot for you every time,” columnist Stan Delaplane wrote, quoting a blackjack dealer at Reno’s Circle RB Lodge (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 27, 1960).

Attention Mounts

Once in Lewiston, two of the Rhythm Boys, Pugh and Foster, enticed the local news reporters to watch them play by betting they could land several $2 jackpots and spend less than $50 in doing so.

Successful, the duo collected $210 ($2,300 today) in 45 minutes’ time, having fed the machine only $20.

That afternoon, Foster and Pugh entered the 600 Club in Lewiston, and the proprietor turned his slot machines so their front faced the wall.

In October 1951, despite many slot operators urging them to stop playing slots in Lewiston, the Rhythm Boys announced they planned to stay in Idaho for years and make a career out of cleaning up on the gambling machines.

Even Classes On It

The rhythm method had been around since before the Boys drew widespread attention to it. Reportedly, it originated in Las Vegas, Nevada, even was taught there, then expanded.  

Johnson explained in his May 4, 1958 column. “One of the first institutions of higher learning in Las Vegas was a special college for rhythm players conducted by the man who developed the system.  It was no cheap diploma mill. The cost was $500 plus expenses for two weeks of concentrated instruction. Probably there were no more than 30 or 40 graduates during the time the school was in existence, but they were enough to endanger the whole slot machine industry.”

An affiliated school was located in Idaho.

Rhythm Is Gonna Get You

The great publicity surrounding the three slots stars and their method, which the Rhythm Boys invited, was their undoing.

“The thing that really hurt was the fact the rhythm boys were so obvious,” Johnson wrote. “Other casino patrons seemed to catch on wherever they played. Pretty soon jackpots would begin falling all around the section where the rhythm expert was in.”

No longer able to play publicly, the trio sought to capitalize on their system by selling it, outlined in a booklet titled How We Beat The Slots, for $2 a pop. In the publication, they Rhythm Boys noted that “publicity barred us from playing in some clubs and made us unwelcome in others.”

To start, in early 1952, the rhythm method kings sent an estimated 30,000 letters to residents of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho in which they offered their treatise for sale.

End Of The Road

Eventually, savvy slot machine mechanics learned through the rhythm method course or the grapevine about this shortcoming of slot machines and sought to eradicate it. (Bud Garaventa, the foreman of Harrah’s Club’s slot machine repair shop, was one who attended the class, according to Johnson.)

The solution was a mechanism added to the inside of a slot machine. Described as windmill like, it spun when the slot handle was pulled and dictated how long each reel would spin. It prevented the floating of any and all reels but didn’t change the game’s odds.

“This [development] was at least six or seven years ago, and since then [the industry] has seen a rare slot machine not so equipped,” Johnson wrote in 1961 (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 27).

Sources

Cadell

1947-1950

Starting in 1947, Wiley “Buck” H. Cadell used his governmental position to build a statewide system of protection for illegal gambling operations in California, the first such concerted effort of this kind in the state. At the time Cadell worked as a gambling investigator, and previously an undercover agent, for California Attorney General Frederick N. Howser. Prior to that, he worked for 20 years as an officer for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Howser

Howser was in on (and perhaps the mastermind of) the conspiracy. His role was covering it up and shielding Cadell and his other agents — Charles Hoy and Walter Lentz — from external investigation and prosecution.

Hoy

Lentz

How It Worked

One part of setting up the protection racket involved getting all of the gamblers in a county to pay a monthly fee or close shop. In exchange, law enforcement wouldn’t interfere with their illegal business.

From gambling house owners, the colluding agents demanded anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of their enterprise’s gross earnings. For slot machine operators, the fee was $4 apiece. For punchboard users, it was $2. (A different group of men was involved in organizing a punchboard monopoly and protection system in The Golden State. They, too, did this with Howser’s blessing.)

For the protection scheme to work, the conspirators also had to get the police chief or sheriff in the same county on board. This meant the officers of the law had to agree to ignore the commercial gambling happening in their jurisdiction. For doing so, they’d receive a portion of the collected payoff monies. Another part of the graft went to Howser.

To sway these law enforcement heads, Howser’s representatives emphasized they had powerful friends in Sacramento. They even often outrightly stated they “had the approval and the authority of the attorney general’s office,” the California Crime Commission reported in its Final Report (Nov. 15, 1950).

Progress Made

Howser’s agents worked on expanding the scheme for over a year. During that time, they approached many of California’s counties. The crime commission knew of at least 16, including Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo and San Bernardino. There may have been more.

Unraveling Begins

Cadell’s involvement ended in June 1948 when he was indicted for related activity (and thus, quit working for Howser). The ensuing charges were for organizing a slot machine protection racket and for plotting to bribe Mendocino County Sheriff Beverly Broaddus.

Howser publicly announced he fully supported Cadell. The elected official also claimed the charges against the agent had been trumped up to frame him.

Despite the AG’s position, a jury convicted Cadell (and two others, a former police officer and a resident, both of Los Angeles), each on five counts of bribery and gambling conspiracy. The judge sentenced Cadell, whom he identified as the “arch conspirator,” to three consecutive prison terms (The Modesto Bee and News-Herald, Dec. 18, 1948). They were 1 to 14 years followed by another 1 to 14 years and, lastly, 1 to 3 years.

“This was not a case of operation of an isolated slot machine,” the judge told the defendants, “but the crimes with which you are charged are more serious, about as dastardly as any crimes that are committed” (The Modesto Bee, Dec. 18, 1948).

As for Howser, no irrefutable evidence linked him to the payoffs. However, “he was tainted by the association,” author Ed Cray wrote in Chief Justice.

Impact Of The Unwilling

Not every person Howser’s men approached on both sides, law enforcement and gambling, was keen on the scheme. Some rejected the proposal outright.

One gambler, Tiny Heller, an Alameda County bookmaker, refused to pay any graft. He was told by a member of the protection racket, Mobster-gambler Dave Kessel, that he could keep operating through the end of the football season but not afterwards. Heller continued taking bets. Soon after, before the deadline to close that Kessel cited, Heller’s business was raided, and Hoy arrested him.

Many other targets filed complaints or informed the crime commissioners about various people having tried to recruit them into the scheme. The crime agency detailed and published all such reported events in its 1950 report.

That exposure, combined with Cadell’s conviction and Howser’s failure to get re-elected in 1950, caused the system to crumble.

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