An innocent man was placed in law enforcement’s crosshairs in late 1930s Los Angeles for a heinous crime … the frame-up stuck.

George “Les” Bruneman

Caught Unawares

While strolling on Southern California’s Redondo Beach Strand, or boardwalk, with a female employee on a July Monday night after dinner with friends, George “Les” Bruneman, 40, was shot in the back. The bullet, which entered his left shoulder, pierced a lung and entered his abdomen. He survived but spent months in the hospital.

“I’m living on borrowed time,” Bruneman told a detective lieutenant. “I’ve got about six weeks more. They’ll get me the next time. They won’t send the same pair, though. They’ll send experts after me the next time” (Oakland Tribune, Oct. 25, 1937).

Bruneman owned/operated the Surf Club gambling house in Redondo Beach and had many horse racing bookmaking establishments throughout that Los Angeles County beach area.

In Cold Blood

Six weeks after his release from the hospital, on October 25, while drinking with friends in Los Angeles’ Roost Café in the wee hours, Bruneman was executed, sustaining four shots from a distance followed by six more at close range. An innocent bystander, Frank A. Greuzard, ran after the killers, but they fatally gunned him down, too.

Police theorized that Bruneman’s murder was related to a gambling feud of some sort, perhaps even rivals wanting his territory for themselves.

Pete Pianezzi, 1981

Seeking A Suspect

While various persons of interest were questioned and released, an informant led police to Peter “Pete” Attillio Pianezzi, an ex-convict from San Francisco, California with bank robbery charges pending against him. He was arrested for the murders of Bruneman and Greuzard.

Pianezzi went on trial for the killings in February 1940, when he was 38. In court, one of the owners and the bartender of the Roost Café identified him as being the shooter. The prosecutor went for the death penalty, but the jury couldn’t agree on a verdict.

In Pianezzi’s second trial, which ended two months later, the panel of his peers convicted him of first degree murder, and the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment at Folsom State Prison.

Around the same time, he was found guilty on three counts of first degree robbery netting $17,000 in bank holdings. For those, he was given three life sentences. All four periods were to be served concurrently.

Long Overdue Exoneration

Pianezzi served 13 years, getting released in May 1953. For the next several decades, he worked to clear his name with respect to the murders and always maintained his innocence regarding them. He especially wanted his wife Frances to see him cleared, but it didn’t happen by the time she passed away.

“I’ve been pretty upset and depressed,” Pianezzi said. “I wanted her to see it. But even if she’s not around, I’m going to hang in there. I didn’t commit the murders, and that’s it” (Folsom Telegraph, June 26, 1981).

In 1966, California Governor Edmond “Pat” G. Brown, offered Pianezzi a pardon on the grounds that he’d been rehabilitated. He turned it down though because he wanted exoneration based on his innocence.

Fifteen years later, in 1981, Brown’s son, California Governor Gerald “Jerry” Brown pardoned Pianezzi, then age 79 and retired from a job distributing newspapers in Mill Valley.

Moceri on left, Bompensiero

Later Revealed

Roughly four decades after Bruneman and Greuzard’s murders, the identity of the actual killers and the motive for the crime supposedly came to light. Two hitmen, members of the Los Angeles Mafia — Leonard “Leo/Lips” C. Moceri and Frank Bompensiero — committed the murders, according to Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno, one of their cohorts who became an FBI informant. Jack Dragna, head of that crime family, ordered the hit, he said. (Moceri and Bompensiero had died, by murder, before Pianezzi’s pardon, the former in 1976, the latter in 1977.)

What allegedly led up to the hit on Bruneman was a dispute between him and Johnny Rosselli, whom the Chicago Outfit had dispatched to Los Angeles to protect Nationwide, the only horse racing wire service provided in California at the time. Bruneman had been bootlegging the service. A rumor swirled that Bruneman wanted to take out Rosselli, then a respected member of the Dragna crime family. When Dragna heard it, he acted pre-emptively.

According to Fratianno, Moceri had described to him years earlier how the assassination had gone down and the fallout, concluding with: “Want to hear the payoff? The cops arrested some dago, Pete Pianezzi, and believe it or not, the son of a bitch was convicted and he’s still serving time on that murder rap. It’s a bum beef.”

Sources

Photo of Bruneman: from the Oakland Tribune, Oct. 25, 1937, by the Associated Press
Photo of Pianezzi: from the Arizona Republic, June 25, 1981, by the Associated Press

Chico Marx, c. 1930

1937

A $2,000 check signed “Chico Marx” (about $34,600 today) was found in the pocket of Los Angeles gambler/bookmaker George “Les” Bruneman upon his murder carried out by a couple of Southern California Mafia hitmen.

About Bruneman’s death, Marx — a fan of betting on card games, sports and horse and dog racing — joked that perhaps he’d done himself in after discovering the check wasn’t cashable due to insufficient funds.

Headline, Nevada State Journal, January 26, 1939

1937-1939

A ticket would cost $1 (about $17 today). A drawing would be held at least every 90 days, maybe monthly if demand was great enough, on the last Saturday night of the month. It would alternate between all Nevada towns, starting with Reno, then Las Vegas.

This was the proposal for a Nevada lottery made by Senator William A. Marsh (D-Nye County) and Assemblyman Patrick Cline (D-Clark County) in 1937, at a time when the state constitution prohibited this game of chance but allowed numerous others. The first such attempt to institute this gambling type, which had failed, had been in 1888 when “state finances were in a parlous* condition” (Reno Evening Gazette, Nov. 22, 1928).

“We are living in a liberal state where we do not presume to be our brother’s keeper, and that is as it should be. We believe that if anyone wants to gamble a dollar on a lottery ticket and stand a chance of winning from $150,000 ($2.5 million today) down to $1,000 (about $17,000 today), he should be able to buy that ticket from the state of Nevada,” Marsh and Cline said in a joint statement.

They added that Americans spend $250 million ($4.2 billion today) each year on lottery/ sweepstakes tickets, and that money was going to Ireland, Mexico and Canada rather than staying at home.

Big, Big Picture

The duo estimated with the new scheme that ultimately $1 million worth of Nevada tickets ($16.8 million today) would be purchased per month, 90 percent of them by out-of-staters despite sales being limited to within The Silver State’s borders. After expenses, the net monthly profit would be $450,000 ($7.5 million today), which would be distributed as follows with the ultimate goal of eliminating property taxes:

• To reducing property taxes, $325,000 ($5.5 million today)
• To the state’s school fund, $50,000 ($838,000 today)
• To a pension plan for seniors, $50,000
• To building and maintaining a hospital for children with disabilities, $50,000
• To the University of Nevada, $25,000 ($419,000 today)

Winnings would be dispersed this way:

• First prize, $150,000 ($2.5 million today)
• Second prize, $75,000 ($1.3 million today)
• Third prize, $60,000 ($1 million today)
• Ten prizes, each $10,000 ($168,000 today)
• Ten prizes, each $5,000 ($83,000 today)
• Twenty-five prizes, each $1,000 ($17,000 today)

The proposal also included the establishment of a lottery commission comprised of three legislature-appointed, nonpartisan men who’d administer the game according to the law, answering to the state controller and treasurer only.

Opposing Views

Several individuals publicly criticized the idea and vowed to fight it. Here are their arguments:

• Slippery Slope: If petitions are circulated to legalize a state lottery by an amendment to the constitution, a similar move will be started against all forms of gambling, Rev. Brewster Adams of the Baptist Church said.

• Goes Too Far: “While this state is liberal, there is a limit to liberality and nothing destroys tolerance as much as abuse, which this proposal certainly is,” said Mrs. Clara Angell, president of the Reno chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (Nevada State Journal, Jan. 7, 1937).

• Negative Publicity: “It would be a sad reflection on the state of Nevada if we were not able to raise enough money to run the state,” said Robert M. Price, Reno attorney. “The government of Nevada is doing very well with the present taxes and it would be poor advertising to let other states think that we need to resort to gambling.”

• Morally Wrong: Gambling is the hardest vice to eliminate, said Reverend William Moll Case. “The proposal is foolish.”

Looking Good

The Assembly voted against the resolution to amend the constitution to permit operation of a state lottery. The Senate, however, did the opposite and then returned the bill to its counterpart for reconsideration. On its subsequent vote, the lower house passed it by a single aye.

This, however, was only the first step. To create a lottery, state lawmakers would have to pass the bill in the next legislative session (1939), and then Nevadans would have to vote to approve it.

Final Curtain

When 1939 rolled around, Cline no longer was in office, and Marsh had passed away the year before.

Again, the Nevada Senate passed the bill. The Assembly returned it to the Senate in error, but the latter again voted in favor of it. Then the Assembly refused to consider it, thereby killing it during the last week the lawmakers convened.

The local media outlets offered little explanation for the Assembly’s non-action other than reporting the lottery plan had been called “immoral and illegal” (Nevada State Journal, March 19, 1939).

The question of legality was a legitimate one, on both federal, state and public policy levels, according to then U.S. District Attorney William S. Boyle. Boyle believed tickets would have to be sold in other states for it to produce significant revenue for Nevada. Because U.S. government law forbade all interstate transportation of lottery materials and because most states at the time had their own anti-lottery laws, tickets couldn’t be sold outside of The Silver State without conflicting with those.

A second problem was within Nevada. Although the state had legalized gambling in 1931, public policy remained opposed to it, as evidenced by the courts’ refusal to hear any case involving gambling debts. Thus, no lawsuit involving a lottery payout would be allowed in The Silver State. The federal courts wouldn’t be an option either due to the above-mentioned regulations, Title 18, Sections 1301 and 1302 of the U.S. Code.

The idea of a Nevada lottery remained dead for 36 years, until lawmakers introduced two new bills in 1975 that revived the idea, which, again, didn’t pass. The state still doesn’t have a lottery today.

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* Parlous = perilous, dangerous

Sources

August 5, 1943 Help Wanted ad

1937-1970

Card dealing was a male-dominated profession in Nevada’s casinos until 1937, when Harolds Club, in Reno, put the first woman at a 21 table to deal.

Co-owner Harold Smith previously had been hiring women, mostly family members, for other jobs on the gambling club floor — chip stacking and roulette wheel spinning, for instance — but never dealing.

Smith’s concern had been that women would be too-easy targets for cheaters and, consequently, the casino would get fleeced. (A total of up to 10,000 silver dollars sat on the various tables during a typical night.)

Smith, though, soon realized women could hold their own, and both genders enjoyed gambling with a “pretty, smiling dealer” (Lima News, Aug. 4, 1943).

With World War II and the resulting shortage of men to employ, women filled the gap at Harolds Club. By that time, 90 percent of the employees there were female. Smith launched a school to train women to become professional dealers. They learned how to deal cards, spin wheels, rake in chips, compute payoffs and watch for cheaters’ tricks, among other skills.

Smith advertised in local newspapers’ Help Wanted sections for recruits in ads indicating, “Men Please Do Not Apply” (Nevada State Journal, Aug. 4, 1943). The pay was $25 per week while attending his school, then up to $60 per week when hired. Students ran the gamut, and included housewives, divorcées (women living in Nevada the requisite six weeks to get an expedited divorce), telephone operators, school teachers, sales clerks, stenographers and newspaper reporters.

By 1943, casinos throughout Northern Nevada were hiring graduates of Smith’s school.

Slow To Change

It was the opposite in Las Vegas. Although women worked as dealers in nearby towns such as Henderson and North Las Vegas, none did on the Strip or in downtown Sin City until 1970, nearly three decades later.

That year, the Silver Slipper, a Howard Hughes-owned casino, hired the first — 47-year-old Jean Brady, who had years of experience from dealing at other Silver State gambling houses.

Sources

1937

The Great American Football Pool (GAFP) of 1937 was to be of massive scale and the first of its kind in the U.S.

The organizers aimed to sell 3 million tickets at $1 apiece and award sizable prizes: $100,000 to the first place winner, $50,000 to the second and $25,000 to the third in addition to 2,100 other weekly awards totaling $424,500.

And similar to the popular Irish Sweepstakes, which many Americans participated in, a percentage of the proceeds — 10 percent, or $300,000 in this case — would go toward building a children’s hospital in Reno, Nevada.

“Americans generally, however, associate the Irish Sweeps with charity, never with rackets, and until recently the great lottery has run without a single sharp glance being cast in its direction,” wrote Fred J. Cook in A Two-Dollar Bet Means Murder. “It is made to appear that the huge Irish Sweepstakes pot is divided 75 percent in cash prizes returned to the winners, 25 percent to the hospitals in Ireland.”

For the GAFP, San Francisco, California resident, Charles Warren, formed a Nevada corporation, obtained the requisite gaming license and opened a Reno office, where all operations had to be carried out to be legal.

“We will not have any solicitors in any other city and positively will not use the federal mails in any way. We believe, and so do leading lawyers in Reno, San Francisco and Los Angeles, that there is nothing illegal about the pool,” Warren told the Nevada State Journal (June 17, 1937), emphasizing that it was not a lottery or sweepstakes, which are illegal under state and national laws.

In terms of how the pool was to work, participants would select a number with each ticket they purchased. That figure was their guesstimate of this: the total points to be scored by 40 specified U.S. college football teams throughout the upcoming season multiplied by the total number of games all teams cumulatively would play.

The first place prize would go to the ticket holder who guessed the correct number. Second, third and subsequent awards would go to the individuals with the next closest guesses.

Not In The Business Plan

GAFP ticket sales started in September. Within two weeks, bunco squad police in San Francisco, California arrested Warren, two employees and three promoters of the pool, one of whom, Jack Ferdinand Van, police said was the operation’s mastermind. They were charged with theft conspiracy for selling tickets outside of Nevada. Officers said the football pool was being operated as a lottery and was arranged such that it would be impossible for anyone to win the first prize.

These arrests led to an investigation in Reno, in which it was discovered GAFP Inc. had sent tickets via car to sales representatives in San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta and Van Horn (Texas) and tickets had been sold in nearly every state. Also, GAFP Inc. hadn’t secured any property for the hospital.

In early October, sheriff’s deputies raided the GAFP’s Reno office, seizing ticket books and pool promotional literature and advertisements. They arrested the three employees present — the Reno manager/secretary-treasurer, the publicity agent and the accountant — for violating Nevada’s anti-lottery law. Authorities closed the office and revoked the corporation’s gaming license.

During the trial for the three men arrested in Reno, the state contended that the football pool was a lottery scheme. The defense claimed it wasn’t and had been approved by the city and county authorities when they granted licenses. The jury acquitted the three defendants.

Meanwhile, a San Francisco grand jury indicted six men on two charges each: conspiracy to violate the California lottery law and conspiracy to commit grand theft in operating the GAFP. These individuals included Van, three promoters and two employees. Interestingly, Warren, the president, wasn’t among them. All six pleaded innocent when indicted.

Their trial took place in March of 1938. One witness testified ticket sales proceeds were to be split this way: 10 percent ($300,000) for the hospital, 23 1/3 percent ($699,900) for prizes, 33 1/3 ($999,900) percent for ticket sales commissions and the other third ($999,000) for GAFP Inc.

The jury found the two employees not guilty but convicted the remaining four. Of them, the judge sentenced Van, the pool leader, to a two-year prison term in San Quentin State Prison in light of his previous record. The three promoters were placed on probation.

The Great American Football pool turned out to be not so great.

Sources

1937-1947

The bustle and liveliness of the Ghost Casino have long been dead. All that remains is a specter of the club’s former self in the form of a rundown, abandoned building — a state befitting its home, the now desolate ruins of Rhyolite, Nevada.

Situated in the desert about 120 miles north of Las Vegas, the gambling enterprise began as a railroad depot erected during Rhyolite’s short-lived boom between 1906 and 1911. Named after the igneous rock prevalent there, the town had boomed after prospectors discovered gold nearby. Once the rumor had spread that the precious metal in the region had been exhausted, all but a few residents had deserted Rhyolite.

Nearly three decades later, in 1937, a Las Vegas saloon owner, Norman C. Westmoreland purchased the entire ghost town at a bankruptcy auction. He sank $15,000 (about $250,000 today) into remodeling it into a nightclub and casino, which he named Ghost Casino. Open only during winters, it became a gambling hot spot for visitors from California’s Death Valley.

It “became famous all over the country and was a noted tourist attraction,” the Nevada State Journal noted (May 27, 1947).

Westmoreland ran the Ghost Casino for 10 years until he grew ill and tried to sell it. There weren’t any takers and he died, so his sister, H.H. Heisler, maintained the place as a museum and gift shop into the 1970s. Today, it’s shuttered and fenced in.

Sources

The director of the Works Progress Administration, the New Deal agency that employed individuals to construct public works projects, informed all Nevada workers that it wouldn’t tolerate “gambling, drinking or other unnecessary expenditure” and those discovered using their earnings that way would be fired.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Roy Merrill, Maricopa County Sheriff, 1937-1938

1937-1938

Within a year of becoming the Maricopa County Attorney, John W. Corbin began work to expose the illegal gambling taking place in the Arizona region. He set his sights on busting the game operators and the public officials taking money to ignore their activities.

“Gambling houses have been running on a wide-open basis, and slot machines are being operated, unmolested, in some 700 to 1,000 spots in Maricopa County. Gambling interests pay an estimated $35,000 a month [cumulatively] to a score of persons for being ‘left alone,’” Corbin told the press (The Madera Tribune, Nov. 18, 1937). (That total amounts to about $597,000 today.)

Those allegedly accepting graft included three high-profile men in law enforcement: Sheriff Roy Merrill, Justice of the Peace Harry E. Westfall and Sheriff’s Deputy Porter Northroup.

To investigate and obtain evidence, County Attorney Corbin pretended, with public officials, that he was agreeable to and complicit in the gambler protection operation. He sought assistance from two men: George Ash, county attorney investigator, and John G. Handy, Los Angeles-based private investigator. Beginning in September 1937, Handy posed as a “John Wilson,” a middle man between the county attorney’s office and the gamblers (the game owners or operators); he was the person to contact and to pay.

Recording Of Transgressions

Handy met with and collected $3,000 ($51,000 today) from gamblers during October and November. All of the transactions were recorded via then cutting-edge equipment: a Dictaphone system that could capture audio through a wall and microphones. Handy initially worked out of a dwelling at 130 W. Adams Street in Phoenix but later moved his setup to a room in the 16-story Hotel Westward Ho at Central Avenue and Fillmore Street.

Also recorded was a conversation between Handy and Sheriff Merrill that occurred in the 1325½ W. Monroe Street apartment, Corbin having introduced Handy to Merrill as his contact. Merrill, who’d declared his anti-gambling stance during his 1936 campaign and after getting elected in ’37, discussed plans for collecting money from gamblers and named some potential targets who were slot machine operators. Merrill also said Deputy Northroup handled collecting throughout the county for the sheriff’s office.

Northroup was captured on tape telling Handy about having arranged with a specific gambling establishment owner a $1,000 a month payment to the sheriff’s office and suggested the county attorney’s office also collect the same amount.

“So dangerous did the probe become that Corbin, Wilmer, Ash and Mullen transcribed their evidence, had a number of copies made, and placed them for safekeeping in bank vaults in a number of cities between Phoenix and Chicago, it was learned,” reported the Arizona Republic (Nov. 19, 1937). (Mark Wilmer, county special prosecutor, and Ted Mullen, county investigator, also were involved in conducting the probe.)

Downtown Phoenix, Maricopa County, in the 1940s

Lawsuits, Trials, Outcomes

In November, County Attorney Corbin filed criminal complaints against 28 people, including Merrill, Westfall and Northroup, and arrests and raids were carried out. All were charged with the felonies of asking a bribe, offering a bribe and/or conspiracy to carry on gambling games.

The complaint against Judge Westfall alleged that he’d implored Corbin not to pursue criminal proceedings against the defendants who’d been operating lotteries and related devices.

By May of 1938, Corbin and Wilmer had prosecuted eight trials in the countywide gambling crackdown. Two of them were against Sheriff Merrill, who was acquitted both times. Four others resulted in hung juries. Defendants — gamblers — were found guilty in only two.

The following month, Corbin asked for and was granted dismissal of all but one of the remaining felony cases because his office believed the chance of any convictions, based on results to date, was “very remote,” he said (Arizona Republic, June 12, 1938). The charges against Justice Westfall and Sheriff’s Deputy Northroup were among those dropped.

“I want it understood I’m not quitting,” Corbin added. “I say the gambling and graft war will continue in spite of dismissal of the cases.”

Sources

1930s

1937

An armored truck, accompanied by three deputy sheriff cars, was moving $262,000 (about $4.5 million today) the 15 miles from the Del Mar racetrack in California down the coastal highway to a San Diego bank. The money was the track’s share of one day’s parimutuel handle, or total amount wagered. This amount, from that single day, was roughly two-thirds the revenue that the City of Reno, Nevada generated over a year, the 1937-1938 fiscal year, from gambling taxes and license fees.

An anonymous phone report of a murder at a café in the City of Del Mar caused the deputies to abandon the transport vehicle and head there.

When they arrived, though, they learned the phone call had been a ruse, likely to isolate the money-containing truck so it could be robbed more easily. Upon the deputies radioing in their discovery, a swarm of law enforcement officers responded. They reached the armored vehicle in time to foil any holdup and get the cash to its destination without incident.

Racetrack Beginnings

Crooner and thoroughbred horse owner and racing fan, Bing Crosby, was behind the development of the Del Mar racetrack. He and actor Pat O’Brien convinced a handful of mostly Hollywood celebrities to invest cumulatively about $2 million (about $34 million today) to lease the new Del Mar Fairgrounds and add a racetrack, facilities and clubhouse. Along with Crosby and O’Brien, the Del mar partnership consisted of fellow actors Gary Cooper, Joe E. Brown and Oliver Hardy and businessman/racehorse owner, Charles S. Howard.

“Del Mar has class written all over it — from the stable area to the swanky interior of the Turf Club,” described Paul Lowry (Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1937). “Del Mar has the Spanish touch of old California, the artistic, aristocratic air of the day of the Dons. The buildings are in keeping from stem to stern — from the adobe outer walls to the architectural dream that brought the clubhouse and grandstand into being.”

With A Grin And A Song

On the Del Mar racetrack’s opening day, Wednesday, July 7, 1937, Crosby greeted the attendees, about 20,000 in all. “[He] appeared at the grandstand turnstiles, smoking his pipe and tipping his dark blue yachting cap to customers as they entered the grounds,” wrote John Christgau in The Gambler & The Bug Boy.

After the bugle sounded for the inaugural race, Crosby sand Where The Turf Meets The Surf, a ditty he co-wrote with James V. Monaco and Johnny Burke specifically for the Del Mar racetrack:

Where the turf meets the surf
Down at old Del Mar
Take a plane
Take a train
Take a car.
There is a smile on every face
And a winner in each race
Where the turf meets the surf
At Del Mar.

The track’s handle for the season’s first day was $183,041 (roughly $3.15 million today).

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons