1967

The month following closure of its on-site Bullpen casino, the Nevada State Prison sold the brass coins that inmates had used for decades (since 1932) for wagering and as currency. Sets, containing one coin of each denomination — $0.05, $0.10, $0.25, $0.50, $1 and $5 — went for $30 to $50 apiece, depending on their condition.

Proceeds went to the facility’s Inmate Welfare Fund, which subsidized recreational activities.

Gambling houses — Palace, Louvre, Oberon — on Commercial Row, Reno, Nevada in the early 1900s

1906-1907

“They’ll never get me,” prisoner John Edwards said while being ushered into court for his trial. “They’ll never fasten anything on me” (Nevada State Journal, April 19, 1906). “Hasn’t a man a right to carry $200 or $300 on his person? Is that a crime?”

Allegedly, two days earlier, Edwards, with two other masked men, entered the Oberon, a saloon and gambling house in Reno, Nevada, in the early Sunday morning hours and, wielding revolvers, ordered the casino workers to hand over the cash at one of the faro tables and line up against the wall. The trio then backed out, and ran in different directions.

Police spotted Edwards and fired several shots at him. The robber shot back until his gun was empty then surrendered. He had on his person about $300 (roughly a $1,000 value today), the amount said to have been stolen from the Reno hot spot.

Edwards, who hailed from Germany and was 27, declared he was innocent. He claimed he’d been walking across the Virginia Street bridge when police officers had accosted and shot at him, so he simply had run and returned fire to defend himself.

To get the suspect to name his accomplices, the district attorney offered to drop one of the two charges against him — 1) robbery and 2) assault to murder — which could mean a life sentence were he convicted of both. The stubborn thief, though, wouldn’t rat out his colleagues.

Not The Best Witness

Four months after the robbery, Edwards’ trial began. (The D.A. wound up dropping the other charge anyway.)

Because the defendant acted shiftily throughout the proceedings, one deputy sheriff sat within a few feet of him and another was stationed at the exit because they thought he might try to flee.

Edwards testified he’d come to the United States when a child, had grown up in St. Louis, was a waiter by profession and had worked in various eastern and western states. Explaining the $300 in his pocket, he claimed he’d had $210 when he’d arrived in Reno a short time ago and had won more than another $100 while gambling.

As for the night of the robbery, he claimed the following: He’d played at the Louvre, the Oberon and the Palace, checked in at the Overland hotel then visited Chinatown. On his return, two men had tried to stop him and because he’d had money, he’d fired at them and had run. Having been followed earlier in the day by some guys who’d seen him show his money, he’d thought they were back to rob him. Then officers had taken him into custody related to a holdup, a mystery to him.

On cross-examination, the D.A. asked the accused why eventually he’d surrendered to the police. The reason, he said, was because he’d realized he’d be “unable to provide an alibi” (Reno Evening Gazette, July 18, 1906).

Apparently sealing his own fate with that statement, the jury, in under 20 minutes of deliberation, returned a unanimous guilty verdict. Judge Benjamin Curler sentenced him to 20 years in the Nevada State Prison and said he believed Edwards wouldn’t hesitate to commit murder to achieve an end.

“I think that you are a desperate man and that you are past reforming,” he added (Reno Evening Gazette, July 20, 1906).

A Time Of Unrest

The following year, an appeal of Edwards’ case was pending in the Nevada Supreme Court. On November 18, a Monday, the convicted robber and two other convicts were working in the prisoner dining room, Edwards with a carving knife, each of the other two with a revolver (presumably they’d gotten them smuggled in somehow).

Richard Forrest was serving 10 years for attempting to kill two police officers in Reno. James Watson was doing 11 years for robbery in Elko.

A little after 3 p.m., the three broke into the nearby kitchen. When a deputy investigating the source of the noise appeared, they immobilized him.

Forrest crawled through the small opening used to pass food to and from the guard’s dining room which was empty. Edwards and Watson pushed the deputy through it then followed him.

Rather than leave the building, as they then were free to do, they barged into the room where a guard watches the prison keys and armory, full of revolvers, rifles, and ammunition. Pointing his gun at the guard, Forrest demanded he give up the keys. When he refused, the prisoners closed in on him. Edwards sawed at the guard’s neck, trying to sever his head. The guard sustained gashes on an arm and a leg during the melee.

On The Lam

“By this time a general commotion prevailed about the prison, and the three convicts, fearing a general onslaught, ran out the front door,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Nov. 19, 1907).

Edwards took the guard’s gun with him. Outside, the butcher’s delivery wagon sat unattended. The trio jumped in and rode off.

At the time, Edwards/Forrest/Watson’s breakout was the second largest in the prison’s history (the biggest had been in 1871).

A Hunt Was On

The alarm was telephoned in to Carson City, word spread quickly and a search for the men began. When a group of armed men espied the criminals and approached, the escapees jumped out of the wagon and fled into the sagebrush and up a mountain.

Found first were Wilson and Forrest, who surrendered passively. About an hour later, Edwards was spotted lying amid the desert flora, a bullet hole in his forehead. The wound had been self-inflicted.

State of Nevada vs. John Edwards was struck from the court calendar.

Sources

1954

Late on a Saturday night in 1954, during the peak of business, an unemployed, 27-year-old railroad hand entered the Stockmen’s Hotel, in Elko, Nevada, where townspeople, miners, ranchers and tourists congregated to socialize, drink and gamble.

Silvus Armandus approached the casino cashier’s cage and demanded: “Hand over your money and don’t make a sound.”

The pit boss, D.E. Pierce, asked him to repeat what he’d said, and he did, gesturing with one of his hands in his pocket that he had a gun. Pierce, who thought Armandus was joking, began walking away. Armandus yelled, “I’ll kill the [expletive*],” while shooting at him twice, both bullets missing Pierce.

Another casino employee, Jack Brady, tackled the scoundrel to the ground and while wrestling with him, the gun fired two more times, injuring Brady in the stomach. Other employees joined the fracas, creating a body pile. When all the staff members stood, Armandus remained on the floor, unconscious.

During the melee, most of the casino’s 100 patrons just kept gambling.

Armandus was jailed for assault with a deadly weapon. When he subsequently appeared in court, the revised charge was attempted robbery. He pled guilty and said he couldn’t remember the incident at all. The judge sentenced him to 2.5 to 5 years in the Nevada State Prison.

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* The expletive wasn’t printed in the original newspaper source

Sources

1920

It was 3 a.m. on a Monday. About 15 men were gambling in the Desert Club. One who’d been there all night, sitting alone, watching and waiting to make his move was George Strickland. In his mid-30s and a self-named Wobbly, he’d arrived in Tonopah, Nevada, a few days earlier.

Suddenly, he stood, brandished a gun and demanded everyone put up their hands. He relieved each of his money and valuables then stole about $150 ($1,800 today) from the cash register. He backed out the door, instructing those he’d robbed to stay put.

The police tracked Strickland to the town of Millers, Nevada. When they ordered him to surrender, he shot at them and fled along the Tonopah & Goldfield railroad track. He came upon a passenger train heading to Mina, Nevada and decided to hold it up and get the engineer to bypass the next stop. An express messenger on board, however, shot Strickland in the arm, thwarting his plan.

When the officers arrested him, the alleged thief had $375 ($4,500 today) on his person, about half the amount the victims claimed he’d stolen from them. They confiscated the cash, which was to be held in police possession until the court instructed them what to do with it.

Spectacle In Court

During his arraignment, Strickland acted bizarrely.

“He pleaded guilty and then withdrew the plea repeatedly until the attorneys were confused and did not understand what his final decision was — until he was halted in a rambling discourse and induced to go on record with a plea of guilty,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (July 16, 1920).

During the trial, it came out that he’d planned to get to Mina to acquire more ammunition then return to Millers to fight the officers pursuing him — surefire suicide by cop.

Strickland’s ongoing behavior pointed to some type of mental imbalance and violent tendencies. While in the Tonopah jail, he’d picked several fights. In the courtroom, he attacked the bailiff in the hopes of commandeering his weapon and escaping. Committee members assigned to evaluating Strickland’s sanity offered diverging opinions. The sheriff believed the only safe place for the accused was the penitentiary.

“It is surmised by officers who have been brought in close contact that he is either an escaped convict or a fugitive from an insane asylum,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (July 16, 1920).

The judge sentenced him to five to 25 years in Nevada State Prison, and Strickland thanked him.

As for the money the convicted criminal had pilfered, if it were returned to the original owners, the men could be convicted of illegal gambling (only some games of chance were allowed then). Thus, the money instead likely wound up in the county treasury.

Tragic Finale

A month later, in August, while in the prison hospital, Strickland picked the lock and found his way into the yard. At risk of being shot by a guard, he scaled the perimeter wall and hotfooted it.

He’d made it about 12 miles when bloodhounds tracked him down in a Carson City mill fewer than three hours later. Recaptured, he was returned to the pen.

The following February, Strickland snatched a razor from the prison’s barber shop and used it to fatally cut his throat.

Sources

1935

Police discovered John S. Parks, a 67 year old, carrying a loaded Colt 45 automatic on a downtown Reno, Nevada street around midnight on a July Monday.

With blood streaming from his nose and smeared on his face and clothes, Parks refused to say what had caused his injuries.

After taking him to the hospital, they jailed him. He was released the next day on $200 bail until his trial for carrying a concealed weapon.

It then came to light that Parks had engaged in fisticuffs that night with a co-worker, Frank Soares. Both men were dealers in the Colombo Hotel’s gambling club. Witnesses said Parks had hit Soares first after a heated argument, after which Soares, 38 years younger, had bested him. Parks had threatened to kill his adversary.

History Of Violence

The altercation with Soares wasn’t Parks’ first. In 1922, he’d shot a porter at the Overland Hotel in the hallway outside the room in which he’d been staying. Parks, who’d been drinking earlier, had grown angry when he’d asked for a second room key, and William Hubbard had responded that one couldn’t be procured until the next morning. Parks had drawn a revolver and when Hubbard had run, he’d shot twice, hitting him in the neck.

“I am a southerner and hot headed,” Parks had told the arresting officers (Nevada State Journal, July 13, 1922).

Fortunately, Hubbard eventually had recovered.

When the case had gone to trial, the jury members had failed to reach a verdict after more than six hours’ deliberation, so the judge had discharged them. A second trial had ensued, in which jurors had found Parks guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, a lesser charge than the first — assault with intent to kill. He’d served two years in the Nevada State Prison.

Unexpected Outcomes

Eleven days following the scrap between Parks and Soares, the elder gambler died in the hospital from brain injuries caused from a fractured skull. Law enforcement arrested Soares but waited to charge him until an autopsy of Parks could be undertaken to reveal the cause of death.

Ultimately, the coroner determined Parks hadn’t passed away from the wounds he’d sustained from his fight with Soares. Having been cleared of any wrongdoing, the dealer was released.

Sources

Nevada State Prison

1932-1967

Inmates strutted around the Nevada State Prison yard and jingled the brass coins or tokens, in their pockets, to boast their elevated status as winning gamblers of the pen.

Beginning in 1932, convicts ran an open casino on the grounds of this maximum security facility in Carson City.

The warden allowed and didn’t hide it, and the public knew.

Over the ensuing years, the men played craps, panguingue, blackjack, poker, tonk, gin rummy and perhaps non-card games like roulette (although one warden denied that) and bet on sports — all using tokens, $0.05, $0.10, $0.25, $0.50, $1 and $5, as currency.

They did so under supervision in the convicts’ recreation area dubbed the bullpen. The inmates didn’t tolerate cheating, which kept the operations honest. As mandated, winners contributed 10 percent of their receipts to the prison’s inmate welfare fund.

Many prisoners passed the time by gambling, which they said prevented tension and conflict among them. Also, it gave the dealers and winners income and prestige.

Though, as in any casino, a fair amount of losing occurred. “Most of them go broke,” said Art Bernard, the warden between 1951 and 1958 (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 26, 1957).

Breaking The Rules

Ironically, the prison casino lacked a gambling license, a state requirement of any such operation. It violated Nevada gaming law, too, by dealing with “persons of notorious or unsavory reputation or who have extensive police records,” noted columnist Frank Johnson (Nevada State Journal, Jan. 9, 1960). “On the plus side,” he added, “one can say not only all employees, but all patrons as well, have their fingerprints on file with the authorities. And the gaming IS conducted in a location that is ‘easy to police.’”

The fun, however, ended 35 years later, in 1967, when Warden Carl Hocker put a permanent kibosh on the casino and brass.

“I think gambling in prison is degrading, and it’s certainly not constructive,” he said (Nevada State Journal, May 7, 1967). “We’re trying to replace it with constructive, wholesome activities that will contribute to a decent, healthful frame of mind.”

Do you suppose the prisoners then took their gambling underground and switched the currency to something else?

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

Las Vegas Hotel on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1915 (just left of Billiards)

1916

The year brought indictments in Las Vegas against individuals for violating Nevada’s anti-gambling statute, which was unusual because law enforcement generally ignored or poorly enforced it. Operating a gambling game then constituted a felony.

In 1916, most games of chance were illegal except for these that the legislature had allowed via passage of an act in 1915:

• Poker, stud-horse poker
• 500: a social, trick-taking card game* with two to six players that arose in America before 1900
• Whist: a classic English trick-taking card game with four players
• Solo: a trick-taking card game based on the English whist but in which one player often plays against the other three
• Parimutuel betting on horse races
• Slot machines with winnings used only toward the purchase of cigars and drinks
• Social games only played for drinks or cigars served individually or prizes not exceeding $2 in value

“The 1915 law seemed to have no effect on the illegal games, which increased in size and number each year. Bribes to allow unmolested games were so widespread that they were considered little more than a form of license,” wrote Jerome H. Skolnick in House of Cards: Legalization and Control of Casino Gambling.

The Accused

The grand jury for Clark County in Southern Nevada returned felony indictments against eight alleged games of chance operators:  

• O.D. Hicks, a Las Vegas city commissioner
• Ed Van of the 00 saloon
• Lon Grosheck of the Northern saloon
• Carl Wassenbach of the Star saloon
• Fred J. Pierce of the Las Vegas Hotel bar
• Joe Nakagawa, a gambler
• J. Graglia and Tom Biama of the Turf saloon

They all were arrested. Bail was set at $3,000 apiece ($67,000 today)!

The defendants were convicted of gambling and sentenced to serve from one to five years in the Nevada State Prison.

Laxity Of The Law

However, for unknown reasons, the judge in the case, Charles Horsey, suspended the sentence of all of them.

Subsequently, all but the men associated with the Turf applied for a pardon, which the Board of Pardons denied in December of that year.

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* A trick-taking game is a card or tile-based game in which play of a hand centers on a series of finite rounds or units of play, called tricks, which are each evaluated to determine a winner, or taker, of that trick.

Sources

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

Sal “Tar Baby” Terrano

1930s-1952

Salvatore “Tar Baby” Orester Terrano is one of numerous criminals whom Nevada gambling regulators approved to own a casino in the state.

In May 1947, the tax commission granted the Northern Californian, then 43, a probationary, 30-day gambling license to offer roulette, craps, 21 and slot machines at the Twin States casino at Lake Tahoe in Stateline. This approval was after the agency had conducted an investigation into Sal Terrano’s past.

The Dirt

What that should’ve revealed was Terrano:

• Had been selling opium out of the Dog House, a Reno, Nevada gambling club where he’d worked as a dealer in the 1930s.

• Had been convicted in May 1939 for narcotics trafficking between San Francisco and Reno. Then 34, he’d been caught with four five-tael tins* of opium (about 10 pounds) in his car in a hidden rear compartment while driving into Northern Nevada.

The drugs had come from Eugene “Rosy” Bastida and Ernest “Ole” C. Olson, owners of the Turf Club, a San Francisco bar and bookmaking place, who’d gotten the crew of the USS Chaumont, a Navy transport ship, to smuggle them in from Asia twice a year.

• Had served seven years, from 1938 to 1945, of his decade-long sentence in Nevada State Prison.

Back To Tahoe

The case of Terrano also was one in which the two pertinent, gaming license-issuing agencies diverged in their decision.

Once free, the ex-convict received that month-long gambling permit for the Twin States Club in spring 1947 from the state tax commission.

However, simultaneously, the licensing board of Douglas County, in which the club was located, refused to give Terrano a gambling or a liquor license because the business was “not the type of establishment wanted in Douglas County,” said Sheriff James Farrell, likely referring to one where drugs were sold and/or consumed on the premises (Nevada State Journal, May 16, 1948).

Without the county’s approval, Terrano couldn’t be involved with gambling at the Twin States. He returned to San Francisco where he dealt drugs and sold merchandise like Jumping Jimminy and King Kong toys out of his Twin States Novelty Company store.

Ad in The Billboard, Jan. 6, 1951

Nabbed Again

Five years later, in March 1952, while living in the Mapes hotel-casino in Reno, he was arrested again for the transportation and sale of narcotics. He’d been dealing heroin for Waxey Gordon (né Irving Wexler), who’d run the West Coast branch of a nationwide, multimillion-dollar narcotics syndicate until he’d been imprisoned for pushing drugs in 1951. Gordon was a mobster and former bootlegger and illegal gambler.

Terrano was sentenced to four years to be served at the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. Per the judge, he was sent to a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas to get clean before being taken to the Kansas prison.

He died in Leavenworth six months later, at 49, supposedly following minor surgery on an obstructed coronary artery. He was interred in a family plot in the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, California.

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* A five-tael tin, a standard-sized opium container, roughly resembles a deck of cards in dimensions and shape. One tael equals about half an American pound; a five-tael tin equals about 2.5 pounds.

Sources

1943

Two acquaintances were having a drink at a Reno casino bar — Miles T. Ellis, 47, a tourist, and Anthony Swiderski, 52, a local chef in the Northern Nevada town.

At an opportune moment, Swiderski spiked Ellis’ drink with croton oil,* which has a slight smell and unpleasant taste. This plant-derived substance, if ingested, in tiny amounts, can cause stomach cramping, vomiting and diarrhea and in small amounts, can be fatal.

Ellis took a sip and, soon after, became seriously ill.

The bartender, who’d seen Swiderski molest Ellis’ cocktail, hailed the police. They arrested Swiderski while an ambulance rushed Ellis to Washoe General Hospital around 3 a.m. on Saturday, June 5, 1943.

Once Ellis was incapacitated, Swiderski had planned to rob him of his currency — a $4,500 check (about $64,000 today), $400 in traveler’s checks and a small amount of silver. However, the bartender’s action and Ellis’ dramatic symptoms foiled his scheme.

This wasn’t Swiderski’s first failed attempt at theft. He previously had committed a $75,000 robbery for which he’d served time in the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet.

In The Biggest Little City, Swiderski was charged with doping a drink, to which he pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced him to five to 25 years in Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

Ellis recovered from the poisoning.

The Next Act

In November 1944, nearly 1.5 years into his sentence, Swiderski escaped from the prison farm under the veil of darkness.

Despite a $50 reward the warden offered for the convict’s capture, Swiderski remained free for 4.5 months. In April 1945, he was captured in San Francisco and returned to the Nevada penitentiary.

In fewer than two years post escape, he was paroled for good behavior. He went to San Francisco where he resumed work as a cook.

Repeat Of The Same

In The City by the Bay, in 1948, a janitor reported to police three people, two males and one female, acting suspiciously near a car outside of a restaurant. One of them was Swiderski. When police searched the vehicle and the woman’s apartment, they found oxygen-acetylene torches, cutting tools, two pistols, 50 rounds of rifle ammunition, cameras, fountain pens and several hundred dollars’ worth of morphine, cocaine and opium.

The men were charged with possession of burglary tools, suspicion of auto theft and suspicion of violating the gun law.

Swiderski remained in jail while he awaited trial. One day, in court for an appearance, he sat, uncuffed, with other prisoners in an open area of the courtroom, separated from the public by a wooden banister.

When the sole bailiff turned away, Swiderski left his seat and took a new one amid the spectators. Soon after, he left the room and the building. This man, inept at robbery but adept at freeing himself from punitive confinement, had escaped again.

Caught By The Law

He moved to Los Gatos and again assumed work as a cook. That lasted a year before he chose to return to San Francisco, thinking it was safe to do so.

In March 1949, he was re-arrested and returned to jail to face those year-old robbery charges.

It’s unknown what then happened to Anthony Swiderski.

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* Croton oil comes from the seeds of the of Croton tiglium L. tree found in the Far East. Other names for the substance include oleum tiglii, oleum crotonis, croton tiglium and croton tiglii. It once was used to spur surface blood flow in humans and as a laxative for animals (and sometimes jockeys to drop weight), but it isn’t any longer due to the oil’s toxicity. Interestingly, today, it sometimes is applied externally to exfoliate the skin as part of cosmetic surgery or procedures.

Sources

Photo from King’s American Dispensatory, Harvey Wickes Felter and John Uri Lloyd, 1898