Casinos at Lake Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada, decades later, in 2008

1958-1959

Clarence Thayer grew ill with flu-like symptoms on Thanksgiving Day in 1958 while visiting his sister in Oakland, California. He was a well drilling contractor who lived in South Lake Tahoe. He and his wife Norma also owned a dry cleaning business that adjoined their home, which she ran and where he sometimes worked.

After an Oakland physician treated the 38 year old, he and his wife returned home. Soon after, he again got sick and sought care locally. When he failed to improve, he was admitted to Carson City Hospital, where he grew worse. He then was transferred to the Veterans Hospital in Reno, where he died on December 10 from what his physicians had diagnosed as pneumonia.

His mother, Lillie Thayer, requested an autopsy be done, and his widow agreed. That examination revealed the deceased’s kidney, liver and brain to be saturated with arsenic! Thus, the forensic toxicologist determined cause of death to be poisoning in small quantities over an extensive time period.

Toxic Source Found

El Dorado County Sheriff Ernest Carlson began an investigation and, early on, ruled out suicide. He administered polygraph tests to all persons of interest.

In interviewing Thayer’s mom Lillie, a 76-year-old former registered nurse, he learned she’d suspected her son was being poisoned for some time and that’s why she requested the autopsy. In separate conversations, she’d shared her suspicion with Norma who “didn’t say anything” and Thayer (Oakland Tribune, Jan. 4, 1959).

Carlson discovered Thayer never had told any of his treating physicians about the poisoning possibility, and it’s unclear why he hadn’t. He had, though, complained to a Lake Tahoe doctor as much as a year earlier about symptoms like the ones that resulted in his death.

In the Thayers’ dry cleaning establishment, Carlson found a few bottles and one mysterious Mason jar containing cherry soda and some jars of root beer concentrate — all tainted with arsenic.

More Details Emerge

During a lie detector test, the housekeeper, Mary Dalhoff, admitted to having taken about 15 bottles of the cherry soda to the dry cleaning business and placing them in the storage room. As far as she knew, she said, they were unadulterated at the time. She’d obtained them from the casino bar at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, in Stateline, Nevada, on the south shore.

She denied knowing anything about the Mason jar or the concentrate. The results of Dahloff and her husband’s polygraph exams were “satisfactory” (Reno Evening Gazette, Jan. 26, 1959).

During Norma’s lie detector test, she said she’d moved the soda to keep it from freezing and after doing so, had seen her husband drink bottles of it from time to time.  

While the news media never reported the outcomes of widow Norma and mother Lillie’s polygraphs, presumably they showed no deception or were inconclusive because no arrests were made … ever.

The case went cold.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: by Constantine Kulikovsky

1902-1927

Touted as “the finest clubhouse west of the Rocky Mountains,” the Casino at Tallac debuted at Lake Tahoe’s South Shore in California in July 1902 despite gambling having been illegal in the state since 1860 (San Francisco Chronicle, July 15, 1902).

“Tallac, heretofore the staidest and most exclusive resort in the Sierra Nevadas, is now the scene of nightly revelries, the clink of the glittering gold, the roll and rattle of the ivory ball and the constant hum of excited voices can be heard most any night in the big, new gambling hall, the Casino,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Aug. 4, 1905).

Elias “Lucky” Jackson Baldwin, a San Francisco realtor and stock speculator, built the summer getaway for $30,000 (about $750,000 today). The rustic casino, finished in maple and pine, contained 3.5 levels. It was furnished with gambling equipment for roulette, faro, and dice, card and other types of illegal games, which “were conducted there day and night” (Los Angeles Times, Aug. 10, 1905).

The casino’s playing cards were unique, and sets, housed in a leather case, were sold as souvenirs. The cards portrayed, for instance, natural scenes from Lake Tahoe and Fallen Leaf Lake or showed guests enjoying the on-site recreational offerings, reported the Tahoe Heritage Foundation, which supports various preservation, restoration and education projects and programs in the Lake Tahoe Basin. One contained an image of H.O. Comstock, the cards’ designer. Even Baldwin himself was pictured, as the “Jolly Joker.”

Other recreational amenities in the Casino building included four bowling alleys, billiards tables, sun parlors, wine rooms and a theatrical stage, café and ballroom. Rare for the time, the structure boasted electric lights, 500 of them. Along with the gambling house, the resort encompassed two hotels.

Gambling Was Protected

Despite their being prohibited by state law, gambling games ran wide open at the casino. Owner Baldwin had contacts in Placerville who’d notify him when law enforcement officers were on their way. It took them a while, as it was 60 miles up a mountain from there to Tallac. When alerted, Baldwin had the game tables hidden.

The local residents didn’t mind the gambling, as it “‘brings them business’ and makes Tallac a lively resort” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (Aug. 24, 1905). California officials ignored it, believing that enforcement of the law “would force the upscale resorts to move to neighboring Nevada (Aug. 3, 1905), where numerous forms of gambling, at the time, were allowed. (In 1909, however, Nevada abolished gaming; the state fully reinstated it in 1931.)

The People And The Trek
Guests and players were primarily wealthy folks of both genders from the West Coast, such as Nathaniel “Nat” Carl Goodwin, the American actor and vaudevillian.

“Women who move in high circles of society in the larger cities, dressed in fashionable clothes, and flashing rich jewelry, are often seen in the Casino, where they sit down and take a hand in some of the games, with as much freedom as some of the men,” described the Los Angeles Times (Aug. 10, 1905).

The trip to the Casino at Tallac was long. Visitors starting out in San Francisco first had to take a barge across the San Francisco Bay then a train to Sacramento. They and Sacramentans journeyed by train to Truckee. Next was a stagecoach ride to Tahoe City (at North Lake Tahoe), where they boarded a steamship that then crossed to South Lake and stopped at Yank’s Pier. Closer visitors traveled by stagecoach from California’s Placerville and Nevada’s Carson City.

The Casino’s Fate

Baldwin passed away in 1909, at which time his daughter, Anita, assumed control of the property. She ran it into the 1920s but after a sustained decrease in the number of tourists, she had all of the buildings, including the Casino, demolished in 1927.

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