Commemorative bronze statue of Binion in Las Vegas, Nevada

Today

Although Texas-born Lester B. “Benny” Binion (1904-1989) no longer is with us, he remains a legend among Las Vegas casino owners and operators — gamblers, in industry parlance.

Iconic even in his appearance — large in girth and ever clad in a cowboy hat and boots — Binion was complex. The dichotomous traits he embodied likely helped him attain success; he was charming yet cruel, a family man yet a criminal, and minimally educated (through the second grade) yet savvy in business.

“For those who understood the real game being played in Las Vegas and America, Benny was one of the most influential, and feared, men of his time; and in that enormous power, if not in his crude style, he set an example,” wrote Sally Denton and Roger Morris in The Money and The Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America.

Binion is remembered for owning and operating the Horseshoe Club in Southern Nevada and allowing players to place high-stakes bets on craps at a time when other gambling houses wouldn’t. He also launched the famed World Series of Poker tournament in 1970.

Down And Dirty Details

That’s the part of his story that prevails. Here are 10 lesser-known facts about Benny Binion:

1) He was an FBI informant for a time, providing the governmental agency with the inside scoop about various Las Vegas gamblers and their enterprises.

2) He murdered at least two men — Frank Bolding, a man whom he suspected of stealing liquor from him during his bootlegging days, and Ben Frieden, a competitor in the policy racket in Dallas, the latter slaying earning him the nickname “The Cowboy.” He wasn’t ever charged for the killings. Despite admitting both to Nevada gaming regulators, they granted him a gambling license.

3) His gambling start was running a lucrative numbers operation in Texas.

4) He couldn’t read, write or do basic math.

5) His father was a drunk and excessive gambler, and his brother, Jack, died in a plane crash at age 23.

6) He was openly racist toward African Americans.

7) He secretly brokered the funneling of millions of dollars from prominent Dallas bankers to Las Vegas mobsters and took a 5 percent cut for his services. One such transaction was $500,000 (about $5.1 million today) that Republic Bank provided to Moe Dalitz, the Cleveland mob’s representative in Sin City, for construction of the Desert Inn hotel-casino.

8) Following a drawn out extradition battle and legal wrangling that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, he served 3.25 years, from Dec. 1953 to March 1957, in the U.S. Penitentiary Leavenworth in Kansas on federal charges of tax evasion and state charges of illegal gambling,

9) After his release from prison, he sold the remaining, non-mob-owned interest of the Horseshoe to mobster Meyer Lansky and associates through their front man, Ed Levinson, because Binion needed money to pay past taxes (eventually, he bought back 100 percent of the casino).

10) He applied for a presidential pardon five times but wasn’t granted one.

Sources

Trailways bus parked at the Golden Nugget Casino in Sparks, Nevada, 1970

1969-present

When executives of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada hosted 12 people from Kansas City in 1969 as part of a gambling junket, it unexpectedly backfired.

When their guests, after four days at the resort, boarded the plane to return home, Clark County sheriff’s deputies arrested all of them on charges of vagrancy because they were believed to be mobsters or associates.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) recommended that each of Caesars’ 59 shareholders be fined up to $50,000 and the casino, $10,000.

“Catering to persons of notorious or unsavory reputation or to persons who have extensive police records reflects or tends to reflect discredit upon the State of Nevada and the gaming industry and is a violation of the regulations in that it is an unsuitable method of operation,” the NGCB’s complaint noted  (Nevada State Journal, June 13, 1969).

Throughout the 1960s, these strategic trips brought hundreds of thousands of tourists to The Silver State to gamble. Under this type of arrangement, an employee or, most often, an independent operator, frequently out of state, found people with a good credit rating and a desire to gamble (some casinos required that visitors be able to lose $2,500) then transported them to a hotel-casino for a few days to play.

The gambling licensee assumed all costs of transportation, meals and accommodations in the hopes the guests would lose money — lots of it — in his casino. The junket organizer received about $50 per person per junket.

“The casinos spend millions for the trips from as far away as New York and try to recoup the money from patrons at the gambling tables,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (February 17, 1967).

If a junket gambler exceeded his credit, the casino might give them a marker, or written IOU. Typically, the coordinator, or junketeer, was responsible for collecting that money for the casino once the guest got home.

Cheating, Extortion, Murder

The lack of rules governing these trips led to abuses by junketeers. Some were involved with organized crime. Some enlisted people who couldn’t meet the credit requirements, then loaned them money at exorbitant rates. Some skimmed off the debts they collected before turning the money over to the casino. Via phone, some threatened junket participants who owed money.

In early 1970, the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) proposed regulations that addressed these problems. Soon after, Harry Otake, 46, who’d facilitated many gambling junkets from Hawaii to Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe hotel-casinos, was found lifeless in the trunk of a car, having been strangled.

Police theorized that gangsters had murdered him, gamblers who’d lost significant amounts or from whom he’d attempted to collect on debts. Robbery was another possible motive, as Otake allegedly had $95,000 in his possession before his death.

Shaken by this homicide, NGC members got all casinos in the state to stop voluntarily all junkets run by non-employee agents until governing rules could be established.

Nevada Takes Control

That same year, after months of discussions and six drafts, the NGC adopted a rule calling for punishment, even potential gaming license revocation, of any casino doing business with unsavory junketeers.

In 1972, the NGC added further stipulations, which comprised Regulation 25. Among them, all junketeers, now called independent agents, had to register with the NGCB, and licensees could work only with those whom the board had approved.

All junketeers, now called independent agents, must register with the NGCB and provide certain documentation, including a copy of the agreement between the agent and the gaming licensee, financial info if the agent is to give money to the licensee and a designation of secondary representatives. Licensees had to report quarterly what agents they’d worked with during the previous three months.

Some minor additions in 1992 aimed to ensure agents and licensees were made aware of the rule’s requirements. Regulation 25 remains in effect today.

As for Caesars Palace, for some reason, the state dropped the matter, leaving the resort’s shareholders free from reprisal.

Sources

Charles Cora’s headstone

1855-1856

Charles and Arabella “Bell” Cora were a colorful, rich and well-known San Francisco couple whose lives jolted into misfortune one Saturday night in 1855.

He, 39, had made his money from dealing faro in Northern California mining camps and the city during The Gold Rush. Prior, he’d broken numerous faro banks in Louisiana and Mississippi, consequently, was banned from many gambling houses. He was “the foremost faro player on the Mississippi,” R.K. DeArment wrote in his article, “Gambling in the Old West.”

She, 27, had earned her wealth as a madam of a high-end brothel on Dupont and Washington streets. Though the two weren’t married, Bell used his last name.

“At the pinnacle of their professions, they were the elite of the sporting crowd, well acquainted with the top political and professional leaders of the city,” wrote Charles L. Convis, author of True Tales of the Old West: Gamblers.

Mutual Provocation

On Thursday, Nov. 15, the Coras were watching the play, Nicodemus, at the American Theater when during intermission, some men seated below recognized and shouted out to Bell. She playfully acknowledged them, after which both parties gestured bawdily to one another.

Sitting in front of the Coras, the wife of General William Richardson, a U.S. marshal, took great offense and asked her husband to make them stop. William, 33, demanded the Coras leave, but they wouldn’t. He asked the manager to force them out, but he, too, refused.

“The Richardsons stalked out, bitterly denouncing [Charles] Cora and Bell,” Convis reported.

Can’t Let It Go

The following night, Charles and William encountered one another again, first on the street then in the Cosmopolitan Saloon, where they had words in between drinks.

The next afternoon, William loudly went from watering hole to watering hole looking for Charles and revenge. When he found him, though, he seemed to have forgiven him as both imbibed more alcohol together at two watering holes before parting.

Later, William approached Charles in front of Montgomery Street’s Blue Wing Saloon and together they walked down Clay Street.

When they stopped at the corner of Leidesdorff, Charles aimed and fired his pistol at William’s heart. Dead almost immediately, William slumped to the sidewalk.

“One version has it that [Charles] Cora slammed [William] Richardson against a building, pinning his arms, and, as Richardson screamed ‘Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed,’ Cora shot him in cold blood,” wrote Dr. Weirde in the article, “For Whom the Belle Toils.” “Another version: Cora collared Richardson, Richardson reached for his weapon, and Cora fired first in self-defense.”

The Daily Alta California noted, “Murders have been committed for robbery or from motives of revenge, but for this last there appears to have been no inciting cause but an unnatural thirst for blood” (Nov. 18, 1855).

Justice With A Twist

The police arrested Charles, whose trial took place in March of the next year. For his defense, Bell hired a slew of attorneys, two of whom later would become U.S. Senators — E.D. Baker (Oregon) and James A. McDougall (California).

Baker’s fee alone was $30,000 (a $725,000 value in 1913, the earliest year for which conversion is available). Bell paid him half, all of which he immediately lost while playing faro.

The jury was hung and Charles, beyond bars, awaited a second trial in April.

Before that could occur, about 3,000 citizens angrily stormed the jail, armed with shotguns, rifles, swords, knives, and revolvers. Agitated by a second recent murder — that of newspaper man James King by city supervisor James P. Casey over a disparaging editorial — the newly reformed Vigilance Committee demanded Charles and James Casey’s release. He and his men greatly outnumbered, the sheriff complied.

The mob held unofficial trials for both men, who were found guilty. The minimum for a majority found Charles guilty; as for James, the same verdict was unanimous.

The committee members allowed Charles to marry Bell, which he did inside “Fort Gunnybags,” the vigilantes’ jail. At 1:15 p.m. that day, Thursday, May 22, from poles they rigged on their office building’s roof, they publicly hanged both men and left them there for nearly an hour.

“Almost every man, woman and child in the city was either a spectator or participator,” reported California’s Sacramento Daily Union (May 24, 1856).

Sources

Photo from the San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

Grave markers at San Quentin State Prison

1915-1935

James “Jimmy” Sidney Rogan, an active student and football player, was well liked by the principal of his high school in Tonopah, a mining boom town halfway between Las Vegas and Reno. In 1915, when the available ore in the town dubbed Queen of the Silver Camps was believed to be petering out and numerous residents, therefore, moved to the next hot spot, Rogan quit school in his junior year but wouldn’t tell Principal Chauncey Smith why. Smith encouraged him to stick with his education, to no avail. Rogan went on to work as a Southern Pacific brakeman running out of Sparks, then as a taxi driver in Reno.

In 1924, when in his mid-20s, Rogan got in a brawl in public in Reno, which led to a disturbing the peace charge. A judge fined him $20 ($475 today).

The next year, also in The Biggest Little City, Rogan and a friend, Bobby Gray, a Reno prizefighter, beat and robbed a miner of $80 and his shirt. When police questioned Rogan, he confessed and returned the money to his victim, who declined to press charges. The same judge, before whom Rogan had appeared in the past, gave him roughly 12 hours to get out of town. He did and found work as a seaman. (Gray was released and admonished to choose better associates.)

In Deeper Trouble

In 1932, Rogan, “the debonair adventurer,” and known San Francisco gangster, Rollie D. McAllister, lost $100 ($1,700 today) in the early morning hours while gambling in a speakeasy in Los Angeles’ exclusive Westlake neighborhood (Nevada State Journal, Oct. 14, 1933).

Around 5 a.m., they returned via taxicab after having decided they’d been cheated out of their money. Brandishing guns, they tried forcing the club’s owners, Harvey Crosby and Ben Harris, to return it. Also inside were Deputy Sheriff Rudolph Vejar, 36, who was investigating vice conditions, a bartender and a dealer.

McAllister forced the proprietors to remove their shoes and lie down on the floor while Rogan kept the other people there on the opposite side of the room covered with two pistols. Finding only $68 in the owners’ pockets, McAllister ordered Vejar to remove his shoes and lie down with Crosby and Harris. McAllister began burning Crosby’s bare feet with lit matches to get him to disclose where the cash was hidden.

Suddenly Vejar drew his pistol and shot Rogan in the leg. The former Renoite returned fire, a bullet hitting Vejar in the mouth then penetrating his neck and spine. Vejar emptied his firearm at McAllister, mortally wounding him. Rogan peppered the room with gunshot as he backed out of the establishment. He then took the waiting cab away from the scene and asked to be let out at Washington Boulevard.

Vejar died in the hospital the next day. Rogan went on the lam.

Eleven months later, police found the “underworld character,” as he was described, in San Francisco, where he was visiting his mother before his planned exit from the United States (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 16, 1933). They arrested and extradited him to Los Angeles.

In late 1933, Rogan was tried on robbery and murder charges. During the court proceedings, he insisted that he was innocent in that McAllister had killed Vejar. The jury, after six hours of deliberation, however, found Rogan guilty on both counts.

The judge sentenced him to death on the gallows. In the meantime, he was to remain behind bars at San Quentin State Prison.

Attempts At A Reversal

The Supreme Court of California heard the case on appeal and upheld the conviction and death sentence.

Rogan’s mother and one of his sisters implored California Governor Frank Merriam to commute Jimmy’s death sentence. Five of the jurors who’d found Rogan guilty previously signed a petition for clemency as did Nevada Senator Pat McCarran, a friend of Rogan’s father.

In early February 1935, Rogan wrote a letter to Smith, his former principal/football coach/math instructor, telling him he was sorry for never following his advice way back when. He revealed why he’d dropped out of high school: he hadn’t made the basketball team while younger classmen had.

“In case the worst happens I certainly wanted you to know that I appreciate the things and the efforts on your part to assist me in every way,” Rogan wrote Smith (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 13, 1935).

On Feb. 8, 1935, the 32 year old was hanged at 10:04 a.m. Eleven minutes later, the prison physician pronounced him dead. To the end, Jimmy had maintained his innocence.

Sources

Photo from the Los Angeles Times: by Rick Meyer

1905-1941

Imagine in the early 1900s, a block about the length of a football field, in the Mojave Desert in Nevada where gambling, drinking and prostitution prevailed free from law enforcement’s intrusion, and where fights erupted often and killings were common.

And because the days were so hot, it came alive at night when locals and passers-through pursued their vices and recreation, including billiards, bowling, music and dancing.

Such a place existed — the original Sin City.

“That part of Las Vegas looked like a rip-roaring, whiskey-drinking, gun-toting, gambling town, while the rest of the town was conservative and business-like,” wrote Stanley Paher in Las Vegas: As It Began—As It Grew.

This frontier area developed in 1905 after William Clark, who with his brother developed the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake railroad, founded the Las Vegas Townsite. He divided 110 acres into 38 parcels of land, each 1,200 square feet in size, which he auctioned. He designated only two of those — Blocks 16 and 17 — as places where liquor could be sold legally. Properties on the other blocks contained a “no liquor” clause in their deed.

Block 16 was located on today’s First Street between Ogden and Stewart avenues. While prostitution primarily was limited to that area and with the free flow of alcohol there,* Block 16 alone earned the name Sin City. The early brothels were located in the rear or upper rooms, or “cribs,” of some of the saloons.

“… riotous Block 16 was the only seat of pleasure. Nearly every night, including Christmas, it ran full blast. The Gem, the Red Onion, the Turf, the Favorite, the OO (Double-O), the Star, the Arcade saloons and the Arizona Club were continually crowded with sharp-eyed dealers and boosters and men standing around trying to solve the mysteries of gambling. All night long sounded the strains of music, the rattle of ivory chips and the clink of silver and gold coins on the tables of faro, roulette, craps, black jack and poker,” Paher wrote.

Tolerance Fades

In the early 1940s, the U.S. Army Air Corps (now the U.S. Air Force) was considering an area outside of town for base facilities for an aerial gunnery school and told city officials that as long as Block 16 existed, servicemen wouldn’t be allowed to enter Las Vegas. Afraid of losing the potential economic windfall from those corpsmen, the city began eradicating Block 16 in 1941.

Law enforcement conducted a series of raids, during which they arrested numerous prostitutes. In 1942, the city revoked all gaming and liquor licenses of Block 16’s businesses. Consequently, income from these vices decreased, and proprietors soon after ceased operations, thereby killing off Sin City.

The facilities, particularly the brothels, later were used through the duration of World War II as inexpensive rooming houses until 1946, when the city deemed them inhabitable and razed them. The land eventually was paved to serve as parking lots, and it still does. They can be found behind Binion’s Gambling Hall & Hotel and just east of the California Hotel-Casino, in the heart of downtown Las Vegas.

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*Even during Prohibition, alcohol was available widely on Block 16.

Sources

Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ University Libraries

1955

When presumed-to-be-wealthy mobster, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, was slain at age 41, the estate he left was worth $35,609 (about $314,550 today).

Before his murder, Siegel co-financed and oversaw completion of the Flamingo hotel-casino in Las Vegas but ran up its development costs by several million and began bouncing checks.

In his earlier days, he was, among others, a bootlegger, hit man, thief and a founder/leader of Murder, Inc., the U.S. Mafia’s enforcement team.

1934-1935

Today, 80 years later, the circumstances of actress Thelma Todd’s death remain a mystery, and the case still is one of Hollywood’s infamous unsolveds.

A deep cover-up precluded the truth about the incident from surfacing. On December 16, 1935, the famous, 29-year-old blonde was found dead in her garage, her beaten, slumped body behind the wheel of her brown phaeton. The cause of her death was ruled accidental carbon monoxide poisoning from her car’s engine.

One theory behind the fatal event, however, purported in the book, Hot Toddy, is that the powerful Mafioso, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, had her murdered. He wasn’t just a low-level syndicate soldier. He was a boss, the first official head of the modern Genovese crime family, and made his mark in New York by splitting the city into five such dynasties. Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel were associates.

Luciano and Hot Toddy, as friends nicknamed her in her youth, began a casual relationship that evolved into a sexual dalliance by 1934. That year, the actress and her friend and neighbor, Roland West, opened a restaurant called Thelma Todd’s Café.

Exploitive Ulterior Motive

Luciano wanted to lease the top floor of her eatery to run a gambling club there, where he believed the wealthy Hollywood stars who frequented her café would spend lots of money. At the time, only poker and other player-against-player card games and horse race betting were legal in California. He sensed the strong-willed Todd wouldn’t permit it, so he employed devious tactics to get her to comply.

Luciano sent some of his goons to torment and wear down West, who managed the restaurant. They forced him to change vendors to those controlled by the mob and siphoned money from the business. As for Todd, Luciano got her addicted to speed, hoping it would make her submissive and willing to do whatever he wanted.

Over time, Charley Lucifer, as he was sometimes called, realized Todd was not a pushover, and she learned more and more about his underworld dealings. Their relationship deteriorated, and they saw each other less and less. Eventually, Todd started dating a businessman from San Francisco with whom she was infatuated.

Meanwhile, Luciano’s underworld nemesis in town, Frank Nitti, threatened to horn in on his interests — prostitution, gambling and drugs. Already, Nitti had shut him out of his shakedown of the movie industry after agreeing to include him. Consequently, to maintain an empire in Los Angeles, Luciano believed he needed Todd’s café more than ever.

He approached her with his plan. Despite knowing that refusing Luciano of anything could, and likely would, get her killed, she said no. For that, he saw her as a problem. He tried to persuade her to change her mind by other means, like having menacing men sit in the restaurant all day every day. Around Thanksgiving in 1935, he again pressured her face to face, to no avail.

“Toddy later told friends Luciano had wrangled with her all night about giving him the storage room for gambling,” wrote Andy Edmonds, the author of Hot Toddy. “He was insistent and vowed he would not walk away without the papers. They had argued violently in the car, Thelma refusing to give Luciano what he wanted.”

Luciano informed her that as of January 1, 1936, he’d be operating a gambling club on the third floor of her restaurant despite her protests.

Todd, though, remained resolute in her refusal to allow it. To thwart his plan, she turned the space into a steakhouse and opened it before he could move in.

The Slippery Slope

In early December, she called the Los Angeles district attorney’s office to relay what she knew about Luciano’s underhanded dealings and connections to other mobsters. She didn’t tell the person who’d answered the phone what her business was, only that she wanted an appointment to speak to the D.A. Little did she know that he was under Luciano’s control and that Luciano had an informant in the office.

In mid-December, Luciano insisted she go to dinner with him. She said no, but he forced her to join him. He took her to a secluded home where he grilled her about her knowledge of his “business” and what she’d told the D.A.’s office. She tried denying she knew anything, but Luciano knew better, became enraged and slapped her hard.

Todd spilled it all. Then figuring she was as good as dead, she purposefully provoked his fears of getting arrested for past actions and losing his foothold in the City of Angels. She claimed she’d hidden evidence, including photos, of his underworld operations and that she’d snitched on him to the FBI — both of which were bluffs.

Irate, Luciano made a phone call, in which he supposedly ordered a hit on Todd, drove her to a Christmas tree lot at her request where she picked out a tree then dropped her off at her home around midnight.

In the morning, her maid discovered her dead in the garage. Luciano left Los Angeles later in the day and never returned.

Sources

In 1971, various people began complaining to the local police department they’d gotten fleeced at an informal casino setup in California’s San Fernando Valley (yes, the location of, like, “valley girl” fame, a culture that developed a decade later).

The Dirty Details

Consequently, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice’s Organized Crime Strike Force investigated the grievances. They discovered an illegal gambling ring, one that floated, or moved to avoid detection by law enforcement. In this case, it had been held at a different, rented home each time and the venture had been run for four months.

Peter J. Milano, Los Angeles Mobster

The men behind it employed prostitutes to lure their johns into playing various dice and card games of chance, including blackjack and craps. These were/are illegal in California. Then they cheated the players out of as much money as possible during the gambling by secretly using loaded dice, marked cards and a crooked wheel, all of which they’d acquired in Las Vegas.

They netted as much as $250,000 a month (about $1.5 million today)!

In December 1972, the LAPD raided the operation, and a grand jury ruling followed in November 1973. It indicted seven men on these charges: 1) conspiring to violate gambling laws, 2) traveling between states to promote an illegal gambling business and 3) conducting an unlawful enterprise.

The alleged co-conspirators were:

• Peter John Milano, 47, a Northridge resident, a made* member of La Cosa Nostra’s Los Angeles Nick Licata Family and a bail bondsman. As the suspected kingpin of the gambling scheme, he’d provided police protection and had offered to put up bond if any of them had gotten arrested.

• Martin C. Calaway, 47, a Beverly Hills attorney who allegedly had bankrolled the scheme with $25,000, for which he was to receive 20 percent of the profits.

• Luigi Gelfuso, 48, operator of a Fresno trash collection company, who supposedly had provided protection and debt collections.

• John Joseph Vaccaro Jr., 33, an unemployed Las Vegas construction worker believed to have run the games.

• Tony Endreola, 49, and Santo Albert Manfre, 39, were said to have overseen the games to ensure Milano had gotten his fair share of the profits. What the involvement of Harry P. Coloduros, 35, had been isn’t known.

Verdict Insurance

Six days before the trial was to start, a masked person executed John L. Dubcek, 31, and his wife Francis Ann, 27 in Las Vegas at close range just before midnight as the two entered the dark hallway leading to their apartment. He first shot John in the back then hit Francis Ann in the face as she turned around.

The two had worked at the Westward Ho casino. He’d been a shift manager, which was ironic as he was an expert slot machine cheater and had gotten into trouble for illegal gambling previously. He also had been charged in 1972 with running a crooked gambling operation in Van Nuys with Vaccaro, but the case had been dropped.

John Dubcek had been scheduled to testify as a prosecution witness in the trial of the septet just as he’d done before the grand jury in the same matter. Although his and his wife’s murders never were solved, the FBI and other agencies believed that Milano, Calaway, Gelfuso and Vacarro had had him killed to silence him. In fact, the prosecutor averred he had proof the four had plotted the hit on the courthouse steps the day they’d been arraigned. Despite knowing that two contracts had been out on his life, Dubcek had refused police protection repeatedly.

“It was definitely a rubout job” by a professional hitman, a police investigator said (Press-Telegram, March 21, 1974).

Due to the murders, the judge postponed the trial for four and a half months.

Judgment Day

When it finally took place, in mid-August, one of the men involved, Coloduros, testified for the government and implicated the others in the illegal gambling ring, yet Milano and Calaway professed their innocence.

The six-man, six-woman jury, after deliberating for three days, returned a guilty verdict for the three major players — Milano, Calaway and Gelfuso. A month later, U.S. District Court Judge Jesse. W. Curtis sentenced them each to four-year terms in federal prison.

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* “Made” denotes one’s status as a fully initiated member of the Mafia, one that requires, for one, carrying out a contract killing on the organization’s behalf.

Sources

Officer Herbert “Burt” D. Long

1932

At about 4:30 on a Sunday morning, a drunk Bartley “Bart” J. Smithson was target practicing in the Palace Club, shooting at a spittoon and a silver dollar with a 0.38 Smith & Wesson Special. Bullets were flying, some lodging in the building’s rear wall.

Smithson was a well-known resident and the proprietor of this saloon-gambling house in the rural mining town of Ely, Nevada.

What The . . . ?

Nearby, Herbert “Burt” D. Long, on duty as the night officer and in the Northern Hotel’s lobby at the time, heard the shots. He walked down Aultman Street to the Palace Club, entered and noted a few patrons inside.

A conversation ensued between Long, 32, and Smithson, 48, something like this:

— “Bart, you can’t shoot like that in here. It’s against the law.”

— “Why not? There’s a steel door in the rear.”

— “That makes no difference. Give me your gun.”

— “What are you going to do with the gun?”

— “I’m going to give it to the district attorney. He’ll just give it back in the morning.”

— “Like hell he will.”

Long took the revolver away from Smithson and ejected the shells.

— “If there’s any more of this, I’ll have to throw you in [jail]. Don’t go after any more guns, Bart.”

When Long was on his way to the door to leave, Smithson darted behind the bar, grabbed a rifle, pumped a shell into the barrel and called Long’s name. When the officer turned, Smithson, only about four or five feet away, shot him. Long, hit in the heart, fell and quickly died.

Law And Order

The sheriff and marshal rushed to the crime scene after learning of the incident. They busted into the rooms above the saloon-casino and arrested Smithson, who surrendered willingly.

In jail, he was charged with first degree murder.

At his arraignment, he pleaded guilty and was held over for trial without bail.

The court proceedings began Feb. 29 and lasted four days. The prosecution asserted that Smithson’s shooting of Long was premeditated, that once Long had taken his gun, Smithson had decided to kill him.

The defense counsel argued that Smithson had acted in self-defense. He presented witnesses who testified that Long had been armed, had used abusive language and had threatened to hit Smithson over the head with a revolver.

The prosecution, however, established that Long hadn’t had a weapon.

The jury found Smithson guilty but directed the maximum punishment to be a life sentence. That’s what the judge gave him, to be served in the Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

Smithson’s subsequent appeal for reduction of the verdict to manslaughter and a motion for a new trial were denied in the lower court.

Subsequently, he took the case to the Nevada Supreme Court. In trying for a new hearing, he argued two points: 1) The judge had omitted critical information in his instructions to the jury and 2) Officer Long had lacked the power to arrest Smithson for the misdemeanor of firing the pistol because he hadn’t witnessed it occur.

The jurists, however, refuted the latter claim, stating Long hadn’t needed to see the offense take place if his other senses (his hearing) had alerted him to it unmistakably. They denied Smithson’s request for a rehearing.

Smithson was released after serving 12 years and passed away while living with a brother in Mason Valley a dozen years later at age 73.

Sources

Casinos at Lake Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada, decades later, in 2008

1958-1959

Clarence Thayer grew ill with flu-like symptoms on Thanksgiving Day in 1958 while visiting his sister in Oakland, California. He was a well drilling contractor who lived in South Lake Tahoe. He and his wife Norma also owned a dry cleaning business that adjoined their home, which she ran and where he sometimes worked.

After an Oakland physician treated the 38 year old, he and his wife returned home. Soon after, he again got sick and sought care locally. When he failed to improve, he was admitted to Carson City Hospital, where he grew worse. He then was transferred to the Veterans Hospital in Reno, where he died on December 10 from what his physicians had diagnosed as pneumonia.

His mother, Lillie Thayer, requested an autopsy be done, and his widow agreed. That examination revealed the deceased’s kidney, liver and brain to be saturated with arsenic! Thus, the forensic toxicologist determined cause of death to be poisoning in small quantities over an extensive time period.

Toxic Source Found

El Dorado County Sheriff Ernest Carlson began an investigation and, early on, ruled out suicide. He administered polygraph tests to all persons of interest.

In interviewing Thayer’s mom Lillie, a 76-year-old former registered nurse, he learned she’d suspected her son was being poisoned for some time and that’s why she requested the autopsy. In separate conversations, she’d shared her suspicion with Norma who “didn’t say anything” and Thayer (Oakland Tribune, Jan. 4, 1959).

Carlson discovered Thayer never had told any of his treating physicians about the poisoning possibility, and it’s unclear why he hadn’t. He had, though, complained to a Lake Tahoe doctor as much as a year earlier about symptoms like the ones that resulted in his death.

In the Thayers’ dry cleaning establishment, Carlson found a few bottles and one mysterious Mason jar containing cherry soda and some jars of root beer concentrate — all tainted with arsenic.

More Details Emerge

During a lie detector test, the housekeeper, Mary Dalhoff, admitted to having taken about 15 bottles of the cherry soda to the dry cleaning business and placing them in the storage room. As far as she knew, she said, they were unadulterated at the time. She’d obtained them from the casino bar at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, in Stateline, Nevada, on the south shore.

She denied knowing anything about the Mason jar or the concentrate. The results of Dahloff and her husband’s polygraph exams were “satisfactory” (Reno Evening Gazette, Jan. 26, 1959).

During Norma’s lie detector test, she said she’d moved the soda to keep it from freezing and after doing so, had seen her husband drink bottles of it from time to time.  

While the news media never reported the outcomes of widow Norma and mother Lillie’s polygraphs, presumably they showed no deception or were inconclusive because no arrests were made … ever.

The case went cold.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: by Constantine Kulikovsky