1941

The brief union between Tony and Dorothy Stralla ended in a suspicious tragedy.

Antonio Cornero Stralla was a colorful, law defying, Southern California rumrunner turned gambler. He was involved, most often as the owner/operator, in a string of casino enterprises,  including the:

• Meadows (Las Vegas, Nevada)
• S.S. Rex (Las Vegas, Nevada)
• Stardust (Las Vegas, Nevada)
• Rex gambling ship (offshore, Santa Monica and Redondo Beach, California)
• Lux gambling ship (offshore, Long Beach, California)
• Montmartre Club (Havana, Cuba)

Dorothy Friend Thaxton was a nightclub singer known as Dorothy Carroll, and, prior to the marriage, Cornero Stralla’s publicist.

He, at about age 41 (records show various birth years), and she, at 25, tied the knot in Las Vegas, Nevada at 2 a.m. on Monday, May 5, 1941. He’d been married before, at least once. It’s unknown whether she had been.

Following their nuptials, she lived in his Beverly Hills home, and he resided in Havana, where he ran the Montmartre nightclub-casino.

The Bloom Is Off The Rose

About two months later, the couple separated following a heated argument at the Southern California house, to which the police were called and Friend Thaxton was taken to the local emergency room for care.

“She first said she had swallowed the contents of two bottles of iodine, and later said she had just stained her lips and hands with the brownish liquid,” reported the Los Angeles Times (July 10, 1941).

A week after that incident, Cornero Stralla filed for a marriage annulment, claiming Friend Thaxton hadn’t “fulfilled her marital obligations” and had pursued the union with him intending never to do so.

The Times noted, “‘Admiral’ Tony Cornero’s latest romance has faded — quick than a sucker’s bankroll aboard one of the floating gambling ships that formerly beckoned the unwary along the Southern California coast.”

“Cold, Harsh, Devoid Of Affection”

Friend Thaxton responded with a cross-complaint, citing cruelty and desertion and asking for separate maintenance. This is an order requiring a spouse to make support, or maintenance, payments to the other, via a separation agreement. In her filing, Friend Thaxton requested $150 (about $2,500 today) per month, 15 percent of Cornero Stralla’s monthly income of about $1,000 ($17,000 today). She denied her husband’s accusations.

On the couple’s subsequent court date in late July, Friend Thaxton showed but Cornero Stralla didn’t. He was away on business, his attorney said. Friend Thaxton told the judge that since she and Cornero Stralla had separated, her husband hadn’t supported her, thereby forcing her to pawn her jewelry and borrow money from friends.

In late July, a judge ordered the gambler to pay the monthly $150 in alimony but only temporarily. Even though the marriage was so short-lived, by California law he had to do so because he’d been the one to initiate the union’s dissolution. Were she to have filed for the annulment instead, he wouldn’t have had to support her.

Whiplash Of Extremes

A month later, the two dismissed their respective legal actions, supposedly having reunited.

Had Cornero Stralla coerced or manipulated Friend Thaxton into dropping her alimony request or had she done so willingly?

A week later, on September 4, the two were in a Las Vegas court, where Friend Thaxton was granted a marriage annulment.

Who Was Responsible?

Following the hearing, she was driving herself home to Hollywood, when she got into a serious car accident about 18 miles west of Baker, California. When she’d tried to pass another car along the shoulder, traveling at a high speed, she lost control. Her vehicle skidded about 140 feet, overturned three times and skidded another 150 feet. She was thrown about 70 feet from where the car came to a rest.

Cornero Stralla had been following her in his car, hoping to overtake her and get her to stop driving, as she’d been drinking and “in no condition to drive,” he told police (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 6, 1941). He claimed she’d exceeded 100 mph at times.

What really happened on that drive?

At 6:15 the next morning, Friend Thaxton died in a doctor’s office from her injuries, which included a skull fracture.

Sources

KENO broadcasting station license, 1941

1941

When Maxwell Kelch applied for call letters for his Las Vegas, Nevada radio station, he requested KLVN as a first choice and KENO as a second, certain the Federal Communications Commission wouldn’t approve a gambling-related name.

The FCC apologetically notified Kelch that KLVN already was in use elsewhere so he’d have to accept using the alternative, KENO — what he wanted all along.

1941

In an override of Governor Edward Carville’s veto, Nevada legislators legalized bookmaking.

The law explained that “the receiving of bets or wagers on horse races held without the state of Nevada shall be deemed to be a gambling game,” thereby making it permissible for those with a gambling license to take such bets on such events.

1941

The man who played roulette in the Palace Club nearly every day for six months was noticeable for his suave appearance. Henry Helmut, age 47, had a bit of gray hair and sported a tasteful, waxed moustache, Pince Nez glasses with ribbon and sharp, tailored attire.

“He looked like a college professor out on a gay holiday and gambling club operators say he ‘was the most impressive piece of scenery’ they have had around in a long time,” reported the United Press (The Amarillo Sunday News-Globe, Dec. 7, 1941).

Eventful Work Shift

On Friday night, December 5, while Helmut was on the job, shilling for the Reno, Nevada casino, police officers arrested then turned him over to federal agents who’d flown in from San Francisco and New York. Helmut’s capture marked the end of a 1.5-year search for him that required 37,000 travel miles through the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Helmut was wanted on a secret indictment in New York for conspiracy against the United States with international ramifications, the feds said.

The name Henry Helmut was one of 40 different aliases — including Paul Laval, Dr. Hoffman and Martin Helmuth — the dapper man had used. His actual name was Helmuth Hartmann.

On a search of Hartmann’s Reno hotel room, police found an unloaded Mauser firearm, about $350 in bills in the lining of his suitcase, gold ore and letters written in German.

Was he a German spy? Was he a drug trafficker? Was he involved in a counterfeit ring? Was he a Nazi?

The feds wouldn’t say, but they extradited Hartmann to The Big Apple to face trial.

Filling In The Portrait

More information about Hartmann later came to light. He’d been born in Germany but since had obtained American citizenship. He was associated with a New York gang. In fact, Reno Detective Captain Harry Fletcher surmised that Hartmann had been casing the local casinos on behalf of his East Coast colleagues who wanted to get into the business. The gambling club booster’s lavish spending around town on a 50 cents-an-hour income made Fletcher suspicious.

Hartmann had been an international racketeer and swindler (stock and matrimonial cons, for example), and had served time in prison. He’d been an associate of 1) Victor “Count” Von Lustig (an alias), the U.S.-based mastermind of an extensive counterfeit operation that law enforcement dismantled in 1935 and 2) Miroslav Skrivanek, a widely known narcotics trafficker in Czechoslovakia.

Recent Unlawful Activity

Hartmann had been apprehended in Reno for his involvement in an extensive conspiracy to smuggle drugs from Mexico and distribute them in New York City. The specific charges against him were conspiring to import, distribute, conceal and transport narcotics.

He’d acted as the liaison between Mafiosi in East Harlem —the 107th Street Mob — and opiate sellers south of the United States border. In doing so, he’d arranged for New York mobsters — Frank Livorsi, Dominick “The Gap” Petrilli and Salvatore “Tom Mix” Santoro, all with long records of violent crimes, from rape to homicide — to obtain a continuous supply of narcotics from Mexico. He’d accompanied these dealers on a drug buy, at least once, in summer 1940.

“The boys now have enough money to buy all the narcotics you can find in Mexico,” Livorsi had told Hartmann. “Do a good job for us” (Advisory Committee, Feb. 16, 1946).

In Northern Nevada, officers also had discovered opiates, in sample-size quantities, in Hartmann’s belongings:

• 200 grains of heroin
• 41 grains of raw opium
• 133 grains of morphine hydrochloride

Punitive Consequences

Once in federal custody, Hartmann divulged what he knew about the narcotics operations and fingered numerous accomplices. This led to a second indictment, in which he also was named, in Arizona, the state through which the drugs entered the U.S.

Hartmann was found guilty in both the Arizona (May 1942) and New York (July 1942) trials. In each, he was given a suspended sentence of two years’ prison time, with probation.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: Pince Nez felts by Infrogmation of New Orleans

1941

Ten years after Nevada legalized gambling and shortened the residency requirement for divorce from six months to six weeks, Montana took steps to compete. Bills to legalize gambling and to allow 30-day divorces were introduced to the state legislature.

Neither made it through, leaving dude ranchers and many others upset about the potential economic boon for which such laws likely would have allowed.