1972

In the mail on Monday, April 24, each of 21 Las Vegas hotel-casinos received an identical, typewritten letter that demanded they pay a total of $2 million (about $12 million today) or get blown up, one by one, until the extortionist got the full amount. It was up to the Nevada resorts if, and how, they divvied up payment. The correspondence didn’t indicate a day, time or place for the drop.

The letters had been sent via Special Delivery, which was expedited service, from Austin, Texas. Fifteen of them were turned over to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The same 21 gaming properties received a second letter, on May 4, which contained payoff instructions. It noted the bombing would start in two weeks, on Saturday, May 13, with Circus Circus being getting hit first and the Thunderbird second.

A similar extortion case had occurred in 1970 in Northern Nevada, in which the perpetrators had instructed three casinos — the Sparks Nugget Motor Lodge in Sparks and Harolds Club and Harrah’s in Reno — to pay a total of $1 million (about $6 million today) or face multiple bombs exploding in their casinos.

Plot Foiled

In the Las Vegas case, about two weeks later, on Thursday, May 11, FBI agents arrested a suspect in a Santa Monica, California motel, on a federal warrant. He was Los Angeleno Nathan N. Marks, 28, a self-employed radio and sales promoter. On him at the time was an airline ticket to Paris, France.

The next day, Marks waived extradition to Nevada to face the charges. Instead, that would take place in San Bernardino County, California. Bail was set at $500,000 ($3 million today).

Spilled The Beans

Marks had recruited a partner, a Texas resident, to help him carry out the scheme, and that person had informed the FBI about it all. That led to federal agents listening in on a phone call between the two alleged conspirers.

During that conversation, Marks told the second man to “buy enough explosive to blow a ’50 by 50 by 50′-foot hole in the casino,” he said, referring to Circus Circus, because he wanted “‘to let the Thunderbird Hotel, which was next on the list, to know that he meant business’” (The Bakersfield Californian, May 12, 1972). Marks indicated the bombs would be dropped from the air, out of a private plane Marks would charter in Los Angeles.

Day Of Reckoning

In May 1973, a year after the criminal endeavor was set in motion, Marks appeared in court. Rather than plead guilty to the 21 counts of mailing a threatening letter against him, he was permitted to admit to just one, which he did.

The judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison, half of the maximum sentence.

Sources

1939

Las Vegas gambling houses and saloons were shut for three hours in observance of Good Friday, at the request of the local churches. It was the first time in the Nevada city’s history that such closures occurred for a day of religious significance.

Photo from freeimages.com: “Salvation” by abcdz2000

Tango game, Las Vegas, Nevada

1946

Some Las Vegas, Nevada casinos handed out women’s nylons as slot machine and tango game* prizes.

When the city’s board of commissioners found out, they banned it, threatening repeat offenders with losing their gambling license.

It wasn’t the hosiery the officials took offense to; it was the casinos offering merchandise to encourage the playing of traditional games of chance.

“We are endeavoring to maintain gaming on a high plane and feel bound to discourage and eliminate any practice which may impugn the dignity of our gaming establishments,” they said (Nevada State Journal, Oct. 12, 1946).

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* Tango is similar to bingo and keno

1968-1969

Can you imagine if Denny’s was in Nevada’s casino business? Well, it nearly happened. 

In 1968 Denny’s Restaurants, Inc. had reached an agreement to acquire Caesars Palace in Las Vegas but didn’t go through with it.

The next year, it negotiated to acquire the corporation that owned the Cal-Neva Lodge in Incline Village (at Lake Tahoe) and the Club Cal Neva in Reno, but that didn’t happen either.

1931-1965

Nevada’s early gambling industry was “wrapped in a segregated White Curtain” (Reno Gazette-Journal, Feb. 27, 2008).

Between 1931, when Nevada legalized gambling, and 1965, African Americans were banned from gambling or even being present in the Silver State’s Caucasian-owned casinos, for fear their presence would scare away white patrons. Typically, any black person who entered a casino would be asked to leave. The only exception was African American men in military uniform, who, in rare cases, were allowed to stay and play.

These hospitality businesses, however, employed blacks as restroom attendants, maids, shoe shiners, cooks, janitors and porters. Owners required African American entertainers who performed on the premises to come and go via the rear or side doors and use the service elevators to not be seen.

In contrast, Asian- and African American-owned casinos permitted blacks entry and gambling privileges. For instance, blacks made up about 90 percent of guests at Bill H. Fong’s New China Club, in Reno. The Asian-American-owned Cosmo Club and the black-owned Harlem Club were two other integrated gambling places in Northern Nevada.

In Sin City

In Las Vegas, prior to the debut in 1955 of the first desegregated hotel-casino, the Moulin Rouge, African Americans weren’t thrown out of gambling clubs on The Strip but were made “to feel unwelcome,” wrote Wallace Turner in Gamblers’ Money. The Moulin Rouge was owned by one black man — boxing champion Joe Louis  —and two white men — Alexander Bisno and Louis Rubin. Although wildly successful at first, the enterprise only lasted a few months, closing and going bankrupt later in the same year.

Frank Sinatra, using his influence, advanced the idea that African Americans should and must be afforded equal rights. He forced the issue when he refused to perform at Las Vegas places where a mixed audience wasn’t allowed and when, on behalf of the Rat Pack, he wouldn’t accept gigs at venues that prohibited Sammy Davis, Jr. from staying in its hotel.

Five years later, NAACP president, Dr. James McMillan, and Nevada’s first black dentist, Charles West, asked to meet with civic leaders and, if refused, threatened a march down the Las Vegas Strip in protest of racial discrimination.

Subsequently, Nevada Governor Grant Sawyer, city officials, local law enforcement and hotel owners convened at the Moulin Rouge’s coffee shop to discuss blacks’ exclusion from the Strip. Out of that tète-a-tète came a pact — the Moulin Rouge Agreement — to end segregation immediately, but only at hotel-casinos on the Strip.

Full Inclusion

It would be another five years before African Americans could gamble freely in any Nevada casino. That came with the 1965 passage of a revised state Civil Rights Act. The amended law expanded anti-discrimination to specifically encompass casinos and bars.

Sources

1961

1963

On the Monday after then President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Las Vegas casinos went dark for 17 hours, from 7 a.m. to midnight, in his honor. Along with the gaming rooms in all of the major downtown and Strip hotels, showrooms and bars closed, too.

Despite gambling being unavailable, many people flocked to the mecca anyway.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

1972-1977

A $25,000 ($146,000 today) offer for the murder of 27-year-old John “Johnny” W. Hicks had been circulated, it was rumored throughout Las Vegas in mid-1972.

The son of Marion B. Hicks, previous owner of the Thunderbird Hotel, and his wife Lillian, then proprietor of the Algiers Hotel next door, Johnny was working as an executive at the latter business.

Among the potential reasons someone wanted Hicks hit, two possibilities ranked high:

• His involvement in a botched coercion attempt that exposed a citywide cheating ring
• His suspected relationship with the wife of a Mob-associated, high-profile casino operator

Plan Gone Wrong

About two weeks before murmurings about the hit contract, on May 30, at 5 a.m., Hicks drove two men, supposedly friends or associates—Robert Lee Murphy and John Branch— to the Vegas neighborhood of Melvyn Myers, a casino executive. Branch stayed in the car while the two others went to Myers’ house and rang the doorbell. When Myers began opening the door, Murphy charged in and struck Myers on the head with a pistol, felling him.

Myers, who’d taken a gun with him to the door, fired several shots, four of which hit Murphy.

Hicks bolted back to the car, where he and Branch waited for Murphy, but he never exited the house. He was dead. When the two spotted a patrol car arriving on the scene, they absconded.

The police later picked up Hicks and Branch, who were charged with murder, attempted murder, burglary and conspiracy to commit burglary. Later, the first two counts would be dropped due to insufficient evidence.

Another Crime Illuminated

While in custody, Hicks supposedly told authorities about a large group of cheaters he was involved with which had bilked a handful of major gambling resorts in downtown and on The Strip of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Some sources said as much as $3 million had been siphoned off the gambling tables by the thieves and that the ring included as many as 150 casino employees,” the Nevada State Journal reported (June 12, 1972).

Phil Hannifin, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said the figure was more like $300,000 to $400,000 ($1.75 to 2.3 million today).

The cheating method required the use of a cheating device (police found one such contraption in Murphy’s home) and three people, two of which had to be insiders—a dealer and either a boxman or pit boss. As such, certain members of the cheating ring supposedly had pressured, sometimes physically, casino employees, particularly ones in debt with loan sharks, into participating.

“An unusual number of strongarmed incidents and assaults have occurred here in recent months. Many of the victims were casino or hotel workers,” noted the Nevada State Journal (June 12, 1972).

The trio had gone to Myers’ home “to keep him from talking” about the scheme he’d refused to be involved in, Hicks said. The powers behind the cheating ring had a contract on Hicks’ head because he knew too much about the operation (Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1972).

“Several persons mysteriously disappeared and a rash of fatal shootings erupted the week Murphy was killed,” reported the Nevada State Journal (June 12, 1972).

Hicks paid the $13,000 bond (about $76,000 today) and supposedly skipped town.

A Treacherous Affair

By late 1976, Hicks was back in Las Vegas and working as a floorman at the Horsehoe Club. He and Geri Rosenthal allegedly had reconnected and were seeing each other. Geri, though, at the time, was married to Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, who ran the Stardust casino for the Chicago Outfit. Hicks lived across the street from the Rosenthals, in a gated community that bordered the Las Vegas Country Club.

Tragedy Ensues

Hicks was shot just outside his residence on January 14. He succumbed to fatal head wounds within an hour’s time despite being rushed to Sunrise Hospital. He was 32 years old.

Was Hicks’ assassination intended to silence him for good about the cheating ring? Was it perhaps retaliation for exposing that operation 4.5 years earlier? Was it maybe to appease a jilted, jealous husband? Or was it motivated by something else entirely?

Sources

1919

Outside many of Reno’s gambling saloons were benches, on which club-goers, typically men, whether or not they’d been gambling, were welcome to sleep the night.

(At that time, some forms of gambling were legal in Nevada and the state’s Prohibition law had gone into effect on January 1 of that year.)

“Upon leaving in the morning he was given coffee and donuts, plus a silver dollar. If by chance he was stopped by a policeman, he could show that he had money thus was not collared as a vagrant,” wrote historian Raymond Sawyer, in Reno, Where the Gamblers Go!

Photo from freeimages.com: “Doughnut” by Erik Araujo

Illinois Club, circa 1900

1860s to 1960s

“The loose buckle in the Bible Belt” and “Las Vegas before Las Vegas had water” — these were Hot Springs, as described in the press (Hot Springs, 2013).

This Central Arkansas city boasted illegal, yet wide-open, gambling for about a century, from the late 1860s until the late 1960s, making it the only United States locale with such a history. That run was interrupted three times: around the start of the 20th century, immediately preceding the onset of World War I and between roughly 1946 and 1948.

They heyday of Hot Springs gambling was from 1927 to 1947, during which more than 10 major and many small casinos existed. In 1931, for example, this home of 16,000 people welcomed roughly 15 times as many visitors.

Hot Spot For Gambling, Fun

Hot Springs was hugely popular among the notorious, wealthy and famous. “Millions of people visited the spa city to gamble” despite its remoteness, wrote Robert Raines in Hot Springs.

Along with games of chance and horse races, the recreation destination offered opportunities to soak in hot baths (the city’s name came from its abundant geothermal springs); drink, even during Prohibition, particularly the revered, locally distilled moonshine; golf; watch Major League Baseball spring training games; and use brothel services.

The notorious visitors to this city included a who’s who list of mobsters, most of whom were involved in gambling, and other, enterprises elsewhere. Among them were Joe Adonis, Jimmy “Blue Eyes” Alo, Albert Anastasia, Al “Scarface” Capone (who had his armored 1928 Cadillac shipped there by rail from Chicago to use while vacationing), his brother Ralph Capone, Mickey Cohen, Frank Costello, Sam “Momo” Giancana, Meyer Lansky, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Owney “The Killer” Madden (who retired in Hot Springs), Bugs Moran, Frank Nitti and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, along with New York and Chicago policy kings Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, Ted Roe, and brothers Edward, George and McKissack Jones. For these men, Hot Springs was a sanctuary of sorts, a place to get away from the stressors and dangers of organized crime, be left alone by rivals and law enforcement and enjoy a true vacation.

The gangsters who flocked to Hot Springs to hide and, sometimes, plan their next crime, many of whom were on the FBI’s Most Wanted list at some point, included Bonnie and Clyde (Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow), Harvey Bailey, the Barker Gang members, John Dillinger, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Alvin Karpis, Frank “Jelly” Nash (who was actually arrested by federal agents in the White Front Club there) and George “Baby Face” Nelson.

The influx of mostly law-abiding visitors included Hollywood stars, celebrity athletes, business magnates and politicians. Some of them were: Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Rudolph Valentino, Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, Babe Ruth, Andrew Carnegie, F.W. Woolworth, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy. Big-name games of chance players, like Nick “The Greek” Dandalos, Amarillo Slim, Murph Harold, Lester “Benny” Binion and Titanic Thompson, also frequented Hot Springs. 

The Gambling Milieu

Primarily locals controlled the gambling, although a few ex-Arkansas mobsters owned interests in some of the enterprises over the years. William “W.S.” or “Bill” Jacobs from Memphis, Tennessee, who owned six clubs there, is recognized as the first gaming impresario of Hot Springs. After Jacobs died, gaming insiders asked New York mobster Frank Costello to take over, but he declined.  Instead, Jack McJunkins succeeded him, and later, H. Dane Harris assumed the role.

Once Owney “The Killer” Madden permanently moved to Hot Springs in 1935, he kept an eye on gambling and ran his own bookmaking/wire service there until his death in 1965. When Sam “Momo” Giancana inquired about buying a piece of the gambling action in the 1960s, he was turned down.

Over the decades, the major places to gamble and the years they opened (when known), included the:

Arkansas Club, Indiana Club, Illinois Club, Kentucky Club, Bridge Club, Arlington Hotel (1874), Southern Club (1893), Ohio Club (1903), Oaklawn Park Race Track (1905), Belvedere Club (1929) and Vapors (1960).

By 1964, only the Southern Club, Vapors and the Arlington Hotel remained as the large gambling spots, along with the race track.

Oaklawn Park Race Track

Despite gambling being illegal, the city charged such operations a tax, the amount depending on their size. When the city needed money, the gambling heads were expected to pay more, which they willingly did to keep running their establishments freely.

Gambling Gets Wiped Out … Mostly

The end of gambling in Hot Springs began with the election of Winthrop Rockefeller (R.), a grandson of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., as the Arkansas governor in 1967. While campaigning, he indicated he’d support a pro-gambling amendment should legislators pass one.

That they did when Rockefeller got into office, but he vetoed the bill. Later that year, he had all gambling eradicated in the city except for horse and dog racing.

For the next 40 years, the Oaklawn Park Race Track was the only legal gambling spot in Hot Springs. That changed in 2005, however, with passage of the state’s Local Option Horse Racing and Greyhound Racing Electronic Games of Skill Act, which allows race tracks to offer some electronic, casino-style games. (This has earned them the moniker “racinos.”) Excluding these racino offerings, gambling remains illegal in Arkansas.

Photo of Illinois Club, restored by Steve Sloan

Sources

1935

Avoiding darkness, they only emerged amid brightness, real or artificial. They congregated outside of every Reno, Nevada gambling club at the beginning of June, pestering the guests as they entered and exited. One night they even went so far as to invade the Palace Club casino.

They, Feltia annexa (Treitschske), or Feltia subterranea, or the granulated cutworm, infested the city by the millions!

Due to a short lifespan, they were expected to die (by natural causes, that is) within a week’s time.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: Adult Feltia annexa by Donald Hobern