An innocent man was placed in law enforcement’s crosshairs in late 1930s Los Angeles for a heinous crime … the frame-up stuck.

George “Les” Bruneman

Caught Unawares

While strolling on Southern California’s Redondo Beach Strand, or boardwalk, with a female employee on a July Monday night after dinner with friends, George “Les” Bruneman, 40, was shot in the back. The bullet, which entered his left shoulder, pierced a lung and entered his abdomen. He survived but spent months in the hospital.

“I’m living on borrowed time,” Bruneman told a detective lieutenant. “I’ve got about six weeks more. They’ll get me the next time. They won’t send the same pair, though. They’ll send experts after me the next time” (Oakland Tribune, Oct. 25, 1937).

Bruneman owned/operated the Surf Club gambling house in Redondo Beach and had many horse racing bookmaking establishments throughout that Los Angeles County beach area.

In Cold Blood

Six weeks after his release from the hospital, on October 25, while drinking with friends in Los Angeles’ Roost Café in the wee hours, Bruneman was executed, sustaining four shots from a distance followed by six more at close range. An innocent bystander, Frank A. Greuzard, ran after the killers, but they fatally gunned him down, too.

Police theorized that Bruneman’s murder was related to a gambling feud of some sort, perhaps even rivals wanting his territory for themselves.

Pete Pianezzi, 1981

Seeking A Suspect

While various persons of interest were questioned and released, an informant led police to Peter “Pete” Attillio Pianezzi, an ex-convict from San Francisco, California with bank robbery charges pending against him. He was arrested for the murders of Bruneman and Greuzard.

Pianezzi went on trial for the killings in February 1940, when he was 38. In court, one of the owners and the bartender of the Roost Café identified him as being the shooter. The prosecutor went for the death penalty, but the jury couldn’t agree on a verdict.

In Pianezzi’s second trial, which ended two months later, the panel of his peers convicted him of first degree murder, and the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment at Folsom State Prison.

Around the same time, he was found guilty on three counts of first degree robbery netting $17,000 in bank holdings. For those, he was given three life sentences. All four periods were to be served concurrently.

Long Overdue Exoneration

Pianezzi served 13 years, getting released in May 1953. For the next several decades, he worked to clear his name with respect to the murders and always maintained his innocence regarding them. He especially wanted his wife Frances to see him cleared, but it didn’t happen by the time she passed away.

“I’ve been pretty upset and depressed,” Pianezzi said. “I wanted her to see it. But even if she’s not around, I’m going to hang in there. I didn’t commit the murders, and that’s it” (Folsom Telegraph, June 26, 1981).

In 1966, California Governor Edmond “Pat” G. Brown, offered Pianezzi a pardon on the grounds that he’d been rehabilitated. He turned it down though because he wanted exoneration based on his innocence.

Fifteen years later, in 1981, Brown’s son, California Governor Gerald “Jerry” Brown pardoned Pianezzi, then age 79 and retired from a job distributing newspapers in Mill Valley.

Moceri on left, Bompensiero

Later Revealed

Roughly four decades after Bruneman and Greuzard’s murders, the identity of the actual killers and the motive for the crime supposedly came to light. Two hitmen, members of the Los Angeles Mafia — Leonard “Leo/Lips” C. Moceri and Frank Bompensiero — committed the murders, according to Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno, one of their cohorts who became an FBI informant. Jack Dragna, head of that crime family, ordered the hit, he said. (Moceri and Bompensiero had died, by murder, before Pianezzi’s pardon, the former in 1976, the latter in 1977.)

What allegedly led up to the hit on Bruneman was a dispute between him and Johnny Rosselli, whom the Chicago Outfit had dispatched to Los Angeles to protect Nationwide, the only horse racing wire service provided in California at the time. Bruneman had been bootlegging the service. A rumor swirled that Bruneman wanted to take out Rosselli, then a respected member of the Dragna crime family. When Dragna heard it, he acted pre-emptively.

According to Fratianno, Moceri had described to him years earlier how the assassination had gone down and the fallout, concluding with: “Want to hear the payoff? The cops arrested some dago, Pete Pianezzi, and believe it or not, the son of a bitch was convicted and he’s still serving time on that murder rap. It’s a bum beef.”

Sources

Photo of Bruneman: from the Oakland Tribune, Oct. 25, 1937, by the Associated Press
Photo of Pianezzi: from the Arizona Republic, June 25, 1981, by the Associated Press

Craps game at Harolds Club

1952

“Someone very dear to you is being held and will be killed if you don’t give me the money.”

This was the content of the note, a bluff, Frederick Charles Will, handed to the manager of the American Trust Company branch in San Francisco on July 28.

Walter Blomberg, whose wife was at home that Monday afternoon, gathered and handed $20,000 in small bills (about $188,000 today) to the robber, a 33-year-old draftsman and war veteran originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Will, aka Frederick Charles Klose, had Blomberg accompany him out of the Northern California bank and even onto a public bus — the escape vehicle — so as not to arouse suspicion among the other employees. At some point, the two men parted ways.

Just In Case

Will went to the apartment of a friend, Martha Dorn, where he opened the briefcase he had with him and showed her the money inside, scattering bills on the floor as he did so. He explained that he’d won $30,000 at the racetrack. She soon ushered him out, as she was expecting a guest. Before leaving though, he hid a wad of $20 bills in her sofa, which she would later discover and turn over to the authorities.

The Yen To Gamble

Next, Will spotted and asked an idle cab driver if he’d take him to Reno, Nevada. Anthony Gelini, 44, agreed. After switching to his personal car, Gelini drove Will to his apartment to pick up his roommate, Sidney Dubowy, also 33. From New York, he was an accounting student at Golden State College in the Bay Area.

Once all three were in the car and en route to Nevada, Will/Klose pulled out a gun and opened his briefcase to display the copious bills inside. “Well, I stuck up the bank,” he told Dubowy. “You didn’t think I would do it. But it was easy—just like in the movies” (Reno Evening Gazette, July 29, 1952).

Upon arriving in The Biggest Little City, at around 4 a.m., Will/Klose instructed Gelini to drive them to Harolds Club, which he did. Will and Debowy locked the briefcase in the car’s trunk and took the key with them into the casino, leaving Gelini outside to wait for them. The roommates gambled at the club for hours.

Now, What?

When they left Harolds, they discovered Gelini and his car were gone. While they were inside, he’d phoned his wife, relayed to her the events and instructed her to call the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and local police. Then he’d sped back to The City by the Bay.

Subsequently, San Francisco Police Department officers retrieved from Gelini’s trunk the briefcase and the $17,000 inside. They asked Reno authorities to apprehend Will/Klose and Dubowy.

By that time, however, the two men had caught a flight back to San Francisco. Shortly after their return, law enforcement agents arrested them at their apartment. 

Willing Or Unwilling Accomplice?

Eventually, more than $19,000 of the stolen $20,000 was recouped. In August, Gelini went to collect the bank reward for recovery of the money but was denied it. Instead, he was arrested soon after, following indictment on the charges of comforting and assisting a fugitive, hindering and preventing his apprehension, and concealing and transporting stolen bank funds between states. He, too, was arrested.

“He is deeply involved,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Karsh told the grand jury. “He was never under any coercion at all, and there was opportunity galore when he could have gotten away.” He only came back “because he knew the jig was up.” Karsh’s office had evidence, he said, that Gelini had planned to take all of the money that he could if he hadn’t gotten the $5,000 promised him.

Gelini countered, “All I was trying to do was to be Will’s friend until I could make a break. Too many cab drivers have been killed by not being friends.”

A jury found Gelini guilty of receiving more than $100 of the stolen money, $140 specifically. He was sentenced to a year and a half of probation.

Punishment Meted Out

As for the other two, Will/Klose was indicted on charges of bank robbery and interstate transport of stolen funds. Dubowy was charged with receiving, possessing and concealing stolen funds under $100.

At arraignment in federal court, Will/Klose told the judge: “I don’t want no jury trial. I want to plead guilty and be punished for what I’ve done” (Reno Evening Gazette, July 30, 1952).

Dubowy said, “I’m just a good natured kid; I was taken advantage of.”

On sentencing, in November, Will/Klose was given eight years in prison for each charge, both stints to be served concurrently. Dubowy got three years’ probation.

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

1937

The Great American Football Pool (GAFP) of 1937 was to be of massive scale and the first of its kind in the U.S.

The organizers aimed to sell 3 million tickets at $1 apiece and award sizable prizes: $100,000 to the first place winner, $50,000 to the second and $25,000 to the third in addition to 2,100 other weekly awards totaling $424,500.

And similar to the popular Irish Sweepstakes, which many Americans participated in, a percentage of the proceeds — 10 percent, or $300,000 in this case — would go toward building a children’s hospital in Reno, Nevada.

“Americans generally, however, associate the Irish Sweeps with charity, never with rackets, and until recently the great lottery has run without a single sharp glance being cast in its direction,” wrote Fred J. Cook in A Two-Dollar Bet Means Murder. “It is made to appear that the huge Irish Sweepstakes pot is divided 75 percent in cash prizes returned to the winners, 25 percent to the hospitals in Ireland.”

For the GAFP, San Francisco, California resident, Charles Warren, formed a Nevada corporation, obtained the requisite gaming license and opened a Reno office, where all operations had to be carried out to be legal.

“We will not have any solicitors in any other city and positively will not use the federal mails in any way. We believe, and so do leading lawyers in Reno, San Francisco and Los Angeles, that there is nothing illegal about the pool,” Warren told the Nevada State Journal (June 17, 1937), emphasizing that it was not a lottery or sweepstakes, which are illegal under state and national laws.

In terms of how the pool was to work, participants would select a number with each ticket they purchased. That figure was their guesstimate of this: the total points to be scored by 40 specified U.S. college football teams throughout the upcoming season multiplied by the total number of games all teams cumulatively would play.

The first place prize would go to the ticket holder who guessed the correct number. Second, third and subsequent awards would go to the individuals with the next closest guesses.

Not In The Business Plan

GAFP ticket sales started in September. Within two weeks, bunco squad police in San Francisco, California arrested Warren, two employees and three promoters of the pool, one of whom, Jack Ferdinand Van, police said was the operation’s mastermind. They were charged with theft conspiracy for selling tickets outside of Nevada. Officers said the football pool was being operated as a lottery and was arranged such that it would be impossible for anyone to win the first prize.

These arrests led to an investigation in Reno, in which it was discovered GAFP Inc. had sent tickets via car to sales representatives in San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta and Van Horn (Texas) and tickets had been sold in nearly every state. Also, GAFP Inc. hadn’t secured any property for the hospital.

In early October, sheriff’s deputies raided the GAFP’s Reno office, seizing ticket books and pool promotional literature and advertisements. They arrested the three employees present — the Reno manager/secretary-treasurer, the publicity agent and the accountant — for violating Nevada’s anti-lottery law. Authorities closed the office and revoked the corporation’s gaming license.

During the trial for the three men arrested in Reno, the state contended that the football pool was a lottery scheme. The defense claimed it wasn’t and had been approved by the city and county authorities when they granted licenses. The jury acquitted the three defendants.

Meanwhile, a San Francisco grand jury indicted six men on two charges each: conspiracy to violate the California lottery law and conspiracy to commit grand theft in operating the GAFP. These individuals included Van, three promoters and two employees. Interestingly, Warren, the president, wasn’t among them. All six pleaded innocent when indicted.

Their trial took place in March of 1938. One witness testified ticket sales proceeds were to be split this way: 10 percent ($300,000) for the hospital, 23 1/3 percent ($699,900) for prizes, 33 1/3 ($999,900) percent for ticket sales commissions and the other third ($999,000) for GAFP Inc.

The jury found the two employees not guilty but convicted the remaining four. Of them, the judge sentenced Van, the pool leader, to a two-year prison term in San Quentin State Prison in light of his previous record. The three promoters were placed on probation.

The Great American Football pool turned out to be not so great.

Sources

1947

This year, the United States’ Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) co-financed construction of a gambling enterprise via its $975,000 loan for the Mapes hotel-casino in Reno, Nevada.

Under Attack

Three years later, Senators William Fulbright (D-Ark.) and Paul Douglas (D-Ill.), members of a committee investigating the RFC’s past lending practices, publicly criticized the group for using federal funds for what included a gambling enterprise and for doing so knowing two of its operators — Louis “Lou” J. Wertheimer and Bernard “Bernie/Mooney” Einstoss — had ties to the underworld. Further, in making the loan, the RFC had overruled the determination of the San Francisco office and Washington RFC review committee not to grant it. The loan went through.

It was “poor public policy” for the RFC to help “big-time gambling,” Fulbright said (Nevada State Journal, July 4, 1950). “It’s a very serious matter to involve public money with characters of this kind.”

Intended Use

The federal government had established the RFC in 1932 to boost the country’s confidence, recapitalize banks and stimulate loans during the Great Depression. The corporation was to help state and local governments finance public works projects and provide loans to banks, businesses, railroads and agricultural entities.

With respect to the Mapes’ financing, RFC officials argued that in places like Reno where gambling was legal, loaning money to a hotel with a casino was no different than doing so for a hotel with a bar. They argued that the casinos’ profits were minor and, therefore, irrelevant. They insisted the Mapes loan was sound and in the public’s interest, and collateral was ample. They denied knowing about Wertheimer and Einstoss’ mob connections.

Douglas agreed the loan was legal but questioned its ethicality. He countered that the gambling areas generated 98 percent of the Mapes’ net profits.

Ultimate Fate

The federal government disbanded the RFC in 1957. The Mapes closed in 1982.

Sources

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

1976

The Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California ruled any tips, or tokes, that individuals give to casino dealers is a form of taxable income.

Photo from freeimages.com: “Batch of Dollars” by Alexander Kalina

1911-1912

A San Francisco, California ordinance outlawed bucket shopping in 1911 — no  longer was running or visiting such an enterprise legal — and one operator didn’t like it.

Henry A. Moss, a bucket shop owner and Nevada citizen, vowed to fight the new law, as it prohibited him from running his four San Francisco branches, which did substantial business. Moss claimed that he’d invested $50,000 in his business locally, that he spent $4,400 a month in telephone and telegraph charges, that he had more than 1,000 customers and that he took in about $15,000 a year in profits (about $365,000 today).

His enterprise, Moss & Co., also had shops in these California locales: Sacramento, Oakland, Fresno, Long Beach, Redlands and San Diego. Locations outside of the state were in Reno, Nevada; Ogden, Utah; and Portland, Oregon.

His Tactics Begin

Moss immediately applied for a temporary restraining order (TRO) and a permanent injunction to prevent the police from hindering his operations, such as arresting him or any of his workers or customers. He claimed the city ordinance was “arbitrary, unreasonable, unjust, oppressive and discriminatory, and in violation both of the constitution of the state of California and the constitution of the United States.”

In response, a judge, in June, denounced bucket shopping as “nothing but gambling,” deemed the ordinance valid and denied Moss’ request (San Francisco Call, June 1, 1911). The proprietor then asked for several days to remove the telegraph network between his offices and close his business.

Instead of shutting down, Moss appealed the ruling and took the case to the federal court, asking it for a similar injunction, which a judge there denied.

City Fights Back

Despite the ban, Moss kept his San Francisco bucket shops open. In October, members of the San Francisco Police Department raided his offices, confiscated various paraphernalia and arrested six employees, 26 visitors and one of Moss’s attorneys.

The following month, those workers and Moss were found guilty and fined $100 or 50 days in jail (the visitors weren’t charged). He filed an appeal and secured a stay of judgment.

Soon after the U.S. District Court of Appeals declared constitutional the law that the federal Congress had enacted, thereby eliminating any basis for Moss’s appeals.

3 More Legal Rounds

1) Subsequently, Moss pleaded his case before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, “reciting imaginary grievances and dismally pleading that his business has been attacked by competitors in the shape of the New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.”

The justices refused to reverse the lower court’s ruling, thus, denying Moss’ initial request for a TRO and injunction.

2) In December, Moss sued a dozen U.S. Circuit Court officers, charging they all conspired, with the management of the San Francisco Call newspaper (which believed bucket shopping to be nefarious and vowed to help eradicate it), to put him out of business. Further, he asked they be restrained from interfering with his operations.

Again, though, he lost his case. That didn’t stop him.

3) Next, he sued three Call newspaper executives — John D. Spreckels, owner; Charles W. Hornick, general manager; and Ernest P. Simpson, managing editor. He claimed they’d libeled him in the article, “Bucketshop Moss Cries Conspiracy,” which “was intended to impeach his honesty, integrity, virtue and reputation” (San Francisco Call, Dec. 29, 1911).

He also cited an op-ed piece, “Bucketshop Rascal and Newspaper Rascal Join Hands Against a Common Foe, The Call,” which purported the real purpose Moss had filed suit in the federal court system was to gain publicity in the San Francisco Chronicle, whose managers’ attitude toward bucket shopping was the same as Moss’s. He sought $100,000 in damages (about $2.5 million today).

In February 1912, Police Judge Charles Weller dismissed the cases against the Call men as baseless.

“So ends the legal farce, the shady and tricky misuse of the courts whereby the proscribed swindlers made their last stand against the inevitable. In none of these proceedings was there ever the slightest merit,” wrote the San Francisco Call (Feb. 18, 1912).

From Plaintiff To Defendant

Moss soon found himself the target of some civil suits. One, brought by an H.E. Churchill of Sacramento in 1912, claimed a male agent of Moss & Co. “induced” her to gamble in wheat by telling her it was like any other investment (San Francisco Call, Feb. 11, 1912). He subsequently persuaded her to bet more money, only to be informed later on that she’d lost all of it — $324 (about $7,000 today) — due to a turn in the market.

The judge required Moss to pay her back in full.

J.C. Robinson, a former San Francisco newspaperman, complained that on December 12, 1911, he’d arranged with Moss & Co. at its Oakland office to sell short, or bet against, 200 shares of stock at a certain price, and that he deposited $400 with the company to cover an advance. A month later, the stock had dropped seven points, paying a profit of $1,400 (about $33,000 today). All told, he was to get $1,800 — his original $400 investment plus his winnings. When he’d gone to cash in, he’d been told he had to go see Moss in San Francisco. There, Moss had informed him the business didn’t have enough money to pay him back in full and had given him a $200 check as partial payment. Moss & Co. hadn’t paid anything more.

Moss argued that because he hadn’t had a contract with Robinson — a violation of the state constitution — the deal was void and he didn’t owe the money.

The outcome of this case isn’t known. How do you think the judge should have ruled?

Sources

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