1936

A single penny got Los Angeles store owner Ethel Jamison convicted.

One day at her shop, Police Officer James Mulligan placed a penny in the slot machine, pulled the lever, received a penny premium and cashed it with her.

He arrested her, as slot machines were illegal in California, and the case went to trial. The jury found her guilty of possessing a gambling device. She was punished with a 30-day suspended jail sentence.

Source: Reno Evening Gazette (Nev.), “Transaction of Lonely Cent Gets Woman Jail Sentence,” Oct. 17, 1936.

The maximum security, federal prison opened in 1934 on Alcatraz Island, 1.25 miles from the coast of San Francisco, California. The facility housed 1,576 of the U.S.’ most dangerous felons, treatment of whom was, at times, brutal and inhumane there. Over time, the penitentiary infrastructure deteriorated to the point where it needed rehabbing. The U.S. government deemed it more prudent to build a new prison rather than overhaul Alcatraz and closed it in 1963.

Among the 1,576 criminals for whom The Rock was home for some duration are five Mobster-gamblers. They are:

Whitey Bulger

In 1956, at age 27, James Joseph Bulger, Jr. (1929-2018) Bulger found himself locked up in the U.S. Federal Penitentiary, Atlanta, facing 20 years for armed robbery of several banks and truck hijacking. When the warden learned the inmate had been plotting to escape, he had Bulger transferred to Alcatraz in 1959. Bulger remained imprisoned there until 1962, then served the rest of his time at two other federal prisons. He was paroled in 1965.

Subsequently, he was an enforcer for the Winter Hill Gang in Somerville (near Boston), Massachusetts. By 1979, he’d became the boss and controlled a large part of Boston’s bookmaking, drug dealing and loansharking operations. While in power, he sanctioned numerous murders and turned FBI informant in 1975.

Bulger went into hiding in the mid-1990s, thereby landing on the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitives list. He eluded capture until 2011, after which he was tried and found guilty of 11 murders, federal racketeering, extortion and conspiracy.

After FBI agents found and arrested Bulger, he told CNN, “If I could choose my epitaph on my tombstone, it would be, ‘I’d rather be in Alcatraz,'” CBS in San Francisco reported (Aug. 12, 2013).

Frankie Carbo

Paul John Carbo (1904-1976) began his life of crime as a gunman for the New York-based Murder, Inc. enforcement-for-hire group. (He was arrested 17 times for murder and rumored to have assassinated Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel.)

Eventually, Carbo became a member of the New York City Mafia’s Lucchese crime family, a partner in a New Jersey bookmaking ring and a corrupt boxing promoter.

“Frankie Carbo had become the Mob’s unofficial commissioner for boxing and controlled many fighters,” Gary Jenkins wrote in Gangland Wire. In that role, he illegally generated revenue from stealing part of boxers’ purses, fixing bouts and gambling on those.

One of Carbo’s various boxing extortion schemes involved muscling in on the promotional rights to boxer Don Jordan after he won the world welterweight championship in 1958. Carbo was caught threatening promoter Jackie Leonard and convicted of conspiracy and extortion in a trial Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy prosecuted.

The feds sent Carbo to Alcatraz with a 25-year federal prison sentence. When the penitentiary closed in 1963, Carbo was relocated to the McNeil Island Corrections Center in Washington.

Charles Carrollo

For many years, Charles Vincent Carrollo (1902-1979) was the Kansas City Mafia’s lug man, collector of the tax it charged the gambling houses to operate. The Combine controlled a $20 million ($307 million today) a year gambling business in the city as well as other rackets. When the boss John Lazia was assassinated, Carrollo took over as the top dog.  

His reign was short-lived, though, because soon after, he was convicted separately of tax evasion, mail fraud (using the U.S. postal service to promote a gambling scheme) and perjury for lying on his naturalization form. While doing his eight years at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary, Leavenworth, he was caught trafficking narcotics and liquor into the facility. For that, he was sent to Alcatraz in 1943, where he stayed until he was granted parole in 1946.

Mickey Cohen

After 20-plus years of working for the National Crime Syndicate in Los Angeles, Meyer Harris Cohen (1913-1976) lost his battle with the Internal Revenue Service in 1961. At age 49, he was imprisoned at Alcatraz for a 15-year stint for evading and underpaying his federal income taxes.

He served three months there then bonded out, the only Alcatraz prisoner to do so. After six months of freedom, he had to go back. Twenty-eight days after his return, fellow inmates John and Clarence Anglin escaped the supposedly impenetrable island prison. Allegedly, Cohen had arranged for a boat to pick up the brothers and for help getting them to South America.

“All of these big named people — Mickey Cohen, Whitey Bulger — they all wanted somebody to try it and make it,” one of the Anglin’s nephews, David Widmer, told a news outlet in 2016. “If somebody made it, they would all get out.”

Cohen’s involvement in gambling went back to his years in Chicago during Prohibition. There, he worked for the Outfit, both running card games and other forms of illegal gambling and as an enforcer.

Eventually, Meyer Lansky and Louis “Lou” Rothkopf sent Cohen to the West Coast to help Siegel gain control of the territory. There, Siegel and Cohen established a horse racing wire service, launched operations in bookmaking, other gambling, prostitution and drugs, and controlled the labor unions.

Bumpy Johnson

Ellsworth Raymond Johnson’s (1905-1968) career in illegal gambling started with shooting dice for money as a youth. Later, as the head of organized crime in New York’s Harlem, he ran a $50 million ($750 million today) a year numbers, or policy, game, in an alliance with Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

To obtain that business, Johnson “ran roughshod over the numbers bosses of Harlem, giving them the option of working for him or losing their businesses altogether,” reported the New York Post (Sept. 23, 2019). “Most accepted the former and took $200-per-week ($3,000 a week today) salaries, forsaking the thousands they earned on their own.”

Johnson expanded his empire to narcotics, which led to his 1953 conviction and 15-year prison sentence for selling heroin. Ultimately, he served 10 years, at Alcatraz.

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Photo of Alcatraz Island: by D. Ramey Logan, from Wikimedia Commons 

Sources

Gambling disputes ending in someone’s death typically involved men, were over alleged cheating and happened at saloons or other enterprises offering games of chance. However, the circumstances behind the 1936 case of Paul F. Rohl, 33, in Los Angeles, California differed.

Death Comes To Light

Police officers responded to a call about a shooting, from the Rohl home late Saturday morning, Feb. 15, 1936. They found the man of the house, a service station attendant, lying on the living room floor, dead. On a cursory look at his body, they noticed a gunshot in the area of his heart and a bullet lodged in his right armpit.

Shoe Money Gone

Paul’s wife, Ruth T. Rohl, 31, told police detectives her husband had shot himself accidentally. He’d pointed the revolver at her, she’d pushed his arm to prevent him from firing at her and the gun went off, she said, hitting Paul in the arm. From that impact, he twisted, causing a second discharge, that one into his chest.

The events had begun the night before, Ruth said. When Paul had gone out with $140 in cash (about $2,700 today), the total amount of his paycheck, she’d hired a private investigator to trail him.

Later, that man had reported to Ruth he’d followed Paul to a gambling house and had witnessed him lose all but $2 playing craps.

The next morning, Ruth had confronted her husband about what he’d done and, admittedly, had berated him for frivolously spending money desperately needed for shoes for their 11-year-old son Paul, Jr. The couple had argued, and he’d slapped her. He’d demanded she leave him alone, having said he’d just wanted to go to work.

He’d left the room, and she’d yelled after him to somehow get money for shoes. He’d returned, she went on, in one hand holding a gun hidden by an overcoat and in the other, his rain boots. He’d pointed the weapon at her.

Ruth Rohl

State Attacks Wife’s Account

Eventually, Ruth was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, or premeditated killing with malicious forethought.

At Ruth’s several-day preliminary hearing that began on Friday, Feb. 28, the deputy district attorney sought to prove the shooting of Paul couldn’t have, and thus hadn’t, happened as Ruth had described. Thus, she’d murdered Paul; he hadn’t killed himself unintentionally.

A handful of witnesses testified, among them the doctor who’d performed an autopsy on Paul’s corpse. He said one bullet had penetrated Paul’s heart. The other had entered and exited his right elbow then had traversed upward through the deceased’s chest, finally stopping in his armpit. The state disputed Ruth’s contention the first bullet hit Paul’s arm.

A ballistics expert said that if the shooting had occurred as Ruth had detailed, Paul’s clothes would’ve had powder burns on them, but they didn’t.

In a move rarely seen in this type of proceeding, the accused took the stand. Ruth again relayed what led to Paul’s death and insisted the shooting was accidental not purposeful.

Ultimately, the judge set bail at $5,000 ($95,000 today) and bound Ruth over for trial. He did, however, reduce the murder charge against her to manslaughter. This, in California, is defined as the killing of another person during a sudden quarrel or in the heat of passion.

Suspicious Circumstances

On April 9, the opposing attorneys empaneled a jury. Then the state unfolded its case, mostly like it had during the preliminary hearing, but added witnesses.

One of the detectives investigating the case testified he’d seen and had photographed Paul’s rain boots some distance from his body, neatly standing upright, side by side. They appeared as if they’d been placed there not flung from Paul’s hand when the bullets impacted him.

The prosecutor questioned Ruth’s mother, Alice E. Gunn, about her having cleaned Ruth’s living room and having taken home and washed the robe her daughter had been wearing during the shooting. Gunn admitted she’d done so with the rest of the Rohls’ dirty laundry, including the robe. She’d claimed the latter hadn’t had any blood stains or powder burns on it before she’d cleaned it.

Opposite Depictions

The defense strategy, in part, was to show Paul had been angry and abusive and Ruth, the target of his rage and, therefore, a victim. Also, her attorneys highlighted that each time Ruth had been questioned about the crime, she’d answered consistently.

Ruth’s long-time best friend testified that Paul had had a violent, uncontrollable temper to which Ruth had been subjected during the past 16 years. During his tantrums, the friend said, he’d yell and curse at his wife and throw things. Fourteen other female friends of the defendant spoke to her stellar character and reputation.

When Ruth took the stand, she said she and Paul had argued many times in the past about his gambling. She reiterated the story of the shooting as she originally had told it to detectives. 

Innocent Or Guilty?

After 13 days, the case went to the jury on Wednesday, April 29. After deliberating two hours, the jurors returned a verdict of not guilty.

Upon hearing of her freedom, Ruth sobbed and told her mom, “Now I can go home and take care of my son” (Illustrated Daily News, April 30, 1936).

Alice Gunn, left; Ruth Rohl

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What do you think? Was the shooting of Paul accidental or intentional? And should Ruth have gotten acquitted or convicted?

Sources

Wertheimer

Myrton “Mert” C. Wertheimer was murdered, William “Bill/Curly” J. Graham ordered the hit and Frank “Frankie” Frost carried it out. This was hearsay from Los Angeles Mobster and made man, Aladena James “Jimmy/The Weasel” Fratianno, as documented in Ovid Demaris‘ biography of Fratianno, The Last Mafioso.

Page 173 (hardback version) contains a conversation relayed to Demaris by Fratianno, between him and two Chicago Outfit members, Sam “Momo” Giancana and Johnny Rosselli. The three were reminiscing after Rosselli was released from prison, and the topic turned to Graham, then deceased. Fratianno says, “‘In his day, [Graham] was a worker. He was telling me one time that he had Frankie Frost clip Mert Wertheimer in Reno. You know, the guy that had the Riverside Hotel.'”

Wertheimer in fact ran the Riverside Hotel casino, called the Riverside Buffet, from 1949 to 1955, first as a lessee then as the owner, and for the three previous years, was involved in the Nevada Club.

Fellow Mobster-gambler, Graham, controlled Reno gambling and organized crime and owned several Northern Nevada casinos, including the Bank Club and the Willows in Reno and the Cal-Neva Lodge in Crystal Bay, between the 1920s and 1940s.

Frost was a hitman, jewelry thief and friend of Graham, who lived in The Biggest Little City for some time.

Were these allegations involving Wertheimer, Graham and Frost true? It Really Happened! investigated.

Circumstances of Death: True Or False?

Mert Wertheimer, the eldest of four brothers, died at age 74 in Los Angeles, California on July 20, 1958. His demise was suspicious in that it happened only two months after his brother Lou’s passing.

At face value, Mert Wertheimer’s death certificate does not indicate homicide, but perhaps it was falsified to hide the truth. The document primarily was typewritten except for the cause of death, time of diagnosis and a few other details that Wertheimer’s personal, Beverly Hills, California-based physician (whose name is indecipherable) handwrote.

The pertinent data on Wertheimer’s death certificate are:

1) Wertheimer passed away in the Cedars of Lebanon hospital at 4:42 a.m.

2) He died from acute monocytic leukemia, diagnosed six months earlier. His obituary in the Los Angeles Times noted “he had been in failing health the last two years” and his wife Bertha flew in from the couple’s Michigan summer home to be by his bedside” (July 21, 1958).

3) Wertheimer’s physician provided medical care to him for seven years, since 1951. He also provided care to Wertheimer’s brothers Lou and Al and filled out and signed their death certificates.

4) The doctor last saw Mert Wertheimer alive the day before his demise.

5) An autopsy was performed, and the findings were  used to determine the cause of death.

6) At the time of death, Wertheimer was living in Reno’s Riverside Hotel but had been in Los Angeles County for 13 days beforehand. Why was he there, to visit family and/or friends or for a medical appointment because he’d been feeling unwell? Or had he been lured there on a false premise?

Many of the above death certificate facts could’ve been verified easily with a check of Wertheimer’s medical records. As such, it’s highly unlikely, though remotely possible, his physician doctored records and the death certificate. If he did, it was at the risk of losing his medical license and career, going to prison and paying a hefty fine.

Question Of Motive

At the time of Wertheimer’s death, Graham was 69 and had been out of the Northern Nevada gambling scene for three years.

Wertheimer and his partners held a 10-year lease on the Riverside Buffet, which they negotiated during a sale of the property in January 1958, six months before Wertheimer’s death.

If Graham had Wertheimer killed, why? Did Graham dislike, envy or have a grudge against him? Did the two gamblers have a longstanding rivalry? What was the point of rubbing out Wertheimer when he was 74 and ill?

Final Determination

After considering the available evidence and information, It Really Happened! deduced that Mert Wertheimer died of natural causes.

In defense of this conclusion, we argue that pulling off a murder and a cover-up secretly and successfully required perfect execution of all of the various steps involved, and that seems improbable. It would’ve needed more than just Wertheimer’s physician to be involved, and it’s unlikely numerous parties kept quiet and for so long. It’s hard to fathom that in perpetrating the cover-up, a physician risked so much and on behalf of the person(s) responsible for the murder.

Tell A Lie Once…

So who lied, Fratianno or Graham? And to what end? Was Fratianno trying to ingratiate himself with Giancana, who revered Graham, with this boast about Graham? Did Graham want Fratianno to think he’d ordered the killing?

Why did author Demaris include this misinformation in his book without at least qualifying it? (Fratianno sued Demaris for allegedly misquoting him in The Last Mafioso, yet at another time, admitted he never read it.)

If it was Fratianno who lied, it calls into question his credibility, which has greater implications. This is because after he became an FBI informant in 1977, he testified against numerous Mobsters, gamblers among them, and his insider testimony helped get 26 La Cosa Nostra members and 11 associates convicted.

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What do you think, was Wertheimer murdered or did he die naturally? If the latter, why would Graham or Fratianno lie about it?

Sources

Frost, 1936

1906-1967

Frank “Frankie” Frost (1898-1967) spent about two decades working in Reno’s gambling scene and had close relationships with those in power locally, including gambler-Mobsters William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay and banker and businessman, George Wingfield, Sr. Frost had a checkered past, which eventually got him blacklisted from Nevada’s gambling industry.

Here we present the “work” (criminal) highlights of Frost, tracking him geographically through Illinois, then California and, finally, Nevada.

Chicago, 1906-1930: Murder Charge By Age 30

Though Frost was born in California, he spent most of his youth in Chicago and eventually became part of its North Side Aiello–Moran gang (Giuseppe “Joe” Aiello and George “Bugs” Moran), which was involved heavily in bootlegging during the 1920s. Frost, who used the aliases Eddie Ryan, Frank Bruna and Frank Citro there, was arrested three or four times for disorderly conduct but wasn’t charged.

Also, Frost was the primary suspect in the November 16, 1928 machine gun murder of John G. Clay, head of the Laundry and Fyehouse Chauffeurs’ Union. Police theorized that Moran ordered the hit because Clay was thwarting Moran’s attempts to muscle in on the cleaning and dyeing racket in The Windy City’s West and South Sides, Alphonse “Scarface” Capone’s territory. Though Frost was arrested for the murder, he wasn’t charged.

In a supposed act of retaliation by Capone, some of his soldiers, disguised as police officers, lined up and machine gunned down six of Moran’s men on February 14, 1929, nearly wiping out his crew. Initially, Frost was thought to be among the victims of what was dubbed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Afterward, Frost switched his allegiance to Capone.

When Chicago Tribune crime reporter, Alfred “Jake” Lingle was murdered June 9, 1930, police traced the gun, left at the scene, back to Frost but determined that a Leo V. Brothers was the shooter.

Frost

Los Angeles, 1930-1934: Not Staying Out Of Trouble

Frost was indicted by a grand jury for accessory to the Lingle crime because he presumably had guilty knowledge of the killer(s) and their motives, but he was in Los Angeles at the time, using the alias Frank Foreman. He was captured there on July 1, 1930, arrested, returned to Chicago and placed in the county jail. After five months, though, he had to be released by law, so he got out on a $20,000 ($309,000 today) bond.

In March of the next year, Frost testified at Brothers’ trial. Also called to the stand was a witness who said he saw Frost and Brothers flee the scene in different directions after Lingle was shot. One detail the witness recounted was seeing Frost help Brothers light a cigarette afterward so Brothers didn’t have to take one of his hands out of his pocket.

The trial of Frost, for his alleged involvement in Lingle’s murder, was scheduled for April 28, but it never took place because the witnesses disappeared. Frost was back in Los Angeles when he learned, in June, that charges against him were dropped.

In September, Frost was arrested on suspicion of extortion in connection with a scheme to extort money from the widow of soap magnate, Leo Bergin. Bergin racked up a gambling debt of at least $6,000 ($102,000 today) in a days-long dice game run by representatives of New York gambler-Mobster Arnold Rothstein. Bergin wrote some checks for what he owed but later stopped payment on some. Before Rothstein’s men could collect in full, Bergin died, so they went after Gladys Bergin for payment. Due to lack of evidence, Frost wasn’t charged.

The following year, 1932, in February, a patrol officer pulled over Frost, who was working at the time as a bail bondsman. A search of the new car he was driving yielded a fully loaded, 0.45-caliber automatic pistol. Frost also had with him a letter from a “Ben” in New York, possibly Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, which read in part, “Other people out there are trying to keep out of trouble, but are always in touch with New York. Glad you have gone into the bonding business, as that is good cover for the business you are in.” Frost was found guilty of carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor. Because he then failed to appear at a hearing of arguments concerning a possible new trial, the judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

A month later, police in San Francisco raided an apartment in their investigation of a $100,000 ($1.8 million today) jewelry robbery and took the four men inside to the station. Frost was among them. It resulted in a vagrancy charge (that later would be removed) and him being returned to the City of Angels. He was sentenced to six months in the county jail for the concealed weapon offense. Frost, though, disappeared, and a nationwide hunt for him began. Before he could be found, the appellate court reversed his conviction.

Presumably, the man who repeatedly had gotten away with crimes laid low in Southern California for the next few years.

Reno, 1935-1967: Focus On Gambling, Business

Frost next turned up living with his wife in The Biggest Little City. Only five months later, in April 1936, he was arrested for allegedly stealing $125,000 ($2.3 million today) worth of jewelry from a New York City store that January. For the story, see next blog post, Reno Mobsters Aid Gangster From Chicago, Raising Suspicions.

In 1938, the owner of a New York clothing store, Cy Kronfield Inc., sued Frost for $630.85 ($11,500 today) for not paying for goods and services it provided to him between 1933 and 1939.

Using the name Frank Foster, Frost was arrested in Elko, a city about 300 miles northeast of Reno, in May 1940 for attempted burglary of the Reinhart general merchandise store. Two months later, he was arrested and served 30 days in jail in Reno for “prowling through parked automobiles” (Reno Evening Gazette, Dec. 10, 1940). In June 1941, he was arrested for petty larceny after getting caught trying to sell children’s clothes he’d stolen from somewhere.

Frost reportedly ran or helped run the race horse pool at Graham and McKay’s Bank Club for several years, after which he opened and operated his own book, the Reno Turf Club.

In 1947’s first half, Frost applied for another gambling license from the city, this one for a new entity, Washoe Sports News, which was to supply race results from the Trans-America News and Publishing Co. wire service to local outlets. On behalf of Capone, Siegel was tasked with forcing bookmakers on the West Coast to switch to Trans-America from Continental Press. While the city council was mulling over whether or not to eliminate the existing cap on the number of race pools allowed in Reno, because granting Frost the license would’ve exceeded it, Trans-America went bankrupt and folded after its primary owner-operator was murdered. Soon afterward, Siegel was killed, too, and Frost withdrew his gambling application.

In 1951, Frost sold the Reno Turf Club. Afterward, he returned to working at the Bank Club, supposedly wrapping money. However, members of the Nevada Tax Commission, the entity which in 1947 gained the task of issuing state gambling licenses, saw him overseeing a game of faro there once. Because of his criminal background, the commissioners didn’t want Frost involved with running the gambling in any Silver State casino.

However, they spotted him again doing just that, counting money and giving orders at Reno’s Palace Club. After a related brouhaha, the casino banned him from working there in 1953, and after that, according to Frost, he no longer could get a job in the state’s gaming industry.

Dorothy Frost

In 1955, Frost’s wife Dorothy, a Manitoba, Canada native, took her life by overdosing on sleeping pills.

His Final Years

The widower remained in Reno and was involved subsequently in some shady business dealings, which came to light through various lawsuits. Frost held and breached the lease on the Mt. Rose Sawmill. In an incident that led to a lawsuit, Frost physically prevented a competing lumber firm (Frost owned the Nevada Pine Mill and Lumber Co.) from taking from the sawmill wood it purchased. Also, he was sued for failing to pay for lumber he bought from a Lake Tahoe man.

In another arrangement, Frost was a co-partner with McKay and Marion T. Weller in F.M.W. Drilling Co. In 1957, an employee sued F.M.W. for not paying him $1,650 ($15,000 today), the remainder of wages due him for building an oil derrick.

In 1961, a Frank Frost appeared to be working at the local Buick dealership as the assistant general sales manager. It may or may not have been him.

The Mobster Frost, who’d left a trail of crime in his wake, passed away on April 1, 1967 at age 68 in Nevada.

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