Las Vegas Strip (in red) runs through Winchester, Paradise

1950-Today

When people are on the Las Vegas Strip, they’re really in Paradise — the town, that is.

In 1950, a rumor surfaced that the City of Las Vegas’ boundaries would be expanded to include the then multimillion-dollar luxury resort area on South Las Vegas Boulevard. Disliking the idea, the proprietors of the hotel-casinos there collectively strategized to get the area in which their properties sat deemed an unincorporated town. That status would prevent the city from annexing it without the owners’ unanimous approval.

Money was the primary reason the Strip businesses opposed incorporation into Vegas. Costs — gambling and liquor license fees and taxes, for instance — within the city were higher than outside, specifically a tax rate of $5 per hundred dollars’ valuation versus $3.48.

In December the Clark County commissioners approved designation of a one-mile wide and four-mile long stretch as the unincorporated town of Paradise, said to be named after the Pair-O-Dice, a club whose property eventually became the Last Frontier.

These men comprised the newly formed, required town board:

• Gus Greenbaum / Flamingo: manager and associate of Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (Greenbaum was Paradise’s board chairman)

• William J. Moore, Jr. / Last Frontier: developer, executive director and vice president

• Wilbur Clark / Desert Inn: front man for Cleveland mobster Moe Dalitz, the principal owner

• Marion Hicks / Thunderbird: architect and manager

• Beldon Katleman / El Rancho Vegas: owner

A major change for the properties in the new township was the lack of access to city services, including sewage disposal and fire protection services. Also, half of all gambling fees collected in Paradise had to be spent on public improvements within the town as opposed to throughout the county, as was the case before.

“What is good for the valley is good for the Strip. We hope this move will bring you better roads, better schools and better everything,” Greenbaum said at a town meeting.

In early 1951, property owners in Paradise Valley, the southern part of the Las Vegas Valley, sought and received approval to annex their unattached land to the newly established Paradise. This expanded the area to 54 square miles.

Paradise Divided

Later, out of the northern portion of Paradise, a second township was created, 7.5 square miles, that became known as Town A. The larger, remaining portion of the original unincorporated Paradise became Town B.

Eventually Towns A and B received official names.

In 1953, Town A was named Winchester. At the time, it encompassed the Sahara, El Rancho Vegas and Thunderbird hotel-casinos on the Strip’s northern end, as well as Last Frontier Village, the Las Vegas Park Race Track, numerous motels and some private homes. The Town A residents liked the name Winchester for its Western flavor and chose it over other suggested monikers, including McCarran, Sunset Heights, Empire, Silverado, Tiffany and Valhalla.

“In addition to getting a new name, the town figures to be one of the richest per capita in the world, since it covers practically all of the multi-million-dollar resort hotel industry, plus several costly motels and the expectation that another $20 million in new hotels will be erected in the near future,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (Oct. 8, 1953).

Town B recaptured the original name, Paradise. Much larger in land size, it included the Desert Inn, Sands and Flamingo hotel-casinos on the Strip’s southern end and the Paradise Valley ranch area.

Attempt At Unification

In 1975, Governor Mike O’Callaghan signed Senate Bill 601, which would’ve doubled the size of Las Vegas by expanding its boundaries to include the Strip (Winchester and Paradise), Sunrise Manor and East Las Vegas — all unincorporated towns. The goal was to consolidate the various city and county governments and services.

However, before the change could be carried out, the Nevada Supreme Court, in June 1976, ruled that the legislation was unconstitutional for various reasons. One was because the law was passed during a special session, which is illegal per the Nevada Revised Statutes.

“I think that ends it for good,” said Senator James Gibson (D-Henderson), who’d introduced the bill. “It will probably kill [a] merger for quite a while in the future” (Las Vegas Sun, June 8, 1976).

Though relatively unknown except to locals, Paradise and Winchester still exist today, independent of Las Vegas.

Sources

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