1953-1955

In fall 1953, John “Fat Jack” Galloway was playing the card game, 21, at Leo Quilici’s hotel-casino, the El Rancho Hotel, in Wells, Nevada.

Fat Jack himself, in his early 40s, was the operator of a gambling saloon located 8 miles west of Fallon. Beforehand, he’d been employed as a dealer at Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas clubs and had served prison time on bunco and vagrancy charges in the early 1940s in California.

Leo’s son, Joe Quilici, 27, the El Rancho’s manager and a city councilman, was dealing to Fat Jack. Thinking Fat Jack was a tourist, Joe cheated him out of about $4,200 ($37,000 today); Joe’d often peek at the top card in the deck and deal the second card rather than the first.

After Fat Jack left the casino, another El Rancho dealer told Joe that Fat Jack was an undercover agent for the tax commission. Joe ran across the street to the Bulls Head Bar, and told his father, the proprietor, he’d been caught cheating. (Joe had been discovered dealing dishonestly previously, and his gambling license had been suspended but then reinstated. The same had happened to Leo for having cheated customers with a plugged slot machine that couldn’t pay out jackpots.)

The day after Fat Jack and Joe’s gaming encounter, Dudley Kline, 61, allegedly paid Leo a visit at his saloon. Dudley was second in charge of the Nevada Tax Commission’s gambling division that, since 1948, had been tasked with keeping games of chance in the state honest. Dudley told Leo that Joe had swindled a tax commission agent and that he, Dudley, might be able to help. Then he left.

Fat Jack then paid a visit to Leo several hours later. After deceptively introducing himself as a tax commission agent, Fat Jack reiterated that the problem of Joe cheating him could go away for $3,000 ($27,000 today), an amount he said he had to split with another person, presumably Dudley. Leo paid him the full amount.

In February 1954, after an investigation in which the Quilicis were the only witnesses, Dudley and Fat Jack were arrested. They were bound over for trial and released on $5,000 bond each.

Elko County District Attorney Grant W. Sawyer, who’d learned of the incident from an anonymous tipster, asserted that Dudley was an accessory before the fact to extortion but charged him as a principal because he supposedly “set the stage” for Fat Jack telling Leo that he, Fat Jack, was a commission member (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 11, 1954). Sawyer similarly charged Fat Jack.

Despite Dudley denying knowledge of any blackmail attempt, Robbins Cahill, the tax commission’s secretary, fired him. 

“The circumstances of this case dictate that we continue to dig. We are going to turn over every spade full around and weigh it carefully,” Cahill said (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 11, 1954).

Without a choice, Leo Quilici closed down the gambling at his two properties — standard procedure when cheating has been discovered.

Pursuit Of (In)justice

Sawyer’s charges against Dudley were dismissed twice. Two different judges, first in district then in justice court, granted Dudley a permanent writ of habeas corpus based on insufficient evidence to warrant holding him for trial.

In a third attempt to convict Dudley, Sawyer, in early 1955, filed an appeal with Nevada’s Supreme Court, challenging the writ.

“I have searched my conscience and I honestly believe there is evidence to hold [Dudley] Kline for trial,” he said, denying he was attempting to persecute him (Reno Evening Gazette, Aug. 13, 1954).

At that point, Fat Jack was awaiting trial pending the outcome of Sawyer’s appeal on Dudley’s case. He closed his gaming operation.

The higher court upheld the original writ, saying “there was no error in the conclusion of the district court that Kline had been held to answer without reasonable or probable cause or in the order discharging him from custody by reason thereof” (Nevada State Journal, April 14, 1955). This ended the legal ordeal for Dudley. Despite the outcome, though, he wasn’t reinstated on the tax commission.

Within the week, Sawyer dismissed the extortion charges against Fat Jack, believing the state wouldn’t be able to adequately prove a guilty verdict.

Was Dudley guilty or, perhaps, framed by Fat Jack and the Quilicis?

Sources

1953

The Sands hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada offered craps not poolside but in the pool!

Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Digital Collections

1953

On a weeknight in May, Louisiana state policemen surrounded a high-end home in the New Orleans suburbs. One of them knocked on a secret side door that contained a one-way glass window, allowing those inside to see out but not those outside to see in. A man in the house opened the door but slammed it shut once he realized who was there. Using sledgehammers, the troopers penetrated that and another door and entered.

Inside, they saw that much of the residence had been converted into an illegal casino. The living room, dining room and a third, smaller room all contained gambling equipment. A cocktail bar in the basement served guests.

Scattered throughout these areas were about 40 to 50 people, several of whom fled upon seeing the authorities. Three even jumped out of a window.

Operating Clandestinely

In the 1920s, parimutuel horse race betting became the only legalized form of gambling in Louisiana, although many casinos operated out in the open anyway, unlawfully, and this went on for decades. However, many of those enterprises went underground after Senator Estes Kefauver and his fellow committee members, in New Orleans in 1951, held hearings on organized crime. Following that probe, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Frank J. Clancy closed the area’s gambling houses.

One of those shuttered illegal clubs was O’Dwyer’s,* which had been owned and operated by brothers George L. and Rudolph “Rudy” T. O’Dwyer. Previously, the duo had run gambling establishments in New Orleans.

The home where the raid took place belonged to George’s son, Edward L. O’Dwyer.

Too Much Stress?

When she saw the police activity, Edward’s aunt and next-door neighbor telephoned her brother, George, and told him what was happening at his son’s home.

Immediately, George jumped in his car and sped to the scene. While pulling into his sister’s driveway, he suffered a heart attack and died on the spot!

Netting A Jackpot

Meanwhile, from the various gaming rooms in Edward’s home, troopers seized three roulette and three blackjack tables, $1,300 in cash (about $12,000 today) from various strongboxes and four loaded revolvers discovered in a cabinet.

“[It was] the most gambling equipment we’ve gotten on any raid,” Col. Francis Grevemberg said of the haul (The Monroe News-Star, May 27, 1953)

The state policemen released all the players but arrested the five operators, none of whom was an O’Dwyer, on illegal gambling charges. It’s unknown what happened to these men subsequently.

————————–

* O’Dwyer’s, open from 1949 to 1951, was located at 100 Jefferson Highway, New Orleans. It’s now a Salvation Army store.

Sources

1953

Theodore “Ted” Donaldson, 31, bought six slot machines from Joe Larango of Pyramid Securities Inc., a company with the devices in several Reno, Nevada locations, including the Oak Room casino. Donaldson paid the $1,825 cost (about $17,000 today) with a check. Each slot was valued at about $900 ($8,000 today).

Larango soon discovered the check was invalid as the account it was written against didn’t exist. Next, he learned that Donaldson had sold three of those purchased gambling machines to a local novelty store owner for $300 ($3,000 today).

Not Having It

Larango pressed charges against Donaldson, who already had a complaint filed against him. That one was for writing a bad $20 check ($185 today) to Lee Miner, owner of Reno’s Midway bar, two months earlier. Bail was set at $2,500 ($23,000 today).

Police officers believed Donaldson had issued at least six fraudulent checks in Reno and Sparks.

On the Larango case, Donaldson was charged with acquiring merchandise under false pretenses, obtaining money via false means and issuing fictitious checks. The judge set bail at $1,300 ($12,000 today).

Strange Proceedings

At the preliminary hearing, Donaldson claimed he thought he’d had enough money in the bank to cover the check to Larango when it was cashed. Yet an employee of his financial institution, the First National Bank, testified at the hearing that Donaldson had opened a checking account with $300 ($3,000 today) several weeks prior to him buying the slots, but the bank manager had closed it when funds had gotten overdrawn.

Donaldson requested a jury trial, which was unusual in that bad check cases rarely advanced to that stage, but one was scheduled.

Then he changed his mind, which was allowed, pleaded guilty and asked for probation. When the state probation officer filed a report on Donaldson for the judge, Harold O. Taber, “the jurist wasn’t impressed with what he saw,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (Dec. 16, 1953). The document detailed prior arrests and searches for Donaldson and contradicted “his version of his family affairs.”

Denying Donaldson’s request, Taber sentenced him to one to five years in Nevada State Prison.

He was paroled in March 1955 after serving 15 months.

As for the other three slot machines Donaldson had acquired from Larango, he at some point had returned them to the seller, whether voluntarily or by order is unknown.

Sources