1948

Arthur T. Morgan belligerently stormed into the Big Hat casino on Highway 91 (outside Las Vegas, Nevada) at about 1:30 a.m. on a Friday night in spring. He immediately began heckling, threatening to shoot and goading the proprietor, Sam Baker, into a gunfight.

“When we go, we’re going to go all the way, Sam, because I’m going to kill you,” Morgan, 40, said. “Shall we shoot it out at four paces” (Nevada State Journal, March 27, 1948)?

“You’re always this way when you’re drunk, Art — forget it,” Baker, 43, responded.

Baker had moved to Las Vegas from Chicago and purchased the Big Hat in spring of 1947. Prior to that, he’d been a politician in the Windy City under William “Big Bill” Hale Thompson, one of America’s most corrupt mayors. Further back, he was involved in minor gambling activities in Albuquerque and Shreveport, Louisiana.

Morgan, who’d been picking fights elsewhere in the Las Vegas area in the previous 24 hours, had opened and sold a nightclub west of Albuquerque years earlier. At the time he was in Las Vegas (only for a few days), he owned both a home and a package liquor store in New Mexico, and was ill with an unknown ailment.

The two were acquaintances from Albuquerque, where they’d gotten into “trouble with a woman,” said Clark County Sheriff Glen Jones, based on reports from New Mexico (Nevada State Journal, March 27, 1948).

The Feud Escalates

On the night of the confrontation, Morgan continued trash talking for two hours, with Baker trying to calm him.

Suddenly, at 3:57 a.m., both men drew their weapons, bullets flew and Morgan fell, never having gotten off a shot. Hit five times, his dead body lay sprawled on the casino floor, his .380 Beretta automatic at his side, his feet pointing toward the bar.

“I beat him to it,” Baker later told police.

The half-dozen or so witnesses to the taunting denied seeing the shooting take place.

Baker informed police officers he’d shot Morgan in self-defense but refused to discuss his prior relationship with the man or his own background. He was booked for investigation then released on $5,000 cash bond.

The subsequent inquest into the shooting found Baker’s claim to be valid. He only was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and fined $50 ($494 today) for that offense.

Consequently, the state tax commission pulled his gambling license, in September, without which he couldn’t turn a profit, he said. Instead, he ran the place as the Villa Venice, a restaurant without a casino.

Sources

Illustration from pond5: “Dueling Pistols” by lineartestpilot

1948

Mickey Cohen (né Meyer Harris Cohen) — violent Los Angeles, California mobster and gambling kingpin with ties to Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and the Flamingo in Las Vegas, Nevada — suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder that led to him washing his hands 50 to 60 times a day.

In fact, the ritual saved his life in 1948. After shaking hands with stickup man, Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno, who was on his way out of Cohen’s menswear shop called Michael’s Haberdashery, Cohen immediately went to the restroom in the back to wash his hands.

Fratianno signaled the assassin team, headed by his best friend, Michael “The Bomp” Bompensiero, which stormed and shot up the store but failed to hit Cohen who was nowhere in sight.

1948

A real or perceived protective relationship with illegal gambling operators got Nevada Police Superintendent Lester C. Moody fired.

Governor Vail Pittman, who’d appointed Moody to the position two years before, terminated him in May 1948. The Nevada Tax Commission, charged with regulating gambling, supported Pittman’s action.

The governor had lost confidence in Moody’s operation of the police force and was distressed by his inability to obtain evidence supporting the arrest and prosecution of the various illegal roadside zoo owners. At the time, these shady gambling places were operating in Nye, Eureka and Clark counties.

“Moody was called into the governor’s office time and time again and was impressed with the vital necessity of investigating and closing places which were a disgrace to the good name of the state of Nevada and caused considerable adverse publicity,” Pittman said (Nevada State Journal, June 10, 1948).

He’d heard rumors that Moody was reluctant to get the Emigrant Pass roadside zoo in Eureka County shut down specifically because Moody was close friends with the owners.

Pittman added, “Immediately before Mr. Moody’s dismissal there came into my possession evidence that incontrovertibly established such intimacy” — a personal letter from Les Moody to Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Dennison (Nevada State Journal, June 10, 1948).

Vehement But Futile Objections

The police superintendent didn’t go quietly. He claimed the real reason for his getting fired was Pittman succumbing to political pressure. Further, he argued it wasn’t his fault the roadside zoos didn’t get closed down, but, rather, the county officials who wouldn’t cooperate with him were to blame.

“If I hear of one more charge or allegation from anyone linking me with gambling conspiracy in this state, I will sue for libel,” Moody wrote in a statement (Nevada State Journal, May 22, 1948).

Pittman refuted Moody’s charge.

“My action in discharging Mr. Moody was based solely on his undue intimacy with men he had been charged with investigating and arresting,” he reiterated (Nevada State Journal,” June 10, 1948).

After an extensive investigation, Attorney General Alan Bible sided with Pittman. Then in September, a grand jury in Eureka County, where Dennison’s zoo was located, also found that Moody’s firing was justified.

“Either through inefficiency, lack of initiative, shifting of responsibility or some other motive, Lester Moody, former superintendent of state police, was culpable for continued existence of the Emigrant Pass establishment,” members noted (Nevada State Journal, Sept. 19, 1948).

The jury, however, also found the county sheriff, Stanley Fine, responsible for continued operation of Emigrant Pass gambling in his jurisdiction, as he repeatedly voted for granting the owner gaming licenses.

“He condoned an offense that called for immediate action — closing the establishment for illegal operation,” they added.

Moody countered, insisting that some grand jury members ruled the way they did because they disliked Moody and were Dennison’s competitors.

Sources

Photo from pond5.com: “Chess and job concept” by Alex Skopje

Gwyndolyn Conger Steinbeck

1948-1950

Tragedy struck when the wife of famed American novelist, John Steinbeck, was in Reno, Nevada for a quickie divorce from him after 5½ years of marriage.

In 1948, while establishing residency in The Biggest Little City, Gwyndolyn “Gwyn” Conger Steinbeck developed a relationship with Leonard Wolff, a wealthy, former U.S. Army Air Forces bombardier during World War II. The 28-year-old man worked at a local hotel, had a son around a year old who lived with his estranged wife and his family owned a department store in his hometown of Denver, Colorado.

On a Friday night in October, a month after Wolff was granted a divorce decree on the grounds of desertion and mental cruelty, he and Steinbeck went to a late dinner with Wolff’s parents at the Mapes hotel-casino. Just after midnight, the younger Wolff and Steinbeck left the elder Wolffs and visited with acquaintances in the casino. At 3:30 a.m., the two stopped for a drink at the West Indies club, south of town.

While there, Steinbeck entertained herself at the slots, and, for hours, Wolff played 21. He ramped up his betting to $100 a hand and for all seats at the table. At one point, he asked for a new dealer, and Newell Benningfield, the owner, took over.

Steinbeck grew tired, laid down in Wolff’s 1946 Ford sedan outside and “blacked out,” she later said (Oakland Tribune, Oct. 27, 1948). Wolff ultimately lost $86,000 (an $851,000 value today) and wrote three checks — one for $7,000, one for $29,000 and one for $50,000 — to cover the loss.

“I hope these checks are good,” Benningfield told Wolff. The debtor said the smaller one could be cashed immediately but not the others as he first had to arrange his finances to cover them.

At about 10 a.m. on Saturday, Wolff dropped Steinbeck off at the ranch where she was residing. Also that morning, Benningfield tried to cash the $7,000 check, but the bank refused because Wolff’s signature on it lacked the middle initial he’d always included.

The Unthinkable Occurs

Within 45 minutes of Wolff dropping off Steinbeck, passersby spotted his car wrecked, all of its tires flat, in the rocks about 200 feet off to the side of Mt. Rose Highway, south of Reno. They stopped to help, but Wolff waved them off.

Soon after, another driver pulled over and discovered Wolff inside the car, dead, with a bullet hole in his temple and a 0.38-caliber pistol at the scene.

Sheriffs ruled the incident a suicide, speculating that the recent divorcé first had tried to kill himself by running off the road and when that failed, had shot himself. He hadn’t been drunk or drugged, blood tests later revealed.

The coroner, Laurance Layman, agreed with law enforcement officers that criminal involvement hadn’t been a factor and further opined: “I don’t think the gambling had anything to do with Wolff’s death,” (Nevada State Journal, Oct. 29, 1948).

Wolff’s family, however, initially suspected foul play but, later, according to Layman, accepted that the fatal injury had been self-inflicted.

Early on, authorities questioned Mrs. Steinbeck and concluded she didn’t know anything about Saturday morning’s events. Seven days after Wolff’s demise, she got her divorce on the grounds of extreme mental cruelty, along with custody of her and John’s two children, ages 2 and 4.

Within the week, the coroner’s jury determined Wolff had died of a gunshot wound to the head, but didn’t specify how it’d happened.

Benningfield Wants His Money

Wolff’s estate was valued at about $34,000 ($337,000 value today). In February 1949, Benningfield filed a claim for $86,000 against it, which its executor, First National Bank, rejected.

In response, the West Indies owner sued in district court but, again, was denied the money because gambling debts weren’t collectable through legal action in Nevada. He appealed in May to the Nevada Supreme Court, which heard the case later that year.

In early 1950, the higher court concurred with its lower counterpart, which meant it was definite: Benningfield couldn’t recoup the $86,000.

Sources

Photo: by Luigi Corbellini

A guest of the Flamingo hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada accidentally took home a $5 ($50 today) gambling chip then deposited it into the Bank of Arizona.

The bank mailed to the Flamingo the chip along with a letter requesting the casino cash it, which it did.

Pasadena, California in 1945

1948

When Pasadena, California vice squad officers got a tip that chef/restaurant owner Paul B. Weston, 56, was sidelining as an illegal bookie, they raided his home and found gambling paraphernalia — where else? — under the stove.

And, sealing Weston’s fate, while the police were in his residence, they fielded 10 phone calls to Weston in which the callers, unaware they were speaking to the law, asked for betting information. Weston was arrested.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons/The National Archives

1948

The November 22, 1948 issue of Sports-Week roiled Nevada Wolf Pack fans and supporters.

Bevy Of Allegations

An article in that edition of the nationally circulated digest charged that the University of Nevada* (UN) football team had thrown the game against Santa Clara two weeks earlier, on November 7, “for the specific benefit of Nevada gamblers” — casino owners and operators and bookmakers — who’d made “a killing” on it (Reno Evening Gazette, Nov. 30, 1948).

The Nevada Wolf Pack had been favored in that game; the Santa Clara Broncos had been a 21-point underdog. The loss cost the Pack a bowl bid.

The story asserted that Renoites were saddened by the Wolf Pack’s 14-0 loss to the Broncos, except for an “exclusive group of bookies who were on the ‘in’ and a few dozen assorted Nevada football players who were on their payroll” (The Camden News, Nov. 20, 1948).

Those players, the article explained, which included All-America candidate, quarterback Stan Heath, received weekly paychecks from the area gambling clubs, a charge the casinos subsequently denied. (Some players worked in the gambling clubs only during summers, they said.)

The exposé noted that Nevada casinos donated large sums to UN in what appeared publicly to be a gracious act but in reality was to buy off the necessary officials so the football team would win or lose as instructed. Reno casino owners gave $30,000 (about $304,000 today) as “a direct subsidy to the university and planted their $40,000,000 per annum business [$406 million today] squarely behind the ostensibly noble purpose of building a national gridiron power,” wrote Don Freeberg, staff writer for the New York-based publication.

Up In Arms

The response in The Silver State to the Sports-Week piece was swift and adamant. Several Nevada attorney-politicians even volunteered to intervene: Patrick “Pat” A. McCarran, then U.S. senator  for Nevada; E.P. Carville, former U.S. senator and governor; and Morley Griswold, former governor.

As a policy, most of the large casinos in Northern Nevada didn’t accept bets on Nevada football games, they clarified through the media. Those that did noted that $500 ($5,000 today) at most had been wagered on the Pack-Broncos game locally.

UN’s newspaper, The Sagebrush, published an editorial demanding action against Sports-Week.

“If the athletic board sits back and allows this incident to pass unnoticed, many will reason it is true,” it read. “It is time to stop ignoring accusations and time to start making a few people eat their insidious remarks. In the event such action does not come, it is time for the board of regents to take over and protect its interests.”

School athletics officials — Joe Sheeketski, director of athletics and head football coach, and Harry Frost, chairman of UN’s board of athletic control — publicly denied the allegations. They had the law firm, Thatcher, Woodburn and Forman, demand that Sports-Week publisher Marty Berg print a full retraction of the story or face a libel suit. In their letter, the attorneys wrote:

“The University of Nevada athletic department makes a categorical and complete denial of the charges and insinuations contained in the article. The charges in your article are infamous, untrue and damaging to Nevada athletics, to the members of the athletic department and to the boys on the Nevada squad.”

Editor Backpedals, Sort Of

Berg issued a public statement in which he didn’t admit any wrongdoing or regret. Sports-Week hadn’t run the article with malicious intent or carelessness, he said. Rather, it published it “in the interest of clean sports in this country which is especially needed so far as college football is concerned.”

He shifted blame to UN officials, saying they’d read into the article charges that weren’t there, perhaps his way of backing off the accusations.

Yet, he seemed to re-level the allegations in his concluding remark: “We commend the Nevada situation to the governor of that state. We believe it warrants his inspection, if Nevada is to occupy any wholesome position in college athletics in this country.”

Berg agreed to print the Reno attorneys’ letter in full in the upcoming December 6 issue. Presumably, he did, as the university didn’t sue Sports-Week. Instead, it let the issue die a quick death.

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* The university was located in Reno. Today, the university is called the University of Nevada, Reno to be distinguished from its southern counterpart, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which didn’t exist then.

What do you think? Did the Wolf Pack throw the game for the casinos?

Do any of you have either of these Sports-Week issues, November 7 or December 6, 1948? It’d be great to see the article and subsequent letter in full.

Sources

Photo from University of Nevada, Reno’s Wolf Pack Athletics Digital Collection