1969

For a week in May, the leader of a group of U.S.-based gamblers rented the Villa Casino, which overlooked Hyde Park in West London, along with two craps tables, the latter for $2,500 (about $17,000 today) and 10 percent of the profits.

They offered a gambling trip to England for $960 ($6,500 today) for roundtrip air fare, a week’s hotel accommodations and $960 worth of chips. Such packages, or junkets, to that country had been popular. Travelers paid one amount for airfare, meals and lodging but individually covered all wagers beyond the allotted amount.

The gambling syndicate’s guests, 40 American high rollers, mostly from the Boston, Massachusetts area, flew into town by charter on Monday, May 12.

Suspicious Activity

During the many games of craps the vacationers played, the croupiers, at crucial points, swapped the dice for misspot ones, in this case dice with two sides bearing the same number of spots. One of these dice men was Clayton P. Gatterdam, a 48-year-old ski school proprietor from Fort Worth, Texas. Gatterdam* was a reputed crossroader, a hustler who traveled around, cheating others at gambling for money.

By using crooked dice at the Villa Casino, the operators fleeced the players out of about $26,400 ($181,000 today) over three days! 

Caught Bang To Rights

On Thursday at around 1 a.m., police burst into the pink, cottage-style building and arrested seven of the hosts. They were charged with involvement in the management and organization of unlawful gaming and conspiring to cheat and defraud. Gatterdam was charged also with possession of seven pairs of misspot dice. (Gambling was legal in England at the time, but cheating by those who ran it wasn’t.)

Undercover police agent and gambling expert, Detective Constable Brian Gillard, 26, had infiltrated the Villa Casino crowd and had watched the games for days before requesting the raid. It’s unknown how initially he’d become aware of the shady goings on.

Intended To Swindle

In a preliminary hearing the following Wednesday, the seven arrestees pleaded innocent. The magistrate agreed to bail of 15,000 pounds, or $36,000 ($247,000), apiece provided they give their passports to police and check in with them daily.

“The bail is the highest set in London for some time,” reported the Orlando Sentinel (May 16, 1969).

At their trial in mid-July at Old Bailey, officially called the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, all of the defendants pleaded guilty. They admitted to having conspired between April 1 and May 15 to obtain property belonging to others dishonestly through deception with dice in craps games. They also admitted to being involved in conducting games in such a way that the odds weren’t favorable to all players equally.

Gatterdam was sentenced to three months in prison. The six others were fined $4,800, $6,000 or $7,200 ($33,000, $41,000 or $49,000), for a total of $33,600 ($230,000). All were discharged on the condition they don’t cheat at gambling again in England in the subsequent two years.

—————————

* About 1.5 years earlier, in October 1967, Nevada Gaming Control Board agents caught Gatterdam using misspot dice in craps games while working as a stickman at the Incline Village Casino at Lake Tahoe.

Sources

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

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