Ernest J. Primm, casino mogul

1956-1959

A thief absconded with $2,000 (about $17,500 today) from the Club Primadonna casino in Reno, Nevada on the first Friday of May 1956.

The missing 10,000 dimes, 2,000 quarters and 1,000 half-dollars, the reserve fund for the club’s slot machines, were taken from a wooden cabinet in the basement. Only two employees had keys to that room.

One of them, Thomas Knaub, seven months later, sued the owner of that Reno, Nevada club, Ernest J. Primm, alleging he’d made false public statements that Knaub had been involved in the robbery. Knaub, no longer in his employ, claimed Primm’s alleged slander of him had prevented him from landing a job.

Therefore, he sought $75,000 in general damages, $25,000 in punitive damages and $2,135 for lost wages — a total of $120,000 ($834,000 today).

The jury trial began three years later in June 1959. The first witness called, Primm, denied ever accusing Knaub of participating in the theft or telling other casino owners Knaub had taken part in it.

“I have never been contacted by one single establishment about Mr. Knaub,” he said. “I have never contacted any establishment about him.” Primm said he didn’t know who took the money, “and I still don’t know” (Nevada State Journal, June 16, 1959).

He added, however, he knew Knaub gambled in the local casinos. “I know one thing. A man that goes around town gambling and puts I.O.U.’s in doesn’t deserve a job,” Primm added.

The former assistant office manager, Margaret Stanley, next testified that in Knaub’s job as a Primadonna club cashier, he counted the cash every morning, made bank deposits and co-signed payroll checks. She said once he’d found and pointed out a $1,000 error in the bank deposit.

When Knaub’s attorney was about to question Stanley about a conversation she’d overhead in the past between Primm and another employee, Marjorie Standlee, the defense objected on the grounds that such conversations are confidential. The judge agreed, and Stanley’s testimony—the crux of Knaub’s case, per his attorney — was cut short.

Two days later, the judge, A.J. Maestretti, dismissed the suit because the plaintiff had failed to present a sufficient case.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: by Greg Primm

Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, Stateline, Nevada, 1973

1972-1973

Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to read is true. No names have been changed, as there were no innocents.

This is the city, Stateline, Nevada. It’s the gambling mecca of Lake Tahoe. Most people visit it to recreate, but some go there to commit a crime.

It was Tuesday, September 19, 1972. It was a chilly night.

Douglas County sheriffs were working the late shift when they got the call. At 10:40 p.m., five employees at Harrah’s hotel-casino were making a routine money transfer from the basement to the casino floor when an armed man stopped them on the stairs and shouted, “Give me the money, or I’ll blow your heads off.”

The suspect was described as roughly 5 feet 8 inches tall, 170 pounds, stocky, in his 30s, long haired and wearing dark glasses, a cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes and possibly a fake beard. His weapon was a .45-caliber automatic Colt pistol.

He grabbed the two bags from the workers, ordered them to back off and fled through the casino and out the door into the dark. He purposely dropped the bag containing chips, $4,500’s worth, ran about two blocks and crossed Highway 50 and then the state line into California. 

At a nearby motel, he hopped on a motorcycle, whose rider had been waiting for him. The bike didn’t start, again and again. The two dismounted, pushed it, finally got it going, jumped on and rode off.

The thief had stolen $178,500 ($1 million today), at that time the largest robbery ever involving a Nevada casino.

Quartet Of Suspects

The crime became a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) matter when the stickup man crossed state lines. Investigators had the motorcycle’s license plate, captured by a witness, to go on as well as possibly the testimony of an informant, Barbara White, who’d been in on the planning of the crime but had backed out before execution.

Agents found $125,000 of the stolen money, the wig, beard and gun buried shallowly in the backyard of the motorcycle driver. Four days after the crime, they arrested:

• Donald Leroy Rice, 35, of Stateline, Nevada, unemployed dealer, married, four-year resident
• Larry Joseph Swinberg, 36, of South Lake Tahoe, California, Harrah’s employee, married, resident of fewer than 30 days
• Jack Andrew Cozad, 37, of Stateline, Nevada, recent Harrah’s employee, separated, 12-year resident
• Thomas Richard Norman, 36, of Reno, Nevada, poker dealer in Reno’s Cal Neva Club, single, 8-year resident

The FBI tagged Rice as the stickup man; Swinburg, the getaway driver; and the other two, lookouts, one inside and one outside the casino.

The four faced federal charges of conspiracy and transporting stolen goods across state lines, and all but Rice, with aiding and abetting. State charges were conspiracy to commit armed robbery and robbery. Bail, mandated by federal and state courts, totaled $125,000 or $150,000 for each suspect.

One Turns Against Others

Legal wrangling began, with defense attorneys filing numerous motions, asking for separate trials, change of venue and more, all of which the judge denied.

Trials were held in 1972 (federal) and 1973 (state). Swinburg testified for the prosecution at both, giving up his accomplices and admitting to commandeering the motorcycle. He said that of the $178,500, he, Rice and Cozad were to get $52,000 apiece, Norman was to get $1,000 and White was to get $17,850.

The suspects were found guilty and were sentenced, in federal (1972) and state (1973) courts, respectively, to:

• Rice: 5 years’ prison, 8 years’ prison — to be served concurrently
• Cozad: 5 years’ prison, 5 years’ prison — to run concurrently
• Norman: 5 years’ probation, 3 years’ prison — the latter was suspended so he was to serve 6 months in jail then 5 years’ probation
• Swinburg: Probation (the state hadn’t charged or tried him)

An Unexpected Twist

Later in 1973, Douglas County sheriff’s deputies recovered what they believed to be the remaining $52,000 from the Harrah’s heist a year earlier.

When investigating an armed robbery of the people living in Rice’s former house in Stateline, officers zeroed in on four suspects, all South Lake Tahoe residents, and found the cash.

“Authorities did not disclose the evidence to support the statement the money might be part of the Harrah’s loot, nor would they say how much was reported taken in the Rice residence robbery,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Sept. 8, 1973).

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

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. 

Sources

Criminal drama occurred between two men late one November morning in the Wieland saloon in Reno, Nevada in 1904.

James Mann, a Wyoming man who sometimes worked in Silver State gambling clubs — the Louvre saloon and Oberon bar — had been imbibing for some time inside the Wieland. He jokingly began to spar with another intoxicated patron, P.J. O’Halloran, a laborer from San Francisco who’d been helping construct an irrigation canal outside of Reno.

O’Halloran, who’d arrived in town the night before and had few acquaintances there, grew annoyed and beat up Mann, who in turn got angry and viciously returned blows. During the heated brawl, O’Halloran knocked him down several times and gave him two black eyes, numerous bruises on his face and a welt on his chin.

Mann went to the saloon’s back room where he washed up. When he returned, he grabbed the bartender’s revolver from behind the bar and fired twice at his then foe.

“He did not give O’Halloran any warning and was cool and deliberate in his deadly work,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Nov. 20, 1904).

The bullets missed. As O’Halloran ran out of the saloon, Mann followed and shot twice, hitting O’Halloran once in the back of the head, “plowing beneath the scalp for a distance of two inches before it made its exit” (Reno Evening Gazette, Nov. 17, 1904). The impact gave the victim a concussion, but he remained conscious.

Unbelievable Outcomes

While O’Halloran staggered around outside of the building, Mann went back inside the saloon. Officers soon arrived, arrested and jailed Mann, who’d told them his name was James Bernard.

A doctor was summoned, who tended to O’Halloran before being taken to the county hospital. There, when a newspaper reporter tried to interview him, after answering only a few preliminary questions, he “dozed off into a drunken slumber” (Reno Evening Gazette, Nov. 17, 1904).

The following day, O’Halloran was doing well, lively and walking about the hospital. Because he’d sustained only a flesh wound, it was believed he’d heal in a couple of days. After getting discharged, he remained in Reno, heavily consuming alcohol.

In the meantime, Mann/Bernard was charged with shooting with intent to kill. A preliminary hearing took place, at which witnesses, including O’Halloran with his head swathed, recounted the events. Mann/Bernard declined to make a statement. The court determined he should be bound over to a grand jury. Unable to pay the bail of $1,000 (at least $25,000 today), he was detained in the county jail.

About two weeks later, O’Halloran again was hospitalized for an extreme case of pneumonia and, soon after, died. The autopsy revealed the cause of death hadn’t been the gunshot wound but, rather, typhoid pneumonia brought about by alcoholism and exposure. The deceased, who’d claimed to be only 24 years old, supposedly had been a hard drinker who hadn’t taken care of himself.

Early in 1905, Mann/Bernard entered a plea of not guilty, and his trial was set for February.

That month, however, because the state’s two eyewitnesses had left Nevada and the prosecuting witness, O’Halloran, was indisposed permanently, the case was dismissed. Mann/Bernard was released from jail.

Sources

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

1953-1955

In fall 1953, John “Fat Jack” Galloway was playing the card game, 21, at Leo Quilici’s hotel-casino, the El Rancho Hotel, in Wells, Nevada.

Fat Jack himself, in his early 40s, was the operator of a gambling saloon located 8 miles west of Fallon. Beforehand, he’d been employed as a dealer at Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas clubs and had served prison time on bunco and vagrancy charges in the early 1940s in California.

Leo’s son, Joe Quilici, 27, the El Rancho’s manager and a city councilman, was dealing to Fat Jack. Thinking Fat Jack was a tourist, Joe cheated him out of about $4,200 ($37,000 today); Joe’d often peek at the top card in the deck and deal the second card rather than the first.

After Fat Jack left the casino, another El Rancho dealer told Joe that Fat Jack was an undercover agent for the tax commission. Joe ran across the street to the Bulls Head Bar, and told his father, the proprietor, he’d been caught cheating. (Joe had been discovered dealing dishonestly previously, and his gambling license had been suspended but then reinstated. The same had happened to Leo for having cheated customers with a plugged slot machine that couldn’t pay out jackpots.)

The day after Fat Jack and Joe’s gaming encounter, Dudley Kline, 61, allegedly paid Leo a visit at his saloon. Dudley was second in charge of the Nevada Tax Commission’s gambling division that, since 1948, had been tasked with keeping games of chance in the state honest. Dudley told Leo that Joe had swindled a tax commission agent and that he, Dudley, might be able to help. Then he left.

Fat Jack then paid a visit to Leo several hours later. After deceptively introducing himself as a tax commission agent, Fat Jack reiterated that the problem of Joe cheating him could go away for $3,000 ($27,000 today), an amount he said he had to split with another person, presumably Dudley. Leo paid him the full amount.

In February 1954, after an investigation in which the Quilicis were the only witnesses, Dudley and Fat Jack were arrested. They were bound over for trial and released on $5,000 bond each.

Elko County District Attorney Grant W. Sawyer, who’d learned of the incident from an anonymous tipster, asserted that Dudley was an accessory before the fact to extortion but charged him as a principal because he supposedly “set the stage” for Fat Jack telling Leo that he, Fat Jack, was a commission member (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 11, 1954). Sawyer similarly charged Fat Jack.

Despite Dudley denying knowledge of any blackmail attempt, Robbins Cahill, the tax commission’s secretary, fired him. 

“The circumstances of this case dictate that we continue to dig. We are going to turn over every spade full around and weigh it carefully,” Cahill said (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 11, 1954).

Without a choice, Leo Quilici closed down the gambling at his two properties — standard procedure when cheating has been discovered.

Pursuit Of (In)justice

Sawyer’s charges against Dudley were dismissed twice. Two different judges, first in district then in justice court, granted Dudley a permanent writ of habeas corpus based on insufficient evidence to warrant holding him for trial.

In a third attempt to convict Dudley, Sawyer, in early 1955, filed an appeal with Nevada’s Supreme Court, challenging the writ.

“I have searched my conscience and I honestly believe there is evidence to hold [Dudley] Kline for trial,” he said, denying he was attempting to persecute him (Reno Evening Gazette, Aug. 13, 1954).

At that point, Fat Jack was awaiting trial pending the outcome of Sawyer’s appeal on Dudley’s case. He closed his gaming operation.

The higher court upheld the original writ, saying “there was no error in the conclusion of the district court that Kline had been held to answer without reasonable or probable cause or in the order discharging him from custody by reason thereof” (Nevada State Journal, April 14, 1955). This ended the legal ordeal for Dudley. Despite the outcome, though, he wasn’t reinstated on the tax commission.

Within the week, Sawyer dismissed the extortion charges against Fat Jack, believing the state wouldn’t be able to adequately prove a guilty verdict.

Was Dudley guilty or, perhaps, framed by Fat Jack and the Quilicis?

Sources

1935

Although it was a Ponzi scheme, its lure of big money was too strong for many Renoites to resist. One chain letter business, the Opportunity Club, popped up overnight as part of the nationwide craze in 1935. In five days, it garnered more than 5,000 participants (about one-quarter of Reno, Nevada’s population then).

“The business has been well organized and every section of the town has been invaded with ‘investors’ seeking to attract their friends into a ‘sure thing,’” reported the Nevada State Journal (May 15, 1935).

How did it work? A customer bought two copies of a letter from a broker for $5 (an $86 value today). He then sold them to two people who signed for and received two more letters from the broker. Each of those two sold their letters to two other individuals and so on. Each letter contained six names. The payout for the top name getting 64 people to buy each of his two letters was $256 ($4,400 today). That amount was $320 minus the per-letter 20 percent broker fee of $32. One name moving to the top of a letter would put $12,288 in the company’s coffers.

While it sounded enticing for the public, it wasn’t. The deal depended on an individual getting 128 (64 per letter) people to pay the $5 apiece at the broker’s office. That would move him up one spot on each letter. The payout also required 128 people for each of the other five names on the letter, or 640 individuals, also paid $5 apiece in person Further, an individual couldn’t get the reward until he advanced to the top of two letters.

The Weak Link

When District Attorney Ernest Brown learned of the racket, he demanded the Opportunity Club cease operations immediately and threatened its manager, Ralph C. Perrin, and other principals with prosecution if they didn’t comply. Brown declared such a business fraudulent because it involved an element of chance and, therefore, violated Nevada’s anti-lottery law, in which it defined:

“A lottery is any scheme for the disposal or distribution of property, by chance, among persons who have paid or promised to pay any valuable consideration for the chance of obtaining such property, or a portion of it, or for any share or any interest in such property upon any agreement, understanding, or expectation that it is to be distributed or disposed of by lot or chance, whether called a lottery, raffle or gift enterprise, or by whatever name may be known.”

The following morning, Perrin applied for a gambling license. That night, the sheriff noted a sign on the club’s door, “Operating with Permission of the Sheriff” — a false statement. On the D.A.’s orders, the sheriff closed the club and arrested Perrin and three others. All were arraigned and released on their own recognizance pending an upcoming jury trial.

A second chain letter brokerage — the Golden Chain Letter Club — was about to open but given the heat on Opportunity never did.

Perrin asserted the chain letter business:

• Wasn’t a lottery as chance didn’t play a role
• Didn’t have the chance of any investor losing (ha!)
• Didn’t involve a drawing

If the business were a lottery, they argued, then so were other types of currently licensed games, such as roulette, keno, 21, horse racing, etc.

They gathered petition signatures of people who believed similarly. Perrin claimed to have received 1,500 signatures from less than one day’s effort. In the meantime, many who’d bought letters asked the D.A.’s office what would happen. Would officials ensure the investors got what the broker promised them? Would they lose their money? At that point, it totaled about $25,000, which Perrin said was being held for investors in a trust.

Taken To A Jury

Five days after Brown ordered the club closed and with chain letter activities finally halted, the Opportunity Club trial began. Two days in, Justice of the Peace James Sullivan declared Brown’s complaint against the defendants defective, thus ending the case. Brown said he’d issue a new complaint against the men only if they restarted the business. Opportunity’s lawyer said the men intended to operate if the city granted them a gambling license — a long shot.

Three days later, the city council, also believing the chain letter gig was a lottery, denied Perrin a gambling license. He then tried to obtain one from the neighboring city and his hometown, Sparks. It, too, for the same reason, refused to grant it. That was the final break in Northern Nevada’s chain of chain letter enterprises. It’s unknown what happened to the money investors already had paid to Opportunity.

Photo from pond5.com: “JOIN Chain Links” by 5@iqoncep

Sources

Embassy Club interior

1936-Present

If it weren’t for gambler Ernest J. Primm’s nerve and fortitude, California’s nearly 90 card clubs wouldn’t exist today.

With a gambling license from the City of Gardena (in Los Angeles County), he opened a poker room there in 1936 — the Embassy Club. It was the first aboveground establishment of its kind since The Golden State’s anti-gambling legislation had been enacted in 1860.

Players, who competed against each other, not the house, each rented a seat for $1 ($17 today) and chips — which is how the business made money.

Primm viewed the enterprise as legal given the existing state and local gambling laws. California’s Anti-Gambling Act banned all banking* and percentage** games involving cards, dice or any other devices, along with 11 specific games. Non-banking poker wasn’t excluded.

Unlike Primm, law enforcement officials viewed even non-banking poker as illegal. Captain George “Ironman” Contreras, head of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s vice squad, for instance, believed the commercialization of the game was wrong despite no regulations against it.

“I don’t object to draw poker in private homes, but I feel it is improper in clubs where the proprietors charge a fee for the tables,” he said (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 7, 1938).

Round One: Is Poker Legal?

A year after the Embassy Club debuted, four men — three players and one employee — were arrested, charged with illegal gambling and taken to trial. It resulted in California Attorney General Ulysses Webb, in 1938, reaffirming the Supreme Court decision from 41 years earlier that gambling doesn’t violate the state’s laws unless there’s a house percentage or banker for the games.

The judge acquitted all of the defendants due to insufficient evidence based on Webb’s ruling. Primm kept operating his establishment, and other similar clubs sprang up in the county.

Round Two: Another Test Case

Yet, despite his own ruling, Webb pursued closure of these poker palaces with the help of Southern California law enforcement groups.

“My opinion, right or wrong, doesn’t justify gambling,” Webb responded, reported the Los Angeles Times (Nov. 5, 1938.)

In November 1938, Webb ordered the shuttering of card rooms in Gardena, Hawthorne, Redondo Beach, Ocean Park and Long Beach — all in Los Angeles County. Many closed willingly. Sheriff’s squads stormed those that didn’t (Primm’s Embassy and two Hawthorne clubs), seized their equipment and padlocked the doors.

“Capt. Contreras said yesterday’s raids should result in a test case to determine if draw poker is legal in California. He said owners will have to seek Superior Court writs to regain their paraphernalia,” reported the Los Angeles Times (Nov. 7, 1938).

Another trial ensued, which involved Primm and other operators, who were victorious. The judge acquitted them and mandated their gambling equipment be returned.

Round Three: A Different Tack

Webb and his supporters, though, persisted in their anti-poker efforts. They next sought legal closure of the clubs for being public nuisances, targeting the Embassy Club for the precedent. Primm and his co-owners again were prohibited from conducting gambling on the property until the court ruling. At that hearing, the judge ruled on Webb’s side, determining the clubs met the definition of public nuisances and, thus, were subject to abatement proceedings.

“A house which is open to the public as a gaming house at which large numbers of persons congregate for the purpose of betting on a game is a public nuisance even though the game itself might be innocent and harmless,” he said (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 3, 1939).

He issued permanent injunctions against all of the poker parlors in Gardena and Hawthorne, forcing them to halt all activity. This remained in effect for two years.

Total Knockout: Poker Allowed

In the interim, Primm and his co-owners of Gardena’s Monterey Club filed an appeal, which the State District  Court of Appeals heard in 1941. The jurists determined that non-banking poker was legal!

“Neither playing draw poker or maintaining a place where it is played being an offense, it follows that the city of Gardena was authorized to license and regulate the operations of such pastime within its corporate limits,” Associate Justice Thomas P. White wrote in the opinion (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, 1941).

“Gambling is neither unlawful per se or a public nuisance per se in California. Playing at any game, even for money, is not in itself an offense at common law. The offense, if any, must be created by statute, and can only be punished as the statute directs,” White explained.

Finally allowed to operate hassle free, card clubs in Los Angeles County thrived for decades, particularly those in Gardena, which evolved into California’s mecca for such gambling between the 1940s and 1970s. At one point, more revenue from these clubs went to that city than any other in California, and its poker version called Gardena jackpots is named after the locale, where it was hugely popular during the same period.

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*Banking games = those in which bets are placed against a house, bank or dealer
**Percentage games = banking games with relatively disproportionate odds

Sources

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