Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, Stateline, Nevada, 1973

1972-1973

Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to read is true. No names have been changed, as there were no innocents.

This is the city, Stateline, Nevada. It’s the gambling mecca of Lake Tahoe. Most people visit it to recreate, but some go there to commit a crime.

It was Tuesday, September 19, 1972. It was a chilly night.

Douglas County sheriffs were working the late shift when they got the call. At 10:40 p.m., five employees at Harrah’s hotel-casino were making a routine money transfer from the basement to the casino floor when an armed man stopped them on the stairs and shouted, “Give me the money, or I’ll blow your heads off.”

The suspect was described as roughly 5 feet 8 inches tall, 170 pounds, stocky, in his 30s, long haired and wearing dark glasses, a cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes and possibly a fake beard. His weapon was a .45-caliber automatic Colt pistol.

He grabbed the two bags from the workers, ordered them to back off and fled through the casino and out the door into the dark. He purposely dropped the bag containing chips, $4,500’s worth, ran about two blocks and crossed Highway 50 and then the state line into California. 

At a nearby motel, he hopped on a motorcycle, whose rider had been waiting for him. The bike didn’t start, again and again. The two dismounted, pushed it, finally got it going, jumped on and rode off.

The thief had stolen $178,500 ($1 million today), at that time the largest robbery ever involving a Nevada casino.

Quartet Of Suspects

The crime became a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) matter when the stickup man crossed state lines. Investigators had the motorcycle’s license plate, captured by a witness, to go on as well as possibly the testimony of an informant, Barbara White, who’d been in on the planning of the crime but had backed out before execution.

Agents found $125,000 of the stolen money, the wig, beard and gun buried shallowly in the backyard of the motorcycle driver. Four days after the crime, they arrested:

• Donald Leroy Rice, 35, of Stateline, Nevada, unemployed dealer, married, four-year resident
• Larry Joseph Swinberg, 36, of South Lake Tahoe, California, Harrah’s employee, married, resident of fewer than 30 days
• Jack Andrew Cozad, 37, of Stateline, Nevada, recent Harrah’s employee, separated, 12-year resident
• Thomas Richard Norman, 36, of Reno, Nevada, poker dealer in Reno’s Cal Neva Club, single, 8-year resident

The FBI tagged Rice as the stickup man; Swinburg, the getaway driver; and the other two, lookouts, one inside and one outside the casino.

The four faced federal charges of conspiracy and transporting stolen goods across state lines, and all but Rice, with aiding and abetting. State charges were conspiracy to commit armed robbery and robbery. Bail, mandated by federal and state courts, totaled $125,000 or $150,000 for each suspect.

One Turns Against Others

Legal wrangling began, with defense attorneys filing numerous motions, asking for separate trials, change of venue and more, all of which the judge denied.

Trials were held in 1972 (federal) and 1973 (state). Swinburg testified for the prosecution at both, giving up his accomplices and admitting to commandeering the motorcycle. He said that of the $178,500, he, Rice and Cozad were to get $52,000 apiece, Norman was to get $1,000 and White was to get $17,850.

The suspects were found guilty and were sentenced, in federal (1972) and state (1973) courts, respectively, to:

• Rice: 5 years’ prison, 8 years’ prison — to be served concurrently
• Cozad: 5 years’ prison, 5 years’ prison — to run concurrently
• Norman: 5 years’ probation, 3 years’ prison — the latter was suspended so he was to serve 6 months in jail then 5 years’ probation
• Swinburg: Probation (the state hadn’t charged or tried him)

An Unexpected Twist

Later in 1973, Douglas County sheriff’s deputies recovered what they believed to be the remaining $52,000 from the Harrah’s heist a year earlier.

When investigating an armed robbery of the people living in Rice’s former house in Stateline, officers zeroed in on four suspects, all South Lake Tahoe residents, and found the cash.

“Authorities did not disclose the evidence to support the statement the money might be part of the Harrah’s loot, nor would they say how much was reported taken in the Rice residence robbery,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Sept. 8, 1973).

Sources

1995-Today

The casino name, Avi, translates into “money” or “loose change” in the language of the Mojave tribe, whose members own it.

Uniquely located geographically, Avi Resort & Casino is on the Fort Mojave Reservation, which reaches into Arizona, Nevada and California, but is in Laughlin (NV). Borders with the other two states are within walking distance. The resort opened in 1995.

James Coffroth is pictured here, on the scrip

1915

The ’49 Camp, one of the attractions at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, offered a gambling experience in which chips could be bought for money but cashed only for free-admission coupons for the other Joy Zone amusements. However, event officials soon discovered the gaming taking place was more real than pretend.

Roaring Recreation

This world’s fair, a celebration of the Panama Canal’s completion, spanned 600 acres in San Francisco, California and ran for nine months, from February 20 to December 4.

’49 Camp was a replicated California mining town from The Gold Rush era, which illustrated the characteristic places, the goings on, the people and their lives. It showcased “log cabins and rough shacks such as the men of 1849 first were housed in, dance halls and gambling hells,* bars and tamale joints, Chinese wash houses, Indians in their wickiups and cowboys and gamblers and the bad men of the camp with their shooting irons in evidence,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (Nov. 11, 1914).

Duels on the streets, shootouts, claim jumping riots and vigilantism all took place. The justice of the peace tossed hellions into jail. A band of Native Americans in full regalia marched the grounds playing music. The Mt. Lassen volcano spewed lava at night. A forceful stream ascending the mountain range turned the water wheel at Sutter’s Mill (the original one). In the placer, miners dug for gold, and guests, for 25 cents, panned for nuggets. (Expo authorities banned the “two-bit beer” and “gay maidens” early on, considering them too raunchy for the audience, noted the Oakland Tribune on March 13, 1915.)

Davis

The camp was a revival of “the days of old, the days of gold, the days of ’49,” said Samuel “Sam” P. Davis, the brainchild and marketer of it (Sunset Magazine, July-December 1915), who also was the editor of the Carson City Appeal newspaper. He’d had success already with the mining concept at the Midwinter Fair in 1894 San Francisco.  

The historic representation spanned five acres and was constructed for $75,000 ($1.8 million today), financed primarily by a Walter Smith.

The Gambling Surprise

By requirement, the simulated gambling at ’49 Camp was limited to roulette, faro, 21, craps and wheel of fortune, and the currency restricted to scrip redeemable for entry into any other expo Zone area.

“Thousands, it is declared, flocked to the resort each night. Chips cost a dollar a stack on the roulette tables and the faro layout; on the crap tables they ran as high as a dollar apiece. Thousands of dollars were lost in a night,” noted an article in The Survey (Oct. 23, 1915). (One dollar in 1915 was equivalent to about $25 today.)

The popularity of the gambling there was due to its operators paying winners in money, not scrip!

When the event authorities learned of this violation of the state’s anti-gambling law, they shut down ’49 Camp.

“It’s a dead camp without gambling,” Davis said (Nevada State Journal, April 14, 1923).

Coffroth

A Fresh Start

In September, he sold the camp to James W. Coffroth, 43, a prizefight promoter. Crester Rowell, a member of the state exposition commission, warned Coffroth he’d lose his money if he tried to open a gambling operation. Coffroth must’ve assured him and the other commissioners he wouldn’t.

Yet, within a month, Coffroth and his Pioneer Days Company were in trouble with them when they discovered, one, gambling (faro, roulette and craps) was taking place and, two, that the scrip could be redeemed at face value for merchandise, Rowell said, in “certain restaurants, saloons and resorts of questionable character” in town, again illegal given California’s gambling law (Oakland Tribune, Sept. 21, 1915). Notices in ’49 camp listed such places.

“Whether it is cashed at 100 cents on the dollar or 39 cents on the dollar, the fact remains that the gambling in the camp is a disgrace and a stench in the nostrils of the state commission,” he added. “No authority was given [Coffroth] to conduct gambling. He now asserts that there was a tacit understanding without any specific discussion that there would be gambling.”

The exposition’s director of concessions ordered the gambling stopped in ’49 Camp. It was, and patronage plummeted.

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* “Gambling hell” is an informal reference to a gambling house or den.

Photo of ’49 Camp Scrip from Panama Pacific International Exposition
Photo of Samuel “Sam” P. Davis from the University of Nevada, Reno Special Collections

Sources