When police arrived at the alley behind the Carlton Bar in Reno just after midnight on May 16, 1946, they found an unconscious man lying on the ground, covered in blood. An American Legion ambulance rushed him to Washoe General Hospital, where a medical team worked to save his life. Their efforts unsuccessful, though, and the physician there pronounced Joseph Vaughn Spratt dead at 1:15 a.m.

Grave Injuries

Spratt, in his early 30s, a World War II veteran and pharmacy student in Denver, Colorado, was in the “Biggest Little City” with a handful of schoolmates to take the Nevada Board of Pharmacy exam. With the test behind them, the group went to the Carlton Bar that fateful night, for music, drinks and gambling before returning home. (The saloon offered 21, craps, roulette, poker and slots.)

All of the students but Spratt eventually left the bar. One of them, Roy Spencer, who exited out the back, was struck immediately after, in the dark alley.

One or more of the establishment’s personnel tossed Spratt out of the rear door into the same unlit area. Somehow, he wound up with a 5-inch-long skull fracture that caused a subdural hemorrhage. He also suffered bruising on the back and one side of his skull and three facial cuts, on his chin, above his eye and on his nose.

The events leading up to him dying on the pavement differed, depending on who relayed them.

Spratt

Someone Must Pay

The police arrested the Carlton Bar’s co-owner, Sam Delich, and its bartender, Guido “Gene” DiIullo. (The other two proprietors were Sam’s brother George Delich and Franz Gersich). Sam Delich and DiIullo were charged with voluntary manslaughter.

Their trials didn’t take place until November of that year. In the interim, the Carlton Bar owners sold their business for $20,000 (about $284,000 today) to Stan Hanson, in June.

Manslaughter V. Self-Defense

At the joint trial of DiIullo and Delich, the prosecution argued that the two were responsible for killing Spratt. They’d beaten him when evicting him from the bar, had tossed him out the back door and had left him for dead in the alley. One prosecution witness, Colonel William Steer, testified Spratt had been unconscious inside the Carlton bar after being struck several times by either DiIullo and/or Delich and, therefore, couldn’t have advanced toward DiIullo, a weapon in his hand, outside.

The defense contended that only DiIullo had hit Spratt, twice, and had done so in self-defense because Spratt had pulled a nail file or other sharp object on him when the duo had escorted him out of the bar. The defense also asserted that it’d been his head hitting the ground that had resulted in Spratt’s

demise. Nevada’s governor at the time Vail Pittman testified to the good reputation of Delich and DiIullo.

The jury acquitted Delich of manslaughter, but was hung, 10 to 1, regarding a verdict for DiIullo.

Dilullo As Defendant Again

In March of the next year, 1947, the district attorney’s office tried DiIullo a second time. He again took the stand and recalled his version of the events.

“The three-day trial was featured by conflicting testimony regarding how and when the fatal blow was struck,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (March 21, 1947).

After deliberating 11 hours, the jurors returned a not guilty verdict.

No one but Spratt paid, after all.

Time and time again, in these fatal historical incidents, the perpetrators were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense, and one has to wonder why. What do you think? Should DiIullo and/or Delich have gotten off like they did or not? Why?

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Sources

It opened in 1939 and for years was the world’s largest.

It was (and still is) in Argentina‘s Mar del Plata, the “smartest, most opulent, most ostentatious shore resort in South America,” as described by “Around the World” columnist Temple Manning in 1949 (The Courier-Express).

Its large, magnificent building showcased an eclectic architectural style.

It was owned and operated by the government.

Its nightly take was higher than at any other continental enterprise of its kind.

In the late 1950s, it could accommodate up to 20,000 people.

It was Casino Central.

Irene Kite

1937-1939

In 1937, an Alton, Illinois woman took on the local gambling-Mobsters and the political machine … with an axe.

Motivating Factors

In Irene Kite‘s county of Madison, gambling was illegal, yet law enforcement and local government allowed certain establishments offering games of chance to operate openly. Her husband Carl’s card club had been one of them until the powers that be, at the behest of the area’s crime syndicate, refused him permission to operate in April 1937 after 15 years in business. This left the Kites without an income.

The majority of approved gaming enterprises were ones run by Mobsters, and they sought to get all independently owned places closed down.

The Syndicate heads in Madison County were: Harry Murdock, Harry Price, Paul Delaney and Cliff Phayer.

“With the exception of a few cities in Madison County, the syndicate had its grip everywhere — Granite City and Wood River being the chief places where the syndicate was barred. Alton, Edwardsville, East Alton, Venice, Madison, Collinsville and some of the smaller places were dominated in their politics, as well as their slot machine business, by one or the other of the divisions of gamblers who were plundering the people of the county,” reported the Alton Evening Telegraph (Nov. 2, 1938).

The article highlighted that the Mobsters’ slots were rigged to rarely pay out and when they did, amounts were small.

Her Killing Spree

On a Saturday afternoon in late December of the same year, Kite contacted a local newspaperman and informed him what she planned to do that night and why.

Later, she went from gambling club to gambling club in Alton, once inside apologized for the disruption and slayed as many syndicate-owned slot machines as she could. Familiar with the devices’ inner workings, she disabled each one with two targeted blows.

Kite maimed 14 slots in 7 bars before police arrested her.

Irene Kite, with axe, in action.

She did it “because that’s the only way I can get at those who allow one man to operate a gambling resort and won’t let the next man,” and she’d intended to embarrass the slot owners, she’d told the reporter (Alton Evening Telegraph, Dec. 20, 1937).

Kite emphasized she’d axe the slots again and again if she thought she had to.

“I’ve got a lot of axes — about a dozen of them — and I’m not going to quit until every slot is out of the city,” she said (Nevada State Journal, Feb. 15, 1938).Kite also had informed the newspaperman that in Alton numerous syndicate-operated gambling places already should’ve been closed but hadn’t been because no officer would serve the warrants. She’d estimated that about 14 of these warrants, all legitimate and signed by a judge, were on file; the reporter looked into the matter and confirmed the total to be 17.

Success And Fame

After spending a few hours in jail that Saturday night, Kite was released. No charges were brought against her for her destructive rampage.

What it did get her was results. Alton’s Chief of Police Paul Smith ordered that all gambling in the city be stopped. And it was … at least for the time being.

“It is true that the slot machines are now in storage,” the Alton Evening Telegraph reported (Nov. 2, 1938), but the gambling syndicate hope, only until after election (on Nov. 8) when the prediction is made, if everything goes right, they will be out and in full operation again.”

Kite also garnered widespread fame. People and groups — the Alton Ministerial Association and the League of Women Voters, for example — admired and supported her. Eventually, the notoriety led to her and her story being featured, in March 1939, in Actual Detective Stories of Women in Crime, a hard-boiled pulp publication.

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Sources

At a time when wide-open gambling was legal in Nevada (as of 1931), the penalty for operating a game of chance without a license was 60 days in the county jail or a $120 fine.

Photo from freeimages.com: “Jail Door” by Robin Turner

The 1869 statute partially legalizing gambling in Nevada prohibited any such operations in first floor rooms.

An 1877 revision allowed gambling in back rooms of a ground level in certain small counties.

In 1905 and on, gamblers statewide could hold games in any room on any floor.

Photo from freeimages.com: “Number One” by Audrey Volodov

In Nevada, where casino operators can employ shills to play in their clubs, it was established that a licensee may not act as a shill, gambling in their own establishment. Their spouse can’t either unless playing with money other than the licensee’s personal funds.

Photo from freeimages.com: “We’ve Got a Winner” by Dimitri C.

McGill Club in later years

1928

A woman named Gladys Anderson sued the McGill Club in McGill, Nevada for $5,000. It was the amount she claimed her husband had lost there playing poker.

The district court, however, dismissed her case because it lacked a cause of action (a set of facts sufficient to justify a right to sue and receive compensation from another party).

Ernest J. Primm, casino mogul

1956-1959

A thief absconded with $2,000 (about $17,500 today) from the Club Primadonna casino in Reno, Nevada on the first Friday of May 1956.

The missing 10,000 dimes, 2,000 quarters and 1,000 half-dollars, the reserve fund for the club’s slot machines, were taken from a wooden cabinet in the basement. Only two employees had keys to that room.

One of them, Thomas Knaub, seven months later, sued the owner of that Reno, Nevada club, Ernest J. Primm, alleging he’d made false public statements that Knaub had been involved in the robbery. Knaub, no longer in his employ, claimed Primm’s alleged slander of him had prevented him from landing a job.

Therefore, he sought $75,000 in general damages, $25,000 in punitive damages and $2,135 for lost wages — a total of $120,000 ($834,000 today).

The jury trial began three years later in June 1959. The first witness called, Primm, denied ever accusing Knaub of participating in the theft or telling other casino owners Knaub had taken part in it.

“I have never been contacted by one single establishment about Mr. Knaub,” he said. “I have never contacted any establishment about him.” Primm said he didn’t know who took the money, “and I still don’t know” (Nevada State Journal, June 16, 1959).

He added, however, he knew Knaub gambled in the local casinos. “I know one thing. A man that goes around town gambling and puts I.O.U.’s in doesn’t deserve a job,” Primm added.

The former assistant office manager, Margaret Stanley, next testified that in Knaub’s job as a Primadonna club cashier, he counted the cash every morning, made bank deposits and co-signed payroll checks. She said once he’d found and pointed out a $1,000 error in the bank deposit.

When Knaub’s attorney was about to question Stanley about a conversation she’d overhead in the past between Primm and another employee, Marjorie Standlee, the defense objected on the grounds that such conversations are confidential. The judge agreed, and Stanley’s testimony—the crux of Knaub’s case, per his attorney — was cut short.

Two days later, the judge, A.J. Maestretti, dismissed the suit because the plaintiff had failed to present a sufficient case.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: by Greg Primm

Following abolishment of gambling in Nevada, a Los Angeles moving picture company purchased and shipped to California a carful of equipment outlawed in 1909, including roulette wheels, faro tables and chuck-a-luck games.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: “Boule-Kessel” by Pierre Poquet

Nevada legislators proposed a bill that would disallow any future installation of slot machines in grocery and drug stores, but it died in the Senate Taxation Committee.