New Star (restaurant, casino, bar), Winnemucca, Nevada, 1960s

1958

Casino workers at the New Star allegedly were caught in flagrante delicto.

In April, a gambling detective — Michael MacDougall from New York — conducted a statewide, in-person survey of various gambling entities upon the request of Robbins Cahill, head of the Nevada Tax Commission, the state’s gambling regulatory agency at the time.

MacDougall spotted dealers cheating during games of 21 (blackjack) on two different days at the Winnemucca gambling house. In May, Fred Galster, an agent for the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), which investigated all cheating complaints, played the game at New Star for hours, and he, too, noticed the same deceitful activity.  

Array Of Infractions

The two witnesses observed the dealers employing the following cheating methods

• dealing seconds = dealing the second card in the deck

• turning the deck = turning a card over and dealing from the deck bottom

• one hand bottom = taking a card from the deck bottom to give the dealer 21

• copping the cut = picking up the cards in the same way they’re cut

• hi-low stack = picking up discards in such an order that the dealer gets two high cards and the player gets one high and one low card

• dealer’s stack = picking up discards in such an order that the dealer gets 21

• bubble peeking = bending the top card slightly to glance at it

• bridge = bending a card so players unconsciously cut at that card

• false shuffle = passing cards through a shuffle without rearranging their position

During the 1950s, Nevada gaming authorities cracked down on cheaters, typically revoking the gambling licenses of the casino operators, thereby closing their establishments for a year.

This was to portray to outsiders, federal lawmakers in particular, that the industry in The Silver State was honest and clean. One might argue they were extra vigilant during 1958 because Robert F. Kennedy was working diligently and blatantly to eradicate racketeering throughout the U.S., and gaming was an obvious place to root out such underworld activity.

Defense Offered

The NGCB ordered New Star casino’s operators — Brent Mackie and Kenneth Henton — to appear at a hearing to show cause why their gambling license should be maintained.

At the proceeding — during which MacDougall, Galster and numerous other people testified — New Star’s defense attorney, Thomas Foley of Las Vegas, denied his clients were guilty and asserted the NGCB had failed to prove the cheating charges. The primary defense was that MacDougall’s findings weren’t credible and, therefore, he wasn’t either. Foley argued MacDougall  had:

• Identified one of the allegedly cheating dealers by physical description but that man hadn’t worked then

• Testified that a certain allegedly cheating dealer was right-handed when in fact the dealer at the time was left-handed

Despite the discrepancies, though, the tax commission pulled Mackie and Henton’s gambling license in July, closing New Star’s casino.

But this isn’t the story’s end. Check back next Wednesday for the finale.

Sources

1958

Reverend Maurice D. Tulloch, 50, a Kansas man, gave up his Baptist ministry for shilling in a Nevada casino.

Feeling as though his life was suffocating him, a month earlier he’d walked out of a church seminar and had gone to a bus station where he’d heard a woman purchase a ticket to Las Vegas.

On a whim, he’d done the same. With only $20 in his pocket, he’d headed to Sin City, having left his wife and two adult children behind.

Photo from freeimages.com, by Andrew Beierle

1958

Sixteen glamazon, primarily English dancers from Paris’ Lido Club troupe were imported to open Las Vegas’ Stardust hotel-casino. The Bluebell Girls’ show broke all attendance records; about 1,400 people left the gaming tables and bars each night to see it.

“The celebrated dancers have been hailed as one of the most popular imports from the British Isles, since Scotch whisky,” noted the Bakersfield Californian (July 11, 1959).

Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas University Libraries’ Digital Collection: “Bluebell Girls Poolside at the Stardust”

To crush subversive or revolutionary activity, Cuban President Fulgencio Batista suspended for 45 days all constitutional guarantees in the country, including the right to public assembly. Yet, he allowed gambling operations to continue.

Photo from freeimages.com: “Poker Chips 2” by Kevin van der Draai

Casinos at Lake Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada, decades later, in 2008

1958-1959

Clarence Thayer grew ill with flu-like symptoms on Thanksgiving Day in 1958 while visiting his sister in Oakland, California. He was a well drilling contractor who lived in South Lake Tahoe. He and his wife Norma also owned a dry cleaning business that adjoined their home, which she ran and where he sometimes worked.

After an Oakland physician treated the 38 year old, he and his wife returned home. Soon after, he again got sick and sought care locally. When he failed to improve, he was admitted to Carson City Hospital, where he grew worse. He then was transferred to the Veterans Hospital in Reno, where he died on December 10 from what his physicians had diagnosed as pneumonia.

His mother, Lillie Thayer, requested an autopsy be done, and his widow agreed. That examination revealed the deceased’s kidney, liver and brain to be saturated with arsenic! Thus, the forensic toxicologist determined cause of death to be poisoning in small quantities over an extensive time period.

Toxic Source Found

El Dorado County Sheriff Ernest Carlson began an investigation and, early on, ruled out suicide. He administered polygraph tests to all persons of interest.

In interviewing Thayer’s mom Lillie, a 76-year-old former registered nurse, he learned she’d suspected her son was being poisoned for some time and that’s why she requested the autopsy. In separate conversations, she’d shared her suspicion with Norma who “didn’t say anything” and Thayer (Oakland Tribune, Jan. 4, 1959).

Carlson discovered Thayer never had told any of his treating physicians about the poisoning possibility, and it’s unclear why he hadn’t. He had, though, complained to a Lake Tahoe doctor as much as a year earlier about symptoms like the ones that resulted in his death.

In the Thayers’ dry cleaning establishment, Carlson found a few bottles and one mysterious Mason jar containing cherry soda and some jars of root beer concentrate — all tainted with arsenic.

More Details Emerge

During a lie detector test, the housekeeper, Mary Dalhoff, admitted to having taken about 15 bottles of the cherry soda to the dry cleaning business and placing them in the storage room. As far as she knew, she said, they were unadulterated at the time. She’d obtained them from the casino bar at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, in Stateline, Nevada, on the south shore.

She denied knowing anything about the Mason jar or the concentrate. The results of Dahloff and her husband’s polygraph exams were “satisfactory” (Reno Evening Gazette, Jan. 26, 1959).

During Norma’s lie detector test, she said she’d moved the soda to keep it from freezing and after doing so, had seen her husband drink bottles of it from time to time.  

While the news media never reported the outcomes of widow Norma and mother Lillie’s polygraphs, presumably they showed no deception or were inconclusive because no arrests were made … ever.

The case went cold.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: by Constantine Kulikovsky

1958

Tourists Robert and Lola McDurmon may or may not have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you look at it.

After taking in four shows on the Las Vegas Strip, the couple from Oxnard, California unwittingly witnessed a crime drama unfold up close. After pulling into the parking lot of their hotel, the Desert Inn, at about 5:30 a.m. to call it a night, a shootout involving a lone man and two law enforcement officers ensued about 20 feet away.

The two were in Sin City in March on a trip Robert had earned for having sold a significant number of Ford autos at work — Moffett Ford in Santa Paula — the previous month.

What Witnesses Didn’t Know

Before the volley of gunshots, Robert Vincent Carter, 47-year-old unemployed accountant, had been imbibing liquid spirits at the Desert Inn’s Sky Room bar. He got into a heated argument with a businessman — Stewart Hollingshead, an executive with the R.M. Hollingshead Company, a New Jersey-based manufacturer.  Because Carter’s language was expletive filled, he was tossed out of the hotel-casino. He drove home, retrieved his 0.350 Magnum pistol and returned to the Desert Inn.

Once there, he grabbed the casino pit boss, Sonny Burnett, and, at gunpoint, forced him outside the building. At that moment, another hotel guest, businessman and friend of Hollingshead, Harold Shafer, was about to enter. Carter snatched him and released Burnett.

“I’m giving you 60 seconds to get that other guy out here,” Carter told Burnett, meaning he wanted him to retrieve the man who had Carter ejected from the property earlier. Burnett went inside.

With his pistol targeted on him, Carter maneuvered Shafer to a car near the hotel entrance and pushed him into the front passenger seat. Carter then got in on the opposite side. While that was happening, sheriff’s detectives, Hiram Powell and Don Peel, appeared on the scene.

“Drop the gun!” Peel said.

Instead of complying, Carter threw open his car door and fired a shot that sailed past one of Peel’s ears. The police duo responded with eight bursts, one bullet hitting Carter in the right temple.

During the fray, Shafer ducked and ran to safety.

Carter was transported to Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital and charged with two counts of kidnapping. Though his condition was critical, he survived.

In September, Carter pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of false imprisonment. He was convicted and sentenced, but it’s unknown what punishment he received.

Possible Triggers

What had set Carter off?

“He apparently just was in a belligerent mood and disturbed by family troubles,” said Sheriff W.E. Leypoldt (Reno Evening Gazette, March 11, 1958).

Carter and his wife, who worked as a cashier at the Desert Inn casino, had been having marital problems and, in the recent past, had been separated on and off, though they were together at the time of the crime. Leypoldt further speculated that the potent amphetamine, Benzedrine, which officers found in his car, together with alcohol may have helped cause Carter to “blow his top.”

An Unforgettable Trip

As for the McDurmons, they had quite the story to tell upon returning home. And tell they did, at least to the local newspaper, the Oxnard Press-Courier.

Sources

Rooms at this hotel-casino were $10 a night, and the golf course was lit during the dark hours.

1958-1961

The Hacienda in Las Vegas, Nevada held an ongoing promotional contest at its golf course, which was widely advertised, even on the back of the postcard above. Participants would pay 50 cents (about $4.25 today) per attempt at a hole-in-one from 165 yards away, and the casino would award $5,000 ($43,000 today) to anyone who accomplished it.

Beating The Odds

The chance of someone making a golf ace depends on their skill and the difficulty of the hole, according to the National Hole in One Association. Roughly speaking, though, these are the odds for achieving such a feat for players of different skill levels:

Professional Golfer:        2,500 to 1
Lower Handicapper:       5,000 to 1
Amateur Golfer:             12,500 to 1

On Wednesday, March 12, 1958, with an entourage present, George Gibson, a local resident and commercial pilot, paid the entry fee and allegedly landed an ace. Yet the Hacienda, 1.5 years old at the time, didn’t give him the prize.

Gibson sued.

Chance v. Skill

At the trial, the Hacienda defense argued and cited state law to support that gambling debts weren’t collectible in Nevada courts and, therefore, the casino wasn’t liable for the $5,000. (It was true that individuals or companies owed, whether a casino or a player, couldn’t use the legal system to recoup such monies.)

In response, the plaintiff’s representation conversely purported that the $5,000 didn’t constitute a gambling debt. This was because what Gibson had participated in hadn’t been a game of chance but, rather, a game of skill. A golf professional testified on Gibson’s behalf that yes, luck was involved in making a hole-in-one, but “a skilled player will get (the ball) in the area where luck will take over more often than an unskilled player [will]” (Nevada State Journal, Feb. 2, 1961).

District Judge A.S. Henderson ruled the Hacienda had to pay Gibson. He determined the hole-in-one contest was in fact a game of skill and as such, the money owed to Gibson wasn’t gambling related.

The casino appealed that verdict, and the Nevada Supreme Court heard the case three years later, in February 1961. That body affirmed the lower court’s ruling and ordered the Hacienda to pay Gibson the $5,000 plus interest and court costs.

Change Of Tune

When the Associated Press reported the outcome of the appeal, the Hacienda’s general manager gave its newsperson a different reason for having not paid Gibson, that his company couldn’t verify the contestant landed an ace.

“The hole in one was made under odd circumstances,” said Norman Yoshpa. “It wasn’t witnessed by an authorized person” (Arizona Republic, Feb. 5, 1961).

Yospha explained that a hotel gift shop employee was supposed to have watched Gibson try for the win, but she got called to the phone just as he was about to swing. She told him to wait then left for the building. Yet when she returned to the green, he claimed he’d made the shot.

What had really happened? Had Gibson made the hole-in-one or had he fabricated that he had? Or had the Hacienda planned all along to not pay any winners? Or had extenuating circumstances in Gibson’s case, as suggested by Yoshpa, been the true reason for the company withholding the five grand? What do you think?

Sources