Gambling disputes ending in someone’s death typically involved men, were over alleged cheating and happened at saloons or other enterprises offering games of chance. However, the circumstances behind the 1936 case of Paul F. Rohl, 33, in Los Angeles, California differed.

Death Comes To Light

Police officers responded to a call about a shooting, from the Rohl home late Saturday morning, Feb. 15, 1936. They found the man of the house, a service station attendant, lying on the living room floor, dead. On a cursory look at his body, they noticed a gunshot in the area of his heart and a bullet lodged in his right armpit.

Shoe Money Gone

Paul’s wife, Ruth T. Rohl, 31, told police detectives her husband had shot himself accidentally. He’d pointed the revolver at her, she’d pushed his arm to prevent him from firing at her and the gun went off, she said, hitting Paul in the arm. From that impact, he twisted, causing a second discharge, that one into his chest.

The events had begun the night before, Ruth said. When Paul had gone out with $140 in cash (about $2,700 today), the total amount of his paycheck, she’d hired a private investigator to trail him.

Later, that man had reported to Ruth he’d followed Paul to a gambling house and had witnessed him lose all but $2 playing craps.

The next morning, Ruth had confronted her husband about what he’d done and, admittedly, had berated him for frivolously spending money desperately needed for shoes for their 11-year-old son Paul, Jr. The couple had argued, and he’d slapped her. He’d demanded she leave him alone, having said he’d just wanted to go to work.

He’d left the room, and she’d yelled after him to somehow get money for shoes. He’d returned, she went on, in one hand holding a gun hidden by an overcoat and in the other, his rain boots. He’d pointed the weapon at her.

Ruth Rohl

State Attacks Wife’s Account

Eventually, Ruth was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, or premeditated killing with malicious forethought.

At Ruth’s several-day preliminary hearing that began on Friday, Feb. 28, the deputy district attorney sought to prove the shooting of Paul couldn’t have, and thus hadn’t, happened as Ruth had described. Thus, she’d murdered Paul; he hadn’t killed himself unintentionally.

A handful of witnesses testified, among them the doctor who’d performed an autopsy on Paul’s corpse. He said one bullet had penetrated Paul’s heart. The other had entered and exited his right elbow then had traversed upward through the deceased’s chest, finally stopping in his armpit. The state disputed Ruth’s contention the first bullet hit Paul’s arm.

A ballistics expert said that if the shooting had occurred as Ruth had detailed, Paul’s clothes would’ve had powder burns on them, but they didn’t.

In a move rarely seen in this type of proceeding, the accused took the stand. Ruth again relayed what led to Paul’s death and insisted the shooting was accidental not purposeful.

Ultimately, the judge set bail at $5,000 ($95,000 today) and bound Ruth over for trial. He did, however, reduce the murder charge against her to manslaughter. This, in California, is defined as the killing of another person during a sudden quarrel or in the heat of passion.

Suspicious Circumstances

On April 9, the opposing attorneys empaneled a jury. Then the state unfolded its case, mostly like it had during the preliminary hearing, but added witnesses.

One of the detectives investigating the case testified he’d seen and had photographed Paul’s rain boots some distance from his body, neatly standing upright, side by side. They appeared as if they’d been placed there not flung from Paul’s hand when the bullets impacted him.

The prosecutor questioned Ruth’s mother, Alice E. Gunn, about her having cleaned Ruth’s living room and having taken home and washed the robe her daughter had been wearing during the shooting. Gunn admitted she’d done so with the rest of the Rohls’ dirty laundry, including the robe. She’d claimed the latter hadn’t had any blood stains or powder burns on it before she’d cleaned it.

Opposite Depictions

The defense strategy, in part, was to show Paul had been angry and abusive and Ruth, the target of his rage and, therefore, a victim. Also, her attorneys highlighted that each time Ruth had been questioned about the crime, she’d answered consistently.

Ruth’s long-time best friend testified that Paul had had a violent, uncontrollable temper to which Ruth had been subjected during the past 16 years. During his tantrums, the friend said, he’d yell and curse at his wife and throw things. Fourteen other female friends of the defendant spoke to her stellar character and reputation.

When Ruth took the stand, she said she and Paul had argued many times in the past about his gambling. She reiterated the story of the shooting as she originally had told it to detectives. 

Innocent Or Guilty?

After 13 days, the case went to the jury on Wednesday, April 29. After deliberating two hours, the jurors returned a verdict of not guilty.

Upon hearing of her freedom, Ruth sobbed and told her mom, “Now I can go home and take care of my son” (Illustrated Daily News, April 30, 1936).

Alice Gunn, left; Ruth Rohl

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What do you think? Was the shooting of Paul accidental or intentional? And should Ruth have gotten acquitted or convicted?

Sources

1932-Today

Though local, state and federal authorities were working to eradicate all gambling ships moored off of the Pacific Coast, the S.S. Monte Carlo met its demise at the hands of an unexpected interloper, Mother Nature.

On A Stormy Night

On New Year’s Eve in 1936, the waterborne casino, closed for the winter, offshore of San Diego, California. Only two caretakers, John Miller and John Gillespie, remained aboard.

“Southern California’s weather turned bad,” described Ernest Marquez, author of Noir Afloat. “Snow fell in the mountains, unrelenting rains turned hillsides into mudslides, gale-force winds toppled trees, and small craft warnings went up all along the entire Southland coast. Around the big Monte Carlo the sea churned and heaved. Waves 12 feet high pounded her hull. Around 3:30 a.m. … the Monte Carlo’s anchor chains, stressed to the breaking point by the power of the storm, snapped. She began to drift helplessly.”

The gambling vessel, her hull split in two, came to rest in shallow water close to the shore, about 200 to 300 yards from the beach, south of the Hotel del Coronado.

“With its first impact against the beach, the ship’s wooden superstructure which had housed the dining and gambling rooms began to crumble, and the high waves which swept over her soon began washing the timbers and furnishings up on the beach,” reported the Coronado Journal (Jan. 7, 1937). “The entire forward part of the superstructure was pounded to pieces by the waves, littering the beach with lumber, chairs, tables, roulette wheels and miscellaneous furniture.”

The shipwreck immediately drew hordes of people, who began taking items from the scene. Police arrived, confiscated the slot machines, crap tables and other gambling equipment and prevented any further scavenging. Removing “goods from any stranded vessel, or any goods cast by the sea upon the land” was illegal per then Section 545 of California’s Penal Code, a misdemeanor, punishable by an up to $500 (about $9,100 today) fine or six months’ jail time.

“The ship appeared to burrow its prow deeper in the sand with each pounding wave, and it was evident that it would be impossible to float her,” noted the Coronado Journal.

Her Storied Past

The Monte Carlo began as the Old North State during construction as an oil tanker in North Carolina in 1921. Unlike most other similar ships, her hull was reinforced concrete, part of a U.S. federal program to build such vessels out of materials other than steel. Old North State spanned 300 feet in length and 44 feet in width. Once put into service with the U.S. Quartermaster Corps, she became Tanker No. 1.

In 1923, the San Francisco-based Associated Oil Company bought her, renamed her McKittrick and put her into service.

Nine years later, two men, Ed V. Turner and Marvin “Doc” Schouweiler, acquired and converted her into a gambling ship. This involved, in part, adding a newly constructed wooden structure to house gambling and dining and filling the ship with cement to minimize the impact of movement. After the owners towed and anchored her three miles out to sea from Long Beach to be in federal waters, they debuted the S.S. Monte Carlo as “the world’s greatest pleasure ship,” via a grand opening on May 7, 1932.

The casino featured craps, blackjack, roulette, chuck-a-luck, Chinese lottery, poker and slot machines as well as wagering on boxing matches and horse and dog races.

“Dice were either weighted or edged to increase the house odds, and were etched with the name of the ship,” wrote Joe Ditler (March 10, 2014).

During the offshore gambling era, between 1927 and 1939, vessels offering this activity and located off of the California coast included the Johanna Smith, Monfalcone, Rose Isle, Tango and Lux.

After about four years of various city and state law enforcement agencies trying to shutter the engine-less Monte Carlo for good, via raids, arrests and other efforts, the co-owners moved the asset to offshore San Diego in 1936.

After The Wreck

It’s unclear who was responsible for the floating casino when nature’s forces destroyed it, whether or not Turner and Schouweiler had sold it in the interim. No one came forward to claim it, suggesting Mob involvement.

“While the entire operation is traced to gangster, bootlegger and gambler Tony Cornero, the presence of Al Capone in Coronado at that time raises speculation that he either had a stake in the gambling ships, or wanted to,” Ditler wrote.

The City of Coronado, which lacked jurisdiction, attempted to get the Monte Carlo’s remains, deemed hazardous and unsightly, removed. Already a man had died, drowning while swimming out to the wreckage on the afternoon the craft had gone aground. (Over the ensuing years, several more would die similarly.)

The U.S. government refused to remove the Monte Carlo’s vestiges because they weren’t a “menace to general navigation,” the Coronado Journal (Feb. 4, 1937) reported.

Instead, “she slowly sank into the sand and was eventually buried,” Marquez wrote.

But she wasn’t entombed for good. Since and still today, when the conditions are right — super low tide after a winter El Niño storm — a weather-thrashed, dilapidated Monte Carlo emerges from her sandy grave. It’s as if she’s imploring us to not forget her and what she represents: a unique, controversial, decade-long trend and, thus, period, in U.S. gambling history, that of vast, bustling floating casino enterprises in the Pacific Ocean.

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Have you seen what’s left of the S.S. Monte Carlo? We’d love to hear about it.

Sources

The Friars Club in Beverly Hills had been a favorite haunt of Hollywood celebrities and the area’s wealthy since 1946, but something underhanded began happening there in the 1960s, unbeknownst to most of its 670 members.

Friendly Wagering

Card playing for money was a regular activity at the Southern California hangout. Games included poker, bridge, panguingue and klabberjass.* Gin rummy was the most popular and usually played for $0.02 or $0.03 cents a point, resulting in wins/losses of about $300 to $400 ($2,500 to $3,200 today).

The third floor of the $750,000 ($10 million today) club, at 9900 Santa Monica Blvd. was dedicated primarily to that activity. Stark with bright lights and hard surfaces, the expanse included a large card room for gin rummy and two smaller private spaces for poker.

“Inside it looks not unlike a Brinks counting house,” described the Los Angeles Times (Sept. 9, 1967).

To access the gambling amenities, visitors entered a plain, mirrored door, at which a guard stood to ensure only members and their guests went through.

In contrast, the second floor showcased high ceilings, muted lighting, warm-hued carpeting, oak paneling and inviting colors: burnt gold, maroon and mauve.  A small bar and a large dining room with a long elaborate buffet comprised the main areas. (The first floor contained a parking area.)

To be a Friars Club member, people had to donate a large sum of money, around $1,500 (about $13,000 today), to charity and subsequently pay $40 (about $350 today) a month in dues.

Gin rummy hand

Chicanery Comes To Light

In July 1967, five federal agents inspected the A listers’ hotspot for four hours. This led to a roughly six-month federal grand jury investigation, for which 75 people were subpoenaed to testify. Some flat out refused, some pleaded the Fifth.

The inquiry uncovered a surreptitious card cheating scheme. Players’ cards were spied on through holes cut in the ceiling, directly over the gambling tables, and covered with fake air vents. Based on everyone’s cards, the observer in the attic, relayed to his partner in the game what moves to make.

This was done through an electronic device, worn by the person at the table, which emitted silent taps. The sender and receiver used their own system of coded signals. For instance, when the player wanted to know whether or not to put down his cards, he placed his empty palm flat on the table. A single tap by his accomplice meant don’t knock, and no tap was a green light.

The perpetrators of the cheat had bilked Friars members this way for five years, between 1962 and 1967, the government alleged.

“Millionaires and celebrities, proud of their ability at gin rummy, [individually] lost up to $100,000 [$800,000 today] in games against opponents who knew what cards they were holding. Few even guessed they were being cheated,” reported the Los Angeles Times (Sept. 9, 1967).

Among the victims were Tony Martin, singer; Harry Karl, shoe magnate and Debbie Reynolds’ husband; Zeppo Marx, comedian and actor; Phil Silvers, comedic actor; and Theodore “Ted” Briskin, former Chicago camera manufacturer and, previously, Betty Hutton’s husband. The government claimed that in less than one year, Friars Club members and guests’ losses due to cheating totaled $400,000 ($3.3 million today).

Quartet To Be Tried

Ultimately, the federal government charged five men with various infractions related to conspiring to swindle people, including interstate transportation to aid racketeering, interstate transportation of funds obtained by fraud and under-reporting income, and totaling 49 counts among them. The alleged criminals were:

• Maurice “Maury” H. Friedman, 62, developer of the Frontier hotel-casino in Las Vegas
• Warner T. Richardson, 62, Frontier casino manager
• Johnny Rosselli, 62, Los Angeles-based Chicago Mobster
• Manuel “Ricky” Jacobs, 48, Beverly Hills professional gambler, promoter of legalized panguingue and owner of a Santa Monica card club
• Benjamin J. Teitelbaum, 53, wealthy art collector and co-owner of a studio equipment manufacturing company

All but Richardson were Friars Club members.

Genesis Of The Cheating

Friedman concocted the scheme with Richardson and hired William Douglas (unindicted ), an electronics expert, to modify the ceiling and install the tapper. At some point, Friedman hired George Emerson Seach (the key witness in the trial) to install and maintain better equipment because the initial system was problematic. When Seach went to prison for an unrelated offense, Friedman replaced him with Miami-based electronics engineer, Edwin Gebhard (refused to testify before the grand jury).

Friedman invited Al Mathes, famed restaurateur (granted immunity for his testimony), and Rosselli, to join the swindle. Mathes did the same with Teitelbaum.

“As more conspirators were brought into the scheme, the prosecutor said, there was ‘dissatisfaction over the division of the proceeds,'” reported the Los Angeles Times in its trial coverage (July 26, 1968).

Jacobs also cheated card players at the Friars Club but using a different method. During play, he and his accomplice conveyed to each other in conversation, using a version of alphabet code, what cards they needed.

After the five co-conspirators were indicted, Friedman gave Seach $25,000 ($186,000 today) and offered another $25,000 so he’d lie about Friedman’s involvement in the Friars Club scandal. Richardson offered Seach $5,000 to say Richardson hadn’t had anything to do with the scam. Teitelbaum threatened Seach, telling him, “He who digs a hole for others falls in himself.” These actions came out in the trial.

“The defendants have approached witnesses in an attempt to have them withhold evidence,” one of the prosecuting assistant U.S. attorneys said in his opening statement (Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1968).

The Verdict Is In

During the trial, which commenced June 12, 1968, Friedman admitted that he’d rigged games and cheated at the Friars Club but claimed he hadn’t done it past 1962, the time when the five-year statute of limitations no longer applied. He said his motive hadn’t been money. Rather, it had been to get back at Briskin, an excellent gin rummy player who regularly beat Friedman at it. As for having tried to pay off Seach, Friedman claimed Seach had shaken him down for the money.

Finally, after 68 witnesses and 200-plus exhibits, the nearly six month-long trial neared its end in January 1969. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for 22 hours. They found all five defendants guilty. Subsequently, though, Richardson was acquitted.

Judge William P. Gray meted out these sentences, listed from most to least severe:

Friedman: 6 year prison term and $100,000 fine (months later, he’d get three more years for bribery in the Friars Club case)
Rosselli: 5 year prison term and $55,000 fine
Jacobs: 4 year prison term and $5,000 fine
Teitelbaum: 4 year prison term and $75,000 fine

Before the court, Gray told Friedman his “cynical cheating of people was cold and calculated.” He added, “Even wealthy people are entitled to the protection of the laws” (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 4, 1969).

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* Klabberjass, pronounced “klobber-yoss” and thus often simply called klob, is a Hungarian, combination poker and gin rummy card game.

Photo from pond5.com: Gin Rummy Hand

Sources

The tri-level Rose Isle, originally the S.S. Rose City passenger ship

1932

“There are no dull moments on the Rose Isle,” the invitation to prospective customers for dinner and dancing on the Southern California gambling ship read. Apparently, the excitement also included murder.

The Crime And The Ship

Alerted to trouble by the ship’s bulldogs Toots and Boots at around 2 a.m. on a Tuesday, a deck hand discovered craps dealer Charles M. Bozeman, 32, dead on a cabin floor, having been shot twice, below the heart and in the arm. Also in the cabin of steward A.C. “Duke” Pohl were café bus boy, Virgil Roach, 32, and casino floorman, James Lee O’Keefe, alive and drunk. An automatic revolver lay near the body (later it was discovered it’d been stolen the previous December in a robbery), and two bullets were lodged in the wall. Bozeman, Roach, O’Keefe and Pohl all were racketeers from East St. Louis, Illinois.

The Rose Isle was one of numerous boats that offered gambling offshore the West Coast during the 1930s. To skirt the state law that prohibited most forms of gambling, these vessels had to be anchored in federal waters, which were at least three miles out from the shoreline. This particular ship sat on “gambler’s row” off of Long Beach, between the Johanna Smith and the Monte Carlo.

Rose Isle’s owners* were believed to be East St. Louis gangsters — Erastus “Raz” E. Pendleton, D.P. Bozeman (the victim’s brother), Frankie Waller and William “Billy” F. Gleason — along with Chicago Mobster Johnny Rosselli, Los Angeles Mobster Jack Dragna and Los Angeles Spring Street Gang affiliates, Tommy Jacobs and Luther “Tutor” B. Scherer.

FBI agents investing the murder learned that earlier that day, July 19, 1932, Bozeman and O’Keefe had gone fishing together and after returning, had done some drinking with Roach in the cabin.

Roach fingered O’Keefe as the shooter and said the murder resulted from a quarrel over a married woman. However, both of these claims would come into question at O’Keefe’s trial in December 1932.  O’Keefe was booked into the Long Beach Jail and charged with Bozeman’s murder. Roach was held in the Los Angeles County Jail as a material witness.

Subsequent Mysterious Crimes

Later that Tuesday, in the evening, another East St. Louisan, John Miley, 36, also was shot to death while fleeing from a robbery he and his underlings had committed at the Lexington Pharmacy in Long Beach. For the theft of about $125 (about $2,300 today), police arrested and charged four suspects: Ed Allen aka Al Reed, 25; John Teeter, 33; Verner Hansen, 20; and Joe Aycoy, 26.

Allen revealed that he, Miley the leader and the others had held up 40 or more drugstores and gas stations over the preceding several months. He said Bozeman fenced the stolen goods for Miley’s group and that Bozeman had $15,000 worth of diamonds (about $281,000 today) in his possession on the day he was murdered. Allen also asserted that Miley was killed by one of his own, “a red-haired East St. Louis gangster” after they’d argued all that day over division of the loot they’d plundered and that the same person murdered Bozeman. The motive, according to Allen, was to gain control over the group of thieves.

About 2.5 days later, the Johanna Smith was set on fire around 6 p.m., and after three hours ablaze, only a charred hull remained. The floating casino was owned by men associated with the Los Angeles Spring Street Gang — Clarence Blazier, his brother Ed Blazier, Herbert C. Sousa, Marvin “Doc” Schouweiler, Ed V. Turner — along with front Albert Howard. Prosecutors at O’Keefe’s trial named the owners as Dan McGIynn of East St. Louis, Kirk Harrington of St. Louis and A.M. Gleason of Long Beach.

“A ‘gambling war’ broke out in the ranks of those controlling and employed on the vessels, where merrymakers from the mainland nightly court the favors of Lady Luck at craps, roulette, blackjack, chuck-a-luck and other games of chance,” the Los Angeles Times quoted Assistant U.S. Attorney Milo Rowell as saying (July 24, 1932).

James L. O’Keefe

Justice Is Done … Or Is It?

O’Keefe’s trial kicked off on Dec. 5. The woman over whom O’Keefe and Bozeman allegedly had argued testified. Edna Frances Smith Wilson said she frequented Rose Isle and knew both men but didn’t believe they’d fought over her.

Another witness testified that shortly after the shooting, Roach had thrown a small lockbox inside the cabin overboard.

When Roach was on the stand, he said O’Keefe and Bozeman had begun arguing in the dining room and then all three had gone to the cabin and had begun drinking from the 5-gallon jug of gin in the room. The dispute, which centered on O’Keefe allegedly having made a female friend of Bozeman leave the ship, had continued. Eventually, O’Keefe had pulled out the gun and had shot Bozeman. Roach said he’d yelled that O’Keefe had shot Bozeman, after which O’Keefe had tried to choke Roach.

Defense attorney John S. Cooper created reasonable doubt by suggesting that Roach could’ve been the killer. Numerous witnesses testified that he’d been drunk and obnoxious from Monday afternoon to the discovery of Bozeman’s body. Roach himself admitted to having consumed at least four drinks.

“Didn’t you shoot and kill Charles Bozeman?” Cooper asked Roach.

“I did not,” Roach answered. “It was James O’Keefe, not I, who shot him.”

Next, O’Keefe testified. He admitted to having been drinking but denied having had words with Bozeman. He claimed that he’d been asleep when Bozeman had been shot, had awoken to the sounds of the shots and had grabbed ahold of Roach who’d shoved him off. He said he hadn’t seen a weapon in Roach’s hand and didn’t know who killed Bozeman. He emphatically denied shooting Bozeman, who he said was his friend.

The ship’s chef testified that after the shooting, Roach had told him O’Keefe had fired the gun and also had expressed concern that his own fingerprints might be on it from his struggle with O’Keefe after Bozeman’s murder.

The jurors found O’Keefe guilty of manslaughter. After, Judge Frank H. Norcross sentenced him to five years’ probation because “the court is not convinced as the court would like to be that the defendant is the one who fired the shot,” he said (Reno Evening Gazette, Dec. 17, 1932). O’Keefe left the courtroom a free man.

Sources

From left to right, Mert, Lou and Al Wertheimer

1907-1958

Wertheimer was their name. Three of these four Michigan-born brothers became full-fledged, successful gambling operators in the first half of the 1900s, their reach spanning five states: Michigan, Ohio, Florida, California and Nevada.

“As gamblers, Al, Mert and Lou became almost as well-known Detroiters as the automobile pioneers. However, the only thing the Wertheimers built was their reputation as being fabulous spenders and operators of plus gambling establishments here and in other cities,” wrote Ken McCormick in the Detroit Free Press (June 9, 1953).

The brothers, from eldest to youngest, and their birthdates were:

Myrton “Mert”                    June 12, 1884
Louis “Lou”                        September 19, 1887
Alfred “Al” John                January 30, 1889
Lionel Abraham                 May 30, 1890 (he wasn’t involved in gambling)

Today, Mert’s 136th birthday, we take a chronological look at most (20) of the threesome’s gambling enterprises over five decades.

1900-1910s

The Wertheimers began their careers with offering illegal gambling in Cheboygan, their hometown, using billiards/pool halls as their front.

In 1907, Al and Lou opened and operated the New Cheboygan Billiard & Pool Hall, renaming it the Model Billiard & Bowling Parlor a year later. After a 1911 fire there, Al moved to Detroit; Mert went, too, in 1915. Lou stayed put until 1925.

1920s

Mert and Al spent this decade plying their unlawful trade at various venues, mostly in Detroit. Later in the decade, though, Lou and Al opened a club in Cleveland, Ohio. Because police raids of their unlawful businesses were frequent, the gamblers simply packed up and opened elsewhere.

Grand River Athletic Club, Detroit, Mich. Mert and Al opened this bowling, billiards/pool and gambling club in 1922.

Monte Carlo, Detroit, Mich. Mert ran this club of his from 1922 to 1927.

Colonial Billiard Parlor, Detroit, Mich. Mert and his friend, Raymond Reuben “Ruby” Mathis, opened the Colonial in 1923.

Park Avenue Health Club, Detroit, Mich. One of Al’s gambling enterprises, run out of the Charlevoix Hotel starting in 1923.

Shawnee Club, Cleveland, Ohio. Al and Lou launched the Shawnee in 1925 with the county sheriff’s blessing despite gambling being illegal in the state. A public official closed the club in 1931.

Aniwa Club, Detroit, Mich. Al’s project starting in 1929, this was the Wertheimers’ first high-class nightclub, offering fine dining, dancing and entertainment. After numerous raids for alcohol and gambling, both illegal, he changed the club to members only.

Chesterfield Club, Detroit, Mich. Mert partnered and co-ran the club with Detroit gamblers Lincoln Fitzgerald and Danny Sullivan. The trio operated as the Chesterfield Syndicate with Mert in charge and Fitzgerald second in command. Consequently, that trio would be convicted in 1946 of illegal gambling there, in Macomb County.

The syndicate operated with the permission of the Purple Gang, which controlled the Chesterfield and other gambling operations. Another set of brothers, the Bernsteins — Abraham/”Abe,” Joseph/”Joe”, Raymond and Isadore/”Izzy” — led this violent group, also involved in bootlegging, murder, extortion, armed robbery and kidnapping.

Colonial Billiard Parlor

Aniwa Club

1930s

During this decade, Mert moved to South Florida, and Al and Lou relocated to Southern California. Then, casino gambling in Florida was illegal as were banking* and percentage** games in California.

Beach and Tennis Club, Miami, Fla. For the upper class, Mert opened this place in 1931 in The Shadows mansion formerly of Carl G. Fisher. It offered dining, dancing, illegal gambling and illegal alcohol, no tennis.

Clover Club, West Hollywood, Calif. Al and Lou’s first gaming establishment in California, they ran it from 1933 to 1936.

Dunes, Cathedral City, Calif. Al and Lou opened it in 1936 on 20 acres just outside Palm Springs. Al closed it in 1941.

Colonial House, Palm Springs, Calif. Al aimed to capture the elite as customers with its 1937 debut. “This one masqueraded as a ‘private hotel,’ but just about everyone in town knew there was a secret staircase hidden behind a cupboard in the pantry that led to an underground casino, bar and bawdy house,” Bob Schulman wrote in the HuffPost (May 15, 2013).

Royal Palm Club, Miami, Fla. Miami city councilman Arthur Childers owned the club, and Mert operated its gambling starting in 1937.

Kaufman’s Plantation, Hallandale Beach, Fla. Mobsters Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo, Julian “Potatoes” Kaufman and Meyer Lansky owned the casino, which Mert helped run beginning in 1939.

Beach and Tennis Club

Dunes

Royal Palm Hotel

1940s

This decade took Mert and Lou to Reno, Nevada, where gambling had been legal since 1931, while Al remained in California.

Bonanza Club, Reno, Nev. Lou bought into the business in 1944 and ran it until the Mapes’ 1947 debut.

Colonial Inn, Hallandale Beach, Fla. Mert was involved with this Lansky-owned property only for the 1945 winter season.

Robbin & Robbin / Nevada Club, Reno, Nev. Around 1945, Mert, Fitzgerald, Sullivan and Mathis wormed their way into and took over Robbin & Robbin, renaming it the Nevada Club afterward.

Mapes, Reno, Nev. Lou and partners, Bernard “Bernie/Mooney” Einstoss, Frank Grannis and Leo Kind, leased and ran this hotel’s casino starting in 1947.

Mapes and Riverside hotels

1950s

This decade marked the end of the Wertheimer brothers’ gambling involvement and their lives.

Riverside, Reno, Nev. Mert took over the lease and operation of this hotel’s gambling concession in 1950. In 1951, Lou joined Mert at the Riverside and worked alongside him for a few years.

Al passed away in 1953 at age 64.

In 1955, Mert, Mathis and others bought the entire Riverside property from George Wingfield. In 1958, Lou died at 70 then Mert followed two months later at 74.

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*Banking games = those in which bets are placed against a house, bank or dealer

**Percentage games = banking games with relatively disproportionate odds

Sources

Bones Remmer

An unpleasant, self-described “big gun,” Elmer “Bones” F. Remmer was “once one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s flashiest and most successful gambling czars,” having owned numerous clubs in which he offered illegal games of chance, noted the Oakland Tribune (June 12, 1963). Before solely working in Northern California, Remmer worked in Northern Nevada for the Wingfield syndicate, the local Mobsters who then controlled gambling there.

He likely is most associated with his Menlo Club in San Francisco, which he operated during the 1940s, and the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe in Crystal Bay, Nevada, which he ran in the 1930s in association with the Wingfield Syndicate. He also owned, during the 1940s, the 21 Club in El Cerrito, the Oaks Club in Emeryville, and the 110 Eddy and B&R Smokeshop in San Francisco — all in California.

Here are 10 true tidbits about Remmer:

1) He was shafted by “It Girl,” actress Clara Bow in September 1930, when she stopped payment on three checks totaling $13,900 (about $198,000 today), which were meant to cover the gambling debt she’d racked up at the Cal-Neva Lodge. (This was even after he’d gifted her with a bottle of whiskey when she’d arrived at the property.)

2) His wife divorced him the following month on grounds of physical and other cruelty. She claimed she’d given Remmer $15,000 ($220,000 today) to buy into the Cal-Neva Lodge and quoted him as telling her, “I got so much publicity out of Clara Bow’s bum checks that now I know everyone and am hobnobbing with the elite. You’re no help to me now — just a detriment.” In the divorce settlement, Remmer had to pay her $15,000 ($270,000 today) in cash and $150 ($2,700 today) per month as alimony.

3) Remmer freely paid off state and local politicians to ignore his illegal gambling operations in the Golden State’s Bay Area. For one, he donated $170,000 ($1.9 million today) in campaign contributions to California Attorney General Frederick “Fred” N. Howser.

4) He was arrested and charged with intoxication, along with three others, following a drunken fight in the Encore bar-restaurant in West Hollywood one early morning in December 1950. The other brawlers were Edmund M. Scribner, a Bakersfield gambler who’d worked for Remmer before; Thomas J. Whalen, St. Louis gambler, and his companion, actress Vici Raaf.

5) While in police custody following the melee, he was served by federal agents with a subpoena, which he’d been dodging, to testify at the upcoming Kefauver Committee hearing. During the hearing in 1951, Remmer couldn’t be found, as he allegedly was waiting it out in Mexico, and never testified. One that threat was gone, he returned to Northern California.

6) Remmer went to trial twice, in 1948 and 1949, in San Francisco for operating illegal gambling houses and using business fronts to do so. Both cases ended in hung juries.

7) Jury tampering was alleged during Remmer’s first tax evasion trial in 1951-1952. An outsider, who claimed to know Remmer, approached and suggested to one of the jurors he make a deal with Remmer, insinuating Remmer would pay for a vote in his favor. The juror refused and notified the judge. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated but concluded nothing untoward had occurred. Ultimately, on appeal, the conviction of Remmer stood, and no charges against the reported interloper were pursued.

8) He was found guilty of federal tax evasion in 1952, but the appeals court ordered a retrial because of the alleged jury tampering. Tried again in 1958, he was found guilty a second time, and the higher court upheld the decision. He was sentenced to a $20,000 fine (about $185,000 today) and five years in prison. He served 2.5 of those, at the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island in San Pedro, California, getting paroled in 1961.

9) He had money problems later in life. Before prison, Remmer paid the requisite pieces of casino income to various mob bigwigs, including Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, New York mobster; Johnny Rosselli, member of the Chicago Outfit; and Jimmy Lanza, head of the San Francisco crime family. Remmer also freely gave money to various local and state politicians. After paying the Internal Revenue Service his tax arrears of $63,000 (about $530,000 today), finances were tight. After prison, he sold cars, until his death four years later, for his brother William Remmer, who co-owned a lot in Oakland, California.

10) Nicknamed “Bones” as a joke because of his fluctuating, 225- to 300-pound size, he is said to have struggled, all of his adult life at least, with an endocrine disorder. Remmer passed away after “undergoing treatment following surgery for a glandular ailment” at age 65 in 1963 (San Mateo Times, June 12, 1963).

Sources

Allen Smiley

Allen Smiley “was one of the most powerful gangsters in [California],” wrote author Gerald Horne in Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950. He was Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel’s partner and best friend and subsequently, Johnny Rosselli’s* right-hand man.

Somewhat in the shadow of these famed men and a private person, his story is less well known. So It Really Happened! unearthed these 10 interesting snippets about him:

1) Allen Smiley, né Aaron Smehoff and also known as Abraham Smickoff, dropped out of school in Canada at age 12 and three years later, entered the United States alone, through Detroit. Born to Orthodox Jewish parents in in Kiev, Ukraine in 1907, he and his family had immigrated to the Great White North when he was seven.

2) Smiley was involved in gambling in various ways in several states. With Siegel, he operated the Transamerica Wire Service, which provided race information from the California tracks, and he helped Siegel get the Flamingo hotel-casino built in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Smiley organized gambling junkets at various locales, including the Garden of Allah in West Hollywood, California; The Knickerbocker in New York, New York; the Argyle Hotel in San Antonio, Texas; the Colony Club in Gardena, California; and the Rex gambling ship, off of the Southern California coast.

He was the ambassador of gambling relations, essentially a recruiter of high-rollers, for the Beverly Country Club in New Orleans, La.

As a player, he loved betting on and watching horse racing. “The race was the one clandestine addiction he couldn’t conceal,” wrote his daughter Luellen Smiley in her memoir Cradle of Crime.

3) Throughout his life, Smiley racked up numerous arrests, for bookmaking, running a wire service, transporting gambling cheating equipment, assault, suspicion of murder, robbery, extortion, operating without a liquor license, contempt of court and other crimes.

4) After Siegel’s murder in 1947, Smiley needed legitimate employment, as he faced possible deportation, having been indicted for falsely writing on an arrest form he was an American citizen. He asked Mob accountant Meyer Lansky if he could get back his $30,000 ($319,000 today) investment in the Flamingo, and Lansky consented. Smiley then invested the money in Texas oil exploration.

5) In 1949, at the Little Chapel in Las Vegas, he married Lucille Casey, a John Robert Powers agency model and a dancer at the Frank Costello-owned Copacabana nightclub in New York City. (The two divorced in 1962.)

6) After being convicted of falsely claiming citizenship, Smiley served nine months of a one-year sentence, from February to November 1951, at the McNeil Island Corrections Center in Washington state. He was paroled early for good behavior.

7) While imprisoned, he testified, somewhat belligerently and in handcuffs, before the Kefauver Committee.

8) Smiley contracted hepatitis B during adulthood. He’d told a confidant that he’d gotten it after being injected with blood from donors suspected of having the virus, at McNeil Island as part of medical research that used prisoners as subjects.** (We couldn’t verify that he’d been one of these test subjects but confirmed that such an experiment was done at that very penitentiary. The purpose was to determine if hepatitis B was or was not a blood-borne disease.)

9) Despite the federal government’s threats to deport Smiley to Canada or the U.S.S.R. upon his release from McNeil Island, Smiley was allowed to stay stateside and eventually become a U.S. citizen, which he did in 1966.

10) He died from hepatitis-induced cirrhosis of the liver. Near his life’s end, he chose to stop the antiviral treatment for hepatitis that he’d been on, knowing that as a result, his liver disease would worsen and cause his demise. He passed away at age 74 or 75 on March 6, 1982.

———————————-

* Johnny Rosselli was a Chicago Outfit member charged with ensuring smooth operations in Hollywood and Las Vegas.

** In the experiment, a total of 60 healthy, supposedly volunteer, prisoners at McNeil Island and at the U.S. Penitentiary, Lewisburg were injected. As a result, 27 of them contracted the virus; two at McNeil died not long after.

Sources

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

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

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.