1907

A faro game with a $50 limit (at least $1,200 today) was underway in the Tonopah Club on a Thursday night in February. Colonel Abe F. Brown, one of the three proprietors of this mining camp saloon in Central Nevada, was playing. A wealthy man, he’d accumulated his assets via gambling enterprises and playing the stock market.

Soon, Brown lost $25,000 ($630,000-plus today). He wanted the maximum bet removed, but this required consent of his partners — George Wingfield and Ed Kennedy. The manager of the Tonopah Club telephoned and explained the situation to Wingfield, who was in the town of Goldfield at the time. Wingfield permitted him to raise the limit to $5,000 ($126,000-plus today).

Brown began betting $5,000 on a single card, and before long, he was about $100,000 ahead. But then his winning streak reversed and he lost repeatedly. Roughly 24 hours later, he’d amassed a debt of  $300,000 (at least $7.5 million today)!

“It is doubtful if ever such an enormous sum of money has been lost by one man,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (Feb. 25, 1907).

Brown wanted to play $50,000 more, but the dealer convinced him to stop. The gambler seemed nonplussed by the misadventure.

“Brown was as cool as a cucumber after he had lost his fortune. He arose from the table, sauntered to the bar, where he took a drink, and bidding his friends goodnight, went off to bed.”

However, the next day and subsequently, he wouldn’t discuss the event and tried to keep it out of the local papers, to no avail. It was the talk of Tonopah.*

Settling Up

Kennedy, the club’s third owner, arrived from Goldfield shortly to settle Brown’s debt with him.  Because faro was a game played against the house and Brown had a one-third interest in it, in his capacity as co-owner he won $100,000 of his personal $300,000 loss, so his net debt was actually $200,000 (at least $5 million today).

To pay it off, Brown supposedly gave his Tonopah Club co-owners 11,000 shares of the Mohawk mine, valued at $17 apiece at the time, and some other stocks.

“His fortune went the same way it came,” the newspaper noted.

The whole unpleasant incident didn’t stop Brown from twisting the tiger’s tail. The very next night, he sat in on another faro game, albeit one for smaller stakes.

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* Tonopah began in 1900 when prospector Jim Butler discovered silver ore in the area.

Sources

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

1949-1950

The Den opened its doors in spring 1949. The proprietors — Donald A. Bentley, John R. Hope and Robert M. Colahan — likely were hoping for at least as long a run as their predecessors’, nine-plus years, when the property was called the Louvre. But it didn’t happen.

In mid-September 1949, from the basement of that Reno, Nevada saloon/gambling club, a burglar punched a hole in the wall near the door, reached in and opened the lock. After entry, he stole a cash box said to contain $586 (about $5,900 today) in cash and checks, a valuable watch and an agate ring.

The next month, a seemingly unprovoked assault occurred. While a Fallon resident, Francis N. Coolbrith, talked to the bartender in the club, around 7 a.m., a stocky man in his early 30s punched Coolbrith in the face, fracturing the bone below one of his eyes.

The next year, on New Year’s Day, a man named Lloyd McCrorey entered The Den at about 5 a.m. A short time later, gunshots hit him in both legs and severed his right pinkie finger. The victim told officers he didn’t know who’d shot him or why, and all patrons claimed they hadn’t seen anything. Police identified the weapon as a German Luger from the spent shell casings but not the shooter. 

Too Much Crime

When The Den’s gambling license came up for renewal, Chief of Police L.R. Greeson recommended denial because the establishment, in his mind, was a nuisance. The determining body, the Reno City Council, concurred in a unanimous vote.

Bentley, the principal owner, protested, arguing he hadn’t been warned of impending trouble.

“That’s putting us out in the street without enough money to get out of town,” he said.

Mayor Francis R. Smith responded, “I think you are aware of all the reasons the license was not renewed.”

Bentley pleaded for a special permit, at a minimum, so he and his co-owners could operate the bar for a bit longer to make enough money to leave town.

The council members said no, meaning the enterprise had to close immediately.

Hot Way Out

Six hours later, at about 1:15 a.m., a small blaze broke out in The Den’s lowest floor. The fire department extinguished it easily and concluded it had been man-made and ignited in a pile of boxes.

About two hours later, while firemen were questioning Bentley, a second, larger fire erupted in the same room, that one gutting the building and damaging four adjacent businesses.

Authorities, who suspected arson, conducted numerous interviews. Witnesses said little, only that they’d smelled gas fumes just before they saw the fire, which they described as scorching and fast spreading.

“We seem to be dealing with close-mouthed individuals,” Fire Chief Karl L. Evans said, adding that the inferno hadn’t been a rekindling of the first and, too, had been set deliberately.

Also seemingly suspicious was that someone, prior to the flames, had emptied The Den’s slot machine’s coin box. That had required removal of the back paneling, which appeared to have been done carefully but replacement of it, haphazardly.

Bentley said a handful of insurance policies on The Den were in place but had burned, and as such, he didn’t know their value. In fact, the building and its contents were indemnified for $25,000 (a roughly $250,000 value today) — $10,000 for equipment, $5,000 for merchandise and $10,000 for interruption of business.

In spring, the operators of Benetti Novelty Co., a slot machine and juke box distributor, Louis Benetti and Jack Douglass, sued The Den’s proprietors for payment on four unpaid notes totaling $6,540. Douglass, also the landowner, asked the court to terminate his lease agreement with the trio, which they’d breached by not maintaining their liquor license.

The defendants failed to answer the suit, therefore, a judgment was entered by default. Judge William McKnight ordered them to return the property to Douglass and to pay the plaintiffs $8,000, including attorneys’ fees and interest (about $80,000 today).

Financial Recovery Fizzles

In July, Bentley, Colahan and Hope sued the New York Fire Insurance Co. and the Orient Insurance Co. of Connecticut because neither had paid on The Den’s policies. They asked for $10,000 from the former for damage to the club and $1,000 from the latter for lost inventory.

The insurance companies filed a demurrer, or an objection that the insureds’ point was invalid. The judge, though, overruled it and mandated they reply to the complaints against them within 15 days.

They did, noting The Den owners hadn’t submitted the requisite itemized list of items lost in the fire within the stipulated 60 days following the event. They hadn’t provided any records at all.

Sources

Photo from freeimages.com: “Fire” by Rick Cowan

1890

Judge Beckley Campbell conducted court in a Benicia, California saloon.

After hearing the evidence and deciding on a verdict in cases, he meted out punishments based on the result of tossing two dice in a cigar box.

Double fours, for instance, would mean eight days or months behind bars, depending on the crime. With a repeat offender, Campbell would skip the proceedings and go straight to the dice.

Photo from freeimages.com: by Jason Morrison