1958

Reverend Maurice D. Tulloch, 50, a Kansas man, gave up his Baptist ministry for shilling in a Nevada casino.

Feeling as though his life was suffocating him, a month earlier he’d walked out of a church seminar and had gone to a bus station where he’d heard a woman purchase a ticket to Las Vegas.

On a whim, he’d done the same. With only $20 in his pocket, he’d headed to Sin City, having left his wife and two adult children behind.

Photo from freeimages.com, by Andrew Beierle

1940s

A spate of “roadside zoos” opened along various Nevada highways, typically in rural areas, during the late 1940s.

The owners were hustlers who lured unsuspecting tourists onto their grounds with the promise of seeing exotic birds, reptiles and/or wild animals then swindled them out of money via games of chance.

The ruse often involved the three-dice game chuck-a-luck or a variation thereof. Although uncommon in casinos, chuck-a-luck was legal, but “thieving and cheating games” weren’t (Nevada State Journal, April 1, 1945).

Chuck-a-luck’s odds greatly disfavored the players who, on average, lost more than they won — and that was with legitimate dice.

“A shill, posing as another tourist, usually draws the victim into the game which involves eight dice, a “contract” supposed to govern the same, a fast and not always accurate count of the dice by the operator, and a process by which the player loses all when he is no longer able to add to his stake,” explained the Reno Evening Gazette (May 23, 1947).

Numerous travelers complained to local officials about being fleeced at these places. The state governor, the attorney general and other officials despised these enterprises and wanted them eliminated as they stained Nevada’s reputation. The state legislature, in early 1947, passed a law prohibiting these fronts for games that victims couldn’t win, thinking that would eliminate them. However, Nevada police superintendent, Lester C. Moody, didn’t seem to be getting it done from a law enforcement standpoint.

They’re Baaaack. . .

But it didn’t; a minor alteration allowed the racket to continue. Owners simply switched their bait from animals to a museum, which was legal, and continued bilking visitors out of their cash. One such operator was Robert Lee Thomas, who ran such an establishment in Rhyolite off of Highway 95.

“Nevada, noted for its fair play, strong men and decisive action, is lying down while racketeers, most of them of unknown reputation, move in and take a haul of thousands of dollars a day from unsuspecting tourists,” wrote Paul F. Gardner (Nevada State Journal, June 1, 1947).

Victims kept complaining to city and state authorities. The allegations included:

• The racketeers told them they couldn’t stop playing and take their winnings but, instead, had to double up and keep on.

• When they’d protested, menacing men “roughly and threateningly” ejected them from the property (Nevada State Journal, June 1, 1947).

• When they’d said they intended to report them to the attorney general, the con artists warned them via veiled threats to keep quiet.

Mr. and Mrs. Fowler of Los Angeles, California, claimed they’d been taken for $15,500 in traveler’s checks (a $164,500 value today) at Ernest Dennison’s Emigrant Pass establishment on Highway 40 (Interstate 80 today). When the couple entered the place, they were cajoled, on the pretext it was legitimate, into playing Badger the Old Cowboy, a form of chuck-a-luck. In the game, the player throws eight dice hoping to make a high or low total score with them. 

A Palo Alto, California, man asserted he’d lost $60 while participating in a chuck-a-luck game at the Nevada Trading Post on Highway 40; Mr. and Mrs. Hill, Alameda, California, residents, lost $100 in a similar way.

Some victims found themselves without money to return home and wound up stranded.

Stricter policing — revoking the owner’s licenses or arresting those operating illegally — eventually eradicated these roadside con game joints for good.

Sources

1941

The man who played roulette in the Palace Club nearly every day for six months was noticeable for his suave appearance. Henry Helmut, age 47, had a bit of gray hair and sported a tasteful, waxed moustache, Pince Nez glasses with ribbon and sharp, tailored attire.

“He looked like a college professor out on a gay holiday and gambling club operators say he ‘was the most impressive piece of scenery’ they have had around in a long time,” reported the United Press (The Amarillo Sunday News-Globe, Dec. 7, 1941).

Eventful Work Shift

On Friday night, December 5, while Helmut was on the job, shilling for the Reno, Nevada casino, police officers arrested then turned him over to federal agents who’d flown in from San Francisco and New York. Helmut’s capture marked the end of a 1.5-year search for him that required 37,000 travel miles through the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Helmut was wanted on a secret indictment in New York for conspiracy against the United States with international ramifications, the feds said.

The name Henry Helmut was one of 40 different aliases — including Paul Laval, Dr. Hoffman and Martin Helmuth — the dapper man had used. His actual name was Helmuth Hartmann.

On a search of Hartmann’s Reno hotel room, police found an unloaded Mauser firearm, about $350 in bills in the lining of his suitcase, gold ore and letters written in German.

Was he a German spy? Was he a drug trafficker? Was he involved in a counterfeit ring? Was he a Nazi?

The feds wouldn’t say, but they extradited Hartmann to The Big Apple to face trial.

Filling In The Portrait

More information about Hartmann later came to light. He’d been born in Germany but since had obtained American citizenship. He was associated with a New York gang. In fact, Reno Detective Captain Harry Fletcher surmised that Hartmann had been casing the local casinos on behalf of his East Coast colleagues who wanted to get into the business. The gambling club booster’s lavish spending around town on a 50 cents-an-hour income made Fletcher suspicious.

Hartmann had been an international racketeer and swindler (stock and matrimonial cons, for example), and had served time in prison. He’d been an associate of 1) Victor “Count” Von Lustig (an alias), the U.S.-based mastermind of an extensive counterfeit operation that law enforcement dismantled in 1935 and 2) Miroslav Skrivanek, a widely known narcotics trafficker in Czechoslovakia.

Recent Unlawful Activity

Hartmann had been apprehended in Reno for his involvement in an extensive conspiracy to smuggle drugs from Mexico and distribute them in New York City. The specific charges against him were conspiring to import, distribute, conceal and transport narcotics.

He’d acted as the liaison between Mafiosi in East Harlem —the 107th Street Mob — and opiate sellers south of the United States border. In doing so, he’d arranged for New York mobsters — Frank Livorsi, Dominick “The Gap” Petrilli and Salvatore “Tom Mix” Santoro, all with long records of violent crimes, from rape to homicide — to obtain a continuous supply of narcotics from Mexico. He’d accompanied these dealers on a drug buy, at least once, in summer 1940.

“The boys now have enough money to buy all the narcotics you can find in Mexico,” Livorsi had told Hartmann. “Do a good job for us” (Advisory Committee, Feb. 16, 1946).

In Northern Nevada, officers also had discovered opiates, in sample-size quantities, in Hartmann’s belongings:

• 200 grains of heroin
• 41 grains of raw opium
• 133 grains of morphine hydrochloride

Punitive Consequences

Once in federal custody, Hartmann divulged what he knew about the narcotics operations and fingered numerous accomplices. This led to a second indictment, in which he also was named, in Arizona, the state through which the drugs entered the U.S.

Hartmann was found guilty in both the Arizona (May 1942) and New York (July 1942) trials. In each, he was given a suspended sentence of two years’ prison time, with probation.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: Pince Nez felts by Infrogmation of New Orleans