1957-1962

Perhaps it was a bird-brained idea; perhaps not.

In 1957, Dick Graves, the owner of the Nugget, in Sparks, Nevada, commissioned a handcrafted, solid gold rooster for display in one of his hotel-casino restaurants, the Golden Rooster Chicken House, then under construction.

The final product was 9 inches tall and embodied about $40,000 worth of 18-carat gold, a $339,000 value today.

After a year or so of the gold bird drawing attention in its burglar-proof coop, Graves found himself in legal trouble … over the fowl.

United States law prohibited citizens from owning more than 50 ounces of any precious metal unless it was a piece of art. Graves’ rooster weighed a whopping 255 ounces. The government, deeming the bird an advertising gimmick rather than an objet d’art, seized it in 1960 and sued its owner for violating the 1934 Gold Reserve Act.

Up To A Jury

During a trial two years later, jurors were tasked with deciding whether Graves had been using the rooster for artistic purposes or not. Three experts gave divergent testimony on that issue.

Graves’ attorney Paul Laxalt said he was “an innocent businessman caught in the web of complicated and confused government” (Reno Evening Gazette, March 29, 1962). “The holding of Dick Graves of this little rooster is not going to upset the international gold balance. It would be a terrific shame to have the rooster melted down.”

After struggling to decide, the jury ultimately ruled in Graves’ favor, concluding his rooster was exempt from the federal rule. The government returned the precious metal poultry to Graves, who promptly returned it to its casino roost. The prosecutor, though, filed an appeal.  

One and a half months later, the U.S. government abandoned the case for good. As for the rooster, it paraded its shiny plumage at the Nugget until July 2014, when it was sold for $234,000 at the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction. 

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1970-1971

In the summer of 1970, a package and suitcase found in a Sparks Nugget Motor Lodge room in Northern Nevada with a note affixed saying to please deliver the items to Nugget owner John Ascuaga’s office. A $20 bill was attached as a tip.

A few days later, Nugget manager Gil Padroli opened the package. It contained a bomb — an explosives-filled cardboard tube attached to a timing mechanism and battery! (Police discovered, though, it wasn’t wired to detonate.)

A handwritten message with the device demanded a total of $1 million from the Sparks Nugget, Harolds Club and Harrah’s Club. The casinos were to exactly follow two outlined steps to deliver the cash. First, they were to mail $100,000 to two different California post office boxes. The money had to arrive within four days (Wednesday, June 24). If it wasn’t, wired bombs like the one in the package would be planted in their casinos.

Padroli, however, hadn’t even opened the package left for Ascuaga until the day after the deadline. But no bombs exploded or were found. Police, however, sent a portion of the $200,000 to the mailboxes and posted surveillance teams at each. Nothing happened.

A similar extortion case would take place in Southern Nevada two years later, in which a different perpetrator demanded 21 Las Vegas hotel-casinos pay a total of $2 million or get bombed one by one.

Instructions, Part Two

The second step was for the casinos to place another $200,000 in the trunk of a car parked on a rural street south of downtown Reno. If this wasn’t done by 10 p.m. Tuesday, June 30, then 84 bombs in various places would detonate. In the trunk would be the location of 40 explosive devices along with final directions for where to leave the remaining $600,000. At that site, a note would indicate where the remaining 44 bombs were placed.

That day, about 60 law enforcement officers, many disguised as campers and hunters, staked out the area around the drop site. But by 11:20 p.m., when the police chief aborted the operation, no one had shown to retrieve the money.

Pursuit Of Suspects

Having worked the case for days, the police identified some suspects:

• One was arrested on an unrelated charge in California soon after the package had been left at the Nugget.

• Police booked the primary suspect, a second California man, Eugene Raymond Dill, a 32-year-old contractor, and charged him with extortion.

• Three months later, Frank Richard Gunn, a friend of Dill, also was apprehended in Seattle and charged with being an accessory after the fact.

The district attorney’s office, however, only pursued charges against Dill, who pleaded innocent, and the case went to trial in March 1971. A latent fingerprint examiner testified that Dill’s fingerprints were found on the sample bomb. When the prosecution called Gunn as a witness, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment. The judge, however, threatened him with contempt of court charges, forcing him to testify, during which he denied any knowledge of the crime.

After four hours of deliberation, the jury decided Dill was innocent.

A month later, Frank Gunn billed the Washoe County Board of Commissioners for $45,000 in damages as compensation for a false arrest in the bomb extortion case. Commissioners denied the request.

Sources

1962-1999

You’ve likely heard of Dumbo, Horton and Babar, but what about Bertha?

Real, unlike the others, Bertha is an elephant renowned for having performed in shows at the Nugget hotel-casino, in Sparks, Nevada, for 38 years!

Former Nugget owner, John Ascuaga, bought Bertha in 1962 for $8,000 (that’s $63,000 in today’s dollars) from a Wisconsin circus museum and, soon after, had the 17 year old appear on stage for opening night of the showroom Circus Room and regularly thereafter.

“Bertha is really super. She’s so gentle and very intelligent. We do a trick where she lays on top of me. She is so careful that I’m not afraid at all,” said Diane Gustin, who performed with her (Nevada State Journal, July 20, 1975). “She is one in a million. She has a fine temperament.”

This Asian star often performed with a stunning female and, over the years, with a younger elephant sidekick, first Tina, then Angel. Once, she carried to the stage Liberace who was bedecked in a $100,000 costume. She also did her act at local elementary schools.

In 1973, Ascuaga awarded Bertha with a 10-year pin and inclusion into the prestigious Nugget employee Hall of Fame; she celebrated by consuming an extra hay bale.

Bertha lived in a barn adjacent to the Nugget, a $75,000 facility equipped with water, electricity, heat and an outdoor exercise yard. Her trainers lived in an apartment above it.

Beauty Routine

This 9,800-pound pachyderm chowed down five times a day, mostly on hay, grain, oat mash, bread, lettuce and other vegetables.

Her beauty and hygiene regimen read like a spa menu. During the summers, peak performance season, Bertha’s trainer bathed her and exfoliated her skin (with fine sandpaper) daily to keep her soft and smelling good. He cut her hair every six to eight weeks with … a blowtorch.

He routinely trimmed her toenails and cuticles. In the winter, when she didn’t perform because the showroom was closed, she basked in a total body, pore-clearing oil treatment that remained on her skin for four weeks.

The entertainment icon retired in October 1999 and died a month later at age 48.

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