30 Illegal Years To The Strip: The Untold Stories of the Gangsters Who Built The Early Las Vegas Strip

Copyright © 2015 by Bill Friedman

www.BillFriedmanAuthor.com

All rights reserved under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part in any media or in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the author.

Published in 2015 by Old School Histories

www.OldSchoolHistories.com

ISBN: 978-0-9896852-3-8

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY WIFE, GLADYCE, WHO GAVE ME UNENDING ENCOURAGEMENT AND SUPPORT.

OUR MARRIAGE INCLUDES THE LAST 39 YEARS OF THIS 49-YEAR PROJECT.

SHE REINFORCED ME DAILY WITH THE INSPIRATIONAL CHALLENGE,

WHY DON’T YOU FINISH THE DAMN THING!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION - THE PURPOSE OF & THE SOURCES FOR THIS BOOK

WHY THIS HISTORY?

FICTION MASQUERADING AS TRUE CRIME

THE EXTENSIVE NEWSPAPER RECORDS

ORAL HISTORIES WITH NEVADA’S GAMBLING PIONEERS

THE SCOPE & UNIQUE FEATURES OF THIS RESEARCH PROJECT

PREFACE – AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY

THE LEGAL RAMIFICATIONS OF HANGING OUT WITH HOODLUMS

CHAPTER 1 - THE PROHIBITION OPERATIONS OF LUCIANO & COSTELLO

BEN SIEGEL’S GLORIOUS DREAM

PROHIBITION - IDEALISM WITH UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

PROHIBITION’S MANY NEW SOURCES OF ALCOHOL

SMUGGLING FOREIGN LIQUORS

THE LUCIANO & COSTELLO IMPORTING OPERATIONS

THE COSTELLO & DWYER RUMRUNNING TRIALS

THE BIG THREE IN LIQUOR & GAMBLING

CHAPTER 2 - THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MAFIA

AMERICA’S POWERFUL STREET GANGS & THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MAFIA

JOE MASSERIA’S MANHATTAN/BROOKLYN MAFIA GANG

THE AMERICAN UNIONE SICILIANA POLITICAL POWER BASE

LUCIANO & ASSOCIATES BECOME RANKING MAFIOSI

LUCIANO’S ECUMENICALISM IN AN INSULAR SICILIAN CULTURE

ETHNICITY IN U.S. CULTURE, PROHIBITION, & CASINO DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 3 - THE YOUNG TURKS EMBROILED IN CONFLICT

PROHIBITION TESTED THE TOUGHEST

VENGEANCE IS NOT MINE

THE YOUNG TURKS CAUGHT UP IN THE SICILIAN-AMERICAN WAR

LOOKING FOR AN EXODUS TO A QUAGMIRE

FROM THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE

CHAPTER 4 - LUCIANO’S ERA OF PEACE – LEADERSHIP & LIFESTYLES

CHARLIE LUCKY & THE YOUNG TURKS LEAD THE UNDERWORLD

MAFIA VIOLENCE, CLEVELAND & MOONSHINE, & THE CRIME CONFERENCE

THE YOUNG TURKS MAKE FRIENDS

BACK TO A NORMAL LIFE

THE REPEAL OF PROHIBITION

A WORD THAT OPENED DOORS

CHAPTER 5 - NEW YORK CITY POLITICS & THE MOB

THE CORRUPT POLITICAL MACHINES

A HIGH-STAKES GAMBLER EXTRAORDINAIRE

ROTHSTEIN’S TIES TO THE YOUNG TURKS

THE MAN & THE MYTH

THE LEGAL & POLITICAL MACHINATIONS OF THE ROTHSTEIN KILLING

WHO SHOT A. R.?

LUCIANO & COSTELLO AS POLITICAL KINGMAKERS

CHAPTER 6 - CAPONE’S CHICAGO & THE UNIONE SICILIANA

THE CHICAGO EMPIRE OF JIM COLOSIMO & JOHNNY TORRIO

TORRIO BROUGHT IN AL CAPONE & THE CICERO MOVE

CAPONE AFTER TORRIO

LEADERSHIP OF THE UNIONE SICILIANA & THE MASSACRE

CAPONE’S PHILADELPHIA STAY & BACK IN CHICAGO

THE IRS IMPACT ON CAPONE

ELIOT NESS & THE FBI VERSUS CAPONE

CHICAGO JOINED THE MOB TO BUILD LAS VEGAS

CHAPTER 7 - LUCIANO & TOM DEWEY

SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TOM DEWEY

DEWEY TURNS HIS SIGHTS ON LUCIANO

LUCIANO’S TESTIMONY ABOUT HIS BACKGROUND

THE VERDICT

DEWEY’S FOIBLES & PROSECUTION OF POLITICAL OPPONENTS

CHAPTER 8 - MURDER, INC. & LEPKE BUCHALTER

A DA INVENTS MURDER, INC.

THE STORY OF MURDER, INC.

THE MURDER, INC. TRIALS & INFORMANT ABE RELES

LEPKE & GURRAH INDUSTRIAL RACKETEERS

LEPKE THE POLITICAL PAWN FOR A PRESIDENCY

DEWEY’S POLITICAL MACHINATIONS

DEWEY’S POLITICAL AMBITIONS & SARATOGA SPRINGS

CHAPTER 9 - BILL O’DWYER, ABE RELES, & ALBERT ANASTASIA

ABE RELES WENT WHERE?

RESTRICTED & SECURELY-PROTECTED ACCESS

NULLIFYING A MURDER INVESTIGATION

THE CONSEQUENCES FOR MURDER

O’DWYER’S RELATIONSHIP WITH COSTELLO & TAMMANY

WHO WAS BEHIND RELES’ MURDER?

ANASTASIA WAS DOMINANT IN BROOKLYN

DA O’DWYER SHIELDED ANASTASIA

THE PANTO MURDER BOMBSHELL

CHAPTER 10 - LUCIANO IN PRISON

LUCIANO & THE WAR

LUCIANO’S LEGAL MANEUVERS

A WINTER IN THE CARIBBEAN

LUCIANO IN EXILE

THE LAST TESTAMENT OF LUCKY LUCIANO

CHAPTER 11 - THE ACTION CROSSED THE HUDSON RIVER

JOE ADONIS IN BROOKLYN

BEN MARDEN’S RIVIERA, & WILLIE MORETTI IN NEW JERSEY

FRANK ERICKSON: FROM NEW YORK TO NEW JERSEY

THE MORETTIS WORKED FOR ERICKSON & ADONIS

ERICKSON HELPED THE GOVERNMENT - OOPS!

EVERYTHING UNRAVELED FOR ADONIS

REFORM CAUGHT UP WITH WILLIE & SOLLY MORETTI

ADONIS IN EXILE

CHAPTER 12 - THE ACTION MOVED INTO CAJUN COUNTRY

COSTELLO FROM YOUTH THROUGH PROHIBITION

COSTELLO & PHIL KASTEL IN LOUISIANA

COSTELLO AS LEADER

THE FBI HAUNTS COSTELLO

COSTELLO’S BUSINESSES

COSTELLO’S POLITICAL SCANDALS & LEGAL ENTANGLEMENTS

CHAPTER 13 - JOE E. LEWIS & COSTELLO’S COPACABANA

JOE E. LEWIS, MACHINEGUN McGURN, & THE COPA

McGURN AFTER CAPONE

JOE E. LEWIS PERSEVERED

COSTELLO’S PIPING ROCK CASINO & COPACABANA NIGHTCLUBS

CHAPTER 14 - THE ACTION SETTLED UNDER THE PALMS

JIMMY BLUE EYES’ EARLY CAREER

JIMMY BLUE EYES JOINED POTATOES KAUFMAN

MEYER LANSKY’S EARLY CAREER

LANSKY JOINED JIMMY BLUE EYES

MIAMI’S S&G BOOKMAKERS & ILLEGAL CASINOS

LANSKY’S HIGH-END SARATOGA CASINO & OTHER BUSINESSES

KEFAUVER TOOK ON FLORIDA LAW ENFORCEMENT

EVERYTHING CAME UNDONE FOR LANSKY & HIS PALS

CHAPTER 15 - CHICAGO FROM PROHIBITION TO UNION TAKEOVERS

CAPONE TURNED TO UNION RACKETEERING

THE RISE OF FRANK NITTI

CHICAGO’S MAYORS CERMAK & KELLY

NITTI’S POLITICAL POWER & UNION TAKEOVERS

JOHNNY ROSSELLI WAS THE MAN ABOUT TOWN

IATSE’S HOLLYWOOD-MOVIE-INDUSTRY EXTORTION

THE IATSE RACKETEERING TRIAL & PARDONS

BIOFF & RICCA AFTER PRISON

CHAPTER 16 - GO WEST YOUNG MAN

SIEGEL FOLLOWED THE STARS TO HOLLYWOOD

MICKEY COHEN REPRESENTED CLEVELAND

JACK DRAGNA REPRESENTED CHICAGO

BEN SIEGEL’S EARLY LIFE & ARREST RECORD

SIEGEL’S INFAMOUS TEMPER & HIS MONIKER BUGSY

THE LIFE-LONG PARTNERSHIP OF SIEGEL & LANSKY

THE MURDER, INC. CASE OF BIG GREENIE

SIEGEL’S LOS ANGELES BUSINESS INTERESTS

HOLLYWOOD’S HOODLUM SOCIALITES

NEVADA’S INVITATION TO A HOOD

ADDENDUMS OF 30 RELEVANT DIGRESSIONS

A The moral crusaders’ campaigns that produced Prohibition.

B President Warren Harding totally corrupted Prohibition enforcement early on.

C Moonshining from early America through Prohibition.

D Prohibition moonshiner car races led the way for NASCAR.

E The moonshine fermenting and distilling process.

F Costello’s rumrunning operations and the government’s investigation and trial.

G U.S. immigration patterns determined the ethnicity of Prohibition’s gang leaders.

H NYPD’s beating of Luciano, and the fraudulent autobiographies about Luciano and Lansky.

I Joe Bonanno’s self-serving autobiography.

J Arnold Rothstein’s criminal image was a myth created by authors.

K The lifestyles of professional Las Vegas sports handicappers and poker players.

L Organized crime books lack credibility, and Rothstein and Torrio were not mentors to Luciano et al.

M The autobiographies about Luciano and Lansky are hoaxes.

N The false sworn claims of Murder, Inc.’s existence by Reles and Prosecutor Turkus.

O The false portrayal of Lepke Buchalter by Turkus in his book Murder, Inc.

P Columnist and broadcaster Walter Winchell revealed dirt on J. Edgar Hoover’s targets.

Q The FBI’s two-year world-wide manhunt failed to find fugitive Lepke Buchalter.

R The false claims by Prosecutors Dewey and Turkus that Murder, Inc. harbored fugitives.

S Four lingering questions about the guilt of the three Murder, Inc. trials’ defendants.

T The informants’ testimonies explain how easily the police could have killed Reles.

U The testimonies by DA O’Dwyer and NYPD Captain Bals lacked credibility.

V DA and Mayor O’Dwyer’s close connection to Frank Costello.

W Mayor O’Dwyer was an erratic political manipulator.

X Mayor O’Dwyer instigated NYPD corruption, and the Harry Gross case.

Y James Moran was the political fixer for Mayor O’Dwyer.

Z Luciano’s contribution to Allied victory in World War II is confirmed by multiple sources.

AA The FBI inquiries of Luciano’s War intel efforts for political dirt compliment him.

BB The two fraudulent autobiographies about Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky.

CC The police surveillance of my interviews with Jimmy Blue Eyes.

DD The strengths and weaknesses of Little Man about Lansky.

ENDNOTES & TIMELINES

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS, MAGAZINE ARTICLES, & LECTURES

INTRODUCTION

THE PURPOSE OF & THE SOURCES FOR THIS BOOK

WHY THIS HISTORY?

This is the untold story of America’s most powerful gangsters. It describes for the first time how organized crime came into existence. It details the organizational structures of the key gangs, and the interrelationships between these independent territorial gangs. This is the inside story of the four gangs who dominated the underworld across the country for five decades like no other criminals before or since.

Early in Prohibition, three of these gangs became the country’s largest in order to import astonishing amounts of the world’s finest liquors. Their freighter ships stopped at sea idling just outside U.S. territorial waters. At night their speedboat fleets loaded the contraband and then raced through the darkness to shore trying to evade lurking pirate craft and Coast Guard cutters. At shore these speedboats transferred their cargoes to a long line of trucks. This convoy then drove to storage depots with its guards ever vigilant for hijacking gangs who could be hiding in ambush in the shadows all along the route.

With the Repeal of Prohibition, these three gangs began operating wide-open but illegal casinos across the nation. Most were elegant facilities that catered to the wealthy. These casinos often offered the area’s finest restaurant or top nightclub entertainment to create a great mood before their guests proceeded on to the gambling room. These high-rolling players were accompanied by their wives who were adorned in magnificent evening gowns, lush fur coats, and exquisite jewelry.

Seven leaders of these three premier gangs developed close associations with each other and became known in the underworld as the Young Turks. These seven included the five partners of the largest importing gang - Charlie Lucky Luciano, Giuseppe Joe Adonis Doto, Meyer Lansky, Ben Siegel, and Vincent Jimmy Blue Eyes Alo. The second biggest Prohibition gang was led by Frank Costello. Even though these two gangs were based in Manhattan and they competed for its wealthy market, Costello was tight friends with each of the other gang’s five leaders. The third largest gang was based in the Midwest and partner Moe Dalitz took the lead in dealing with the nation’s other gang leaders. All the names of the five partners in the largest gang are well known to any one interested in early organized crime, but this is the first time it has been revealed that they were partners.

Likewise no one until now has known which bootlegging gangs were the biggest. I personally interviewed members of these three gangs, and all agreed who was one, two, and three because they knew the amount of firepower each employed to move and protect their liquor inventories. However none of these participants had any idea how many bottles they brought into the country, because they handled every transaction individually in cash and never wrote anything down.

These seven leaders of the three leading gangs partnered in legal and illegal businesses, and they formed underworld political alliances that were every bit as complicated, calculating, and treacherous as the politics of the overworld. These seven leaders, or the Young Turks, shared values that were unique to the underworld. They applied standard business principles to their Prohibition and illegal casino operations, while rejecting gangland’s core values of violence and monopoly. They were convinced everyone could make more money and live longer by competing in business and cooperating politically than they could by fighting, killing, and dying for exclusive territories.

One would have expected that these peculiar underworld values would have kept the seven Young Turks on the sidelines of underworld influence, but major territorial gang wars inadvertently thrust these improbable men to the pinnacle of organized crime leadership. As foreign as their values were to the nation’s traditional violent gangsters, these seven men achieved far greater respect and stronger support from the rest of gangland than any gang bosses in history.

The country’s fourth biggest Prohibition gang was headed by Al Capone in Chicago. This was the country’s most murderous gang and the one focused on expansion. Their values could not have been more contrary to the Young Turks, especially in their proclivity for violence and monopoly. Despite these extreme differences, the Chicago gang’s first eight successive leaders (Capone was the third) and their close associates admired the Young Turks of the three largest gangs and remained loyal to them for many decades. Thus these four gangs partnered together in business ventures, allied in underworld politics over which they were the dominant force, and later developed in concert the gambling resorts of the early Las Vegas Strip. The leaders of these four gangs and their associates built 80% of the fabulous Strip resorts from the Flamingo in 1946 to Caesars Palace in 1966. This was the Strip’s Golden Era when it was the world’s gambling and entertainment mecca, the greatest adult playground ever created.

Unbelievably the Young Turks of the three largest gangs were able to restrain Chicago from committing even more murders than their awful total, and the political intrigue surrounding these disagreements over the use of violence is presented in this book. In addition the Young Turks demanded Chicago behave like normal human beings when dealing with anyone in Las Vegas. The Young Turks kept Chicago in check from the time the Windy City gangsters established a beachhead on the Strip in the late 1940s. They enforced this until the early 1970s when the Young Turks and their associates had sold their Strip gambling resort interests. Since the people associated with the other three gangs were gone from the business, all hell broke loose in Las Vegas as Chicago brought in its penchant for gangland violence. These types of murder had been prohibited from occurring in the city before. Only a few of these bad incidents were depicted Hollywood-style in the movie Casino (1995).

Las Vegas residents and the media have long used the term the mob that built the Strip. This phrase merely referred to the licensed owner/operators of these marvelous gambling resorts. No one in Las Vegas ever had the slightest suspicion that there might actually be an interrelated criminal mob hidden behind the scenes calling all the shots in the vast gambling-tourism industry along the Strip. Then 20 years into this research project, the Young Turks or their associates who directed everything had finally built up enough trust in me to let me into their inner sanctum, so I could write the whole amazing story of what actually occurred and how it all worked. Now the world is about to be exposed to this gripping and exciting exclusive look inside as these gangsters followed their varied paths to the Strip.

This is the thrilling story of these gangsters’ three decades of astonishing adventures negotiating their way through the intricacies of gangland to finally arrive at the Strip. It describes their business challenges; competitive conflicts; underworld political intrigues, clashes, and gang wars; law enforcement prosecutions and persecutions; and threats by powerful and unscrupulous politicians with Machiavellian personal agendas.

To this day old Las Vegans who were residents before 1980 talk about the town’s mob with fond memory. They invariably say, The town was a lot better when the mob ran it, meaning before corporations took over the industry. This is because the casino leaders up until then adopted the core values of the unusual gangsters known as the Young Turks who you are about to meet.

FICTION MASQUERADING AS TRUE CRIME

Vincent Jimmy Blue Eyes Alo was the best friend of Charlie Luciano, and also the best friend and lifelong partner of Meyer Lansky during Prohibition and in running illegal casinos (although when Ben Siegel was alive he was the closest to Lansky). At the beginning of my first interview with Jimmy, he asked why I had been researching for so many years the history of the Nevada gambling industry and the gangsters who populated it. I described my passion for discovering the truth about what actually happened. After listening he advised, I’m fascinated by history. I’m only talkin’ to you because I respect your searching for the truth. But the lies have been told about Meyer (Lansky) and Ben (Siegel) and Charlie (Luciano) for so long and so many times, you can’t change anything. The lies are now the world’s reality. No one’s gonna believe you. i

Jimmy Blue Eyes’ statement triggers two questions. How did so many lies about these gangsters come into existence and then become perpetuated, and why does history have an almost total void about the actual early development of organized crime? The answer to the void is because no one investigated it. Big city police departments did their job of identifying the local gang members, but they acquired little knowledge about these gangs’ organizational structures or their underworld alliances and political interactions with the gangs in other cities that were outside their jurisdiction. Federal law-enforcement agencies like the FBI, IRS, and FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics) investigated a rather small number of cases that focused on gang leaders, so they learned nothing about these gangs’ organizations or relationship interconnections.ii

The only meaningful information about the inner workings of gangs in that era was obtained by local newspaper investigative reporters. They usually developed close personal relationships with their area’s gang leaders who traded information about competing gangs’ activities in the hope of receiving better press for themselves. The investigative reporters of this era were very effective and uncovered much of the information contained in this research. However they usually developed little information about the local gangs’ relationships with other gangs throughout the country. It was the merging of the information from all these local sources and my interviews with key participants during this research that allowed me to finally put together for the first time this era’s nationwide gangland interrelationship structure.

A number of biographical books have been written about these early organized-crime leaders, but all are seriously flawed for the following reasons. Not one of these writers ever interviewed their criminal subjects or their few close associates who had any knowledge about their illegal behavior. Unfortunately our knowledge is so limited because these Prohibition gang leaders were the most tight-lipped criminals in history. Total silence protected them from criminal prosecution by state’s witness testimony, and also from accidentally divulging a clue about their mass liquor transportation methods and plans and storage facilities. The only time they ever talked about their activities was with their most trusted gang associate (or very few associates) who were also involved, but even with them these gangsters never talked about their legal or illegal businesses in which the other was not involved. Thus, while all the former hoods I interviewed later in their lives were surprisingly open about their pasts, not one was able to tell me anything about any of his associate’s activities except for those in which he was also a participant.

The few gangsters of this era who commented to the press were publicity-hounds like Chicago’s Al Capone and Los Angeles’ Mickey Cohen, but they offered reporters only self-serving one liners that were too often untrue denials. Because of this ingrained absolute code of silence among the gangsters of this era, not one of them ever sued an author no matter how untrue and libelous his lies. Thus, unscrupulous writers knew they could manufacture any fiction about these gangsters and publish it as factual biography without fear that its authenticity would ever be challenged, and oh my gosh did these writers ever take advantage of this opportunity.

Two writers claimed their books were autobiographies, but even they failed to obtain any interviews with their subjects about their criminal activities. Thus, the writers of the fraudulent autobiographies about Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky were totally discredited by the press upon publication. Despite these damning revelations, which are buttressed by additional strong evidence in this book, especially in the addendums, later writers about organized crime in this era continued to quote many of these two books’ proven bogus assertions."iii

A biography can be a great historical work even without obtaining an interview of the subject, if it is well researched from relevant documents. However, writers about early organized crime rarely studied their subjects’ lives. Their standard approach was to look at a small collection of major headlines from newspaper morgue files, and around these events write pure fiction about their behavior, motives, interpersonal relationships, and personality traits. These writers presented each gangster’s childhood, early teenage years, family life, and introduction into the underworld, even though practically no record exists about any of this except for their birth certificate or arrival in this country, years of school attendance, and police record. These early organized-crime books also list dramatically different police records for the major gangsters meaning at the most only one book can be factual.

This is why few of the books about early organized-crime have footnotes identifying their source of information, because they are imaginary tales. The books that are footnoted depend primarily on earlier published undocumented organized-crime biographies. Many of the other listings in these books’ footnotes typically cannot be confirmed or they turn out to be false, not exactly the stuff real histories are supported by. Sadly, this genre of books about early organized-crime has been based on repeating the falsehoods by previous writers and then introducing new fanciful embellishments to expand upon and sensationalize these fairytales.

Two blatant examples demonstrate that these writers did not seem to even read the articles attached to the few headline events they incorporated because their books reversed their subjects’ roles. Arnold Rothstein and Joe Adonis were illegal casino operators based in and around New York City and both were big-stake players in high-limit private games. Rothstein and Adonis made separate headlines when each became associated with financial crimes. The book writers who discussed either of these hoods not only attributed the financial crimes in the headlines to them, but went further by claiming Rothstein and Adonis spent their careers specializing in these types of crime. However, if these writers had bothered to read the articles below the headlines, they would have learned that in every one of these cases Rothstein and Adonis were either the victim or an innocent bystander. In fact law enforcement publicly credited both gangsters with helping to bring down the actual culprits. This is how the incredibly ridiculous fantasies about each of these Prohibition and illegal casino gangsters was created, and then book after book repeated and embellished these fictitious accounts. The grossly false information about each of these gangsters in the early organized-crime fictions is exposed in this book not only in the text but also with additional revelations in the addendums. Unfortunately, today’s writers about this era continue to rely on these old books, rather than researching the raw material as I did, so they continue to perpetuate all these fabrications.

Because all the books written about early organized crime are almost pure fiction, practically nothing you have ever read about the organized-crime leaders of this era appears in this book. Likewise almost none of the information presented in this book have you ever read before or seen in a Hollywood production. But these are the events that actually did happen. These gangsters’ lives have finally been exhaustively researched and documented with the source of every statement footnoted so it can be easily confirmed by any researcher, historian, reader, or critic. You are about to learn the whole unvarnished truth about these gangsters’ careers and values, and the reality is very different from the fabricated myths that have been written about them. You are about to embark on a truly unique and amazing real-life adventure packed with riveting and exciting action and filled with intrigue in a place far away from anywhere you have ever visited before.

Jimmy Blue Eyes’ two grandsons lived in Las Vegas, and for years I put out feelers to them that I was interested in interviewing their grandfather. Finally during one visit he agreed to talk with me. At the end of my first meeting with Jimmy, I pointed out that he had never once during his long career given out a single comment to the press, so I asked him why he had finally agreed at age 91 to talk to me. He answered, Because everybody I know is dead. You’re the only person left whose lived in my world, who knows what it was like, who relates to my values, who knew the people I did. You’re the only one who can understand me. Besides, you’ve got some great stories and facts about the people I knew that I never heard before. At the end of my interview he said he needed to get some rest before going out dancing that evening. He was still sharply alert, amusingly quick-witted, and an excellent ballroom dancer who regularly went out to a club to charm the silver-haired girlies and to spend the evening foxtroting and waltzing with them.iv

THE EXTENSIVE NEWSPAPER RECORDS

Besides being complete, this presentation is wholly different from previous histories because for the first time the newspaper article accounts of these gangsters’ activities are included. These were written by reporters from interviews of the eyewitnesses at the events, police and detective descriptions of their findings and handling of investigations, and the trial testimonies that included the victims, the criminal cohorts who turned state’s witness, and the people who harbored some of these gangsters during their fugitive manhunts. The many individual facts collected about each of these incidents create a dramatic step-by-step flow that produces an incredibly exciting and fast-moving adventure story. It is like a movie that is made up of many individual pictures flashed one after the other to produce the motion, but in this case it allows the reader to follow the moving action through his or her imagination.

Newspaper reports are primary source material for biographies about politicians, business leaders, and criminals, and also for law enforcement in criminal investigations. The U.S. Attorney in Chicago who successfully directed the IRS investigative team that prosecuted Al Capone and his lieutenants for income-tax evasion, George E. Q. Johnson, testified to a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on April 2, 1932 about the importance of newspaper articles in building these cases. He explained, I made up a card index. Newspaper men have amazingly accurate information. It was rather astonishing. It was not evidence, but it was very accurate information as to who the gangs were and the leaders [and their activities], so I had a newspaper man make a card index of all the gangs, taking it from newspaper stories. This was the IRS’ principal source material to identify and locate the criminal associations and financial holdings of Capone and his lieutenants.

In that era many newspapers specialized in publishing organized-crime exposés, and their articles were a useful law-enforcement source tool. For example, from the 1920s through the 1980s, about half the pages in the FBI files concerning members of organized crime were reproductions of newspaper articles. (I did not study the FBI files after the 1980s because they were no longer relevant to the Nevada casino industry since the FBI directors who succeeded J. Edgar Hoover eradicated this type of crime by driving all organized-crime hidden interests out of this business.)

Nevada’s early gaming controllers depended heavily on press reports to determine whether casino license applicants should be approved or denied. In the 1940s through the 1960s, Nevada knowingly licensed illegal casino owners and executives from other states for two reasons. First, Nevada had no home grown operators, so the only experienced and knowledgeable casino managers available were illegal operators. Second, a high percentage of casino dealers and executives in that era were accomplished slight-of-hand cheats. Thus, casino officials had to be very knowledgeable about card and dice theft techniques or their operations would have been severely ripped off. This was illustrated by those legitimate businessmen who were licensed as owners in this era but who did not employ a qualified casino manager. Soon after opening, these casinos experienced a high-rate of bankruptcies due to employee theft.

Thus the goal of the early gaming controllers was not to keep experienced illegal casino operators out of Nevada, but as they told me, our job was to determine the good hoods from the bad gangsters. This meant Nevada wanted licensees to have been involved only with the crimes of gambling and Prohibition, while keeping out all those who had committed crimes involving dishonesty, theft, threats, or violence. Hence this book presents the early backgrounds of the good hoods before they began building the Las Vegas Strip. It is the story of these men’s careers, lifestyles, and survival while running huge illicit liquor and gambling operations in the midst of America’s toughest and most dangerous gangs.

To distinguish the good hoods from the bad gangsters, gaming controllers interviewed crime reporters in the cities the applicants came from. The first Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman, Bob Cahill, told me, Newspapermen were a very important arm of my law enforcement program. There were the out-of-state newsmen. Every town has a reporter who specializes in hoods and syndicated crime. I got more information from newsmen than from official law enforcement agencies. They have access to information the police do not have through personal acquaintance with the criminal element. v

Nevada’s early gaming controllers also depended on four dedicated in-state investigative reporters who had a passion for chasing down dirt about hoods. They were determined to ferret out the facts, all the facts. And they never interjected personal opinions that have become the style of so many of today’s newscasters. They worked for the state’s four largest newspapers, two in Las Vegas and two in Reno. They had personal relationships with the local casino operators, who revealed the backgrounds of the various applicants they deemed to be undesirable for Nevada, and defended the ones they knew to be legit no matter how bad their reputations in their home press. All four Nevada investigative reporters also had close contacts with some out-of-state reporters in major cities who followed this criminal element in their locales, so these local newspapermen not only wrote the news but they occasionally dramatically influenced the licensing process by covertly supplying their inside information to the gaming authorities. I was fortunate to have had in-depth interviews with all four even though two had left the state by the time I began my research. They were Ed Olsen, Bob Bennyhoff, Bryn Armstrong, and Frank McCulloch. I discussed with each one much of the information they had learned from their sources especially the many scandals they exposed in shocking headlines.

A major part of my research program was to study the microfilms of six archived daily newspapers. Three covered the gambling industry, politics, and economic trends in Nevada, and the other three newspapers were key home cities for many of that era’s major license applicants. I read the relevant articles in a total of 123,200 newspapers from the following years:

The New York Times - 1910 through 1959 (50 years)

The Chicago Daily Tribune - 1910 through 1959 (50 years)

The Los Angeles Times - 1920 through 1949 (30 years)

The Reno Gazette-Journal (I used the Nevada State Journal until its merger with the Reno Evening Gazette on October 7, 1983) - 1931 through 2006 (76 years)

The Las Vegas Review-Journal - 1931 (the year Nevada legalized casinos) through 2006 (76 years)

The Las Vegas Sun - its first edition was on July 1, 1950 to the final edition on September 30, 2005 (55 ¼ A years)

The New York Times is an exceptional newspaper that had a liberal editorial page but employed both top liberal and conservative reporters to obtain balanced news coverage. Its articles gave in-depth analysis of most issues and included much historical information. The Times is a researcher’s dream because its articles often lead to other sources and related issues and individuals.

The Chicago Daily Tribune was staunchly conservative, but the publisher valued law and order and honest politicians more than his political agenda. Thus, this paper led the fight to topple Al Capone and exposed Republicans as readily as Democrats when it found them to be corrupt. It even endorsed Democrats against the worst-offending Republican candidates and elected officials.

The Los Angeles Times during this era was a huge research disappointment. It carried sparse coverage of Prohibition and illegal gambling in Southern California, even though casinos operated openly in Los Angeles and Palm Springs. The Los Angeles Times’ articles did not list all the facts from police reports, and often did not list the address or even the city where illegal casinos were busted or were having legal problems. Its reporters did almost no research, so unlike the other five newspapers, which frequently exposed the activities of major criminals in their communities, the Los Angeles Times produced almost no crime exposés during the 1920s through the 1940s. At least part of the reason can be found in the paper’s political agenda. It endorsed and supported the most corrupt politicians and DA’s during this period. It even editorialized in news stories on behalf of the crooked officials who protected the serious criminal element in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Los Angeles Times contained some useful information, but unfortunately buried much more.

The three Nevada newspapers effectively covered the casino industry and its leaders in Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe. They also reported on the strength of the economies, market trends, and state politics, including actions and decisions by the state legislature and city councils, courts, and state and local gaming control authorities. Each newspaper had an aggressive investigative reporter who specialized in the gambling industry and politics. (There were four excellent ones until the merger of the Nevada State Journal with the Reno Evening Gazette, when it was reduced to three.)

It is important to note that reporters sometimes write inaccurate information because some of their sources lie, and reporters are occasionally required by press deadlines to submit articles before fully completing their investigations, which can result in incomplete or distorted information. Thus my research of many other types of documents and my in-depth oral histories with Nevada’s gambling-industry pioneers for their first-hand eyewitness’ accounts was invaluable in confirming, correcting, and expanding upon these newspaper reports.

I also read the Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Times for the years 1923 through 1950. Both newspapers had excellent investigative reporters who exposed the city’s unusual and unbelievable political and gangland history and its influence on developments in the Nevada gambling industry. These findings were presented in the first book in this series - "All Against The Law: The Criminal Activities of the Depression Era Bank Robbers, Mafia, FBI, Politicians, & Cops" (2013).

ORAL HISTORIES WITH NEVADA’S GAMBLING PIONEERS

This book is based on the only extensive in-depth, comprehensive interviews ever conducted of the pioneers who distinguished themselves by making important contributions to the Nevada casino industry. These 582 people were resort owners, hotel and casino management and marketing executives, organized crime gang leaders and their close associates, attorneys, accountants, bankers, gaming control and law enforcement officials, political leaders, and newspaper investigative reporters.

The vast majority of the men who developed Nevada’s legal casino industry had previously been involved with illegal casinos, many with Prohibition as well. They always refused requests from reporters and authors for interviews about their lives. Part of the reason for their silence was a remnant of their strict secrecy to avoid exposing criminal activities, but most of this reticence was a reaction to the frequent misquotes by reporters and the lies by authors whose books were fiction thinly disguised as organized-crime history.

Once these good hoods settled in Nevada, their penchant for privacy was counterbalanced because they were now legitimate, licensed, law-abiding businessmen. These men harbored a deep resentment toward the terrible stigma still tainting their names, and they wanted their families to have an accurate record and image of their lives.

My oral histories began with a few bold pioneers who hoped the truth would finally be told. Satisfied with the depth of my research and my determination to dig up the truth, they convinced other pioneers to speak to me. Over time I earned acceptability from virtually every pioneer. All but a handful eventually participated in my oral histories.

They accepted me to be their official historian because I was a dedicated, well-prepared academic researcher and a fellow Nevadan, unlike writers from out of state who stayed briefly and moved on. I had attended the University of Nevada, Reno, and was a casino dealer for three years before beginning my research. They knew I had become part of the casino industry and loved it.

I was surprised to find that these gambling-industry pioneers actually wanted an accurate record - warts and all - rather than a puff piece. The most negative information I got about some of them came not from documents, associates, or enemies, but directly from them. When I would point out that what they had just related to me was quite unflattering, they invariably admonished me with a remark like, That’s me. You can use it, but just tell the truth, the whole truth. Tell it the way it really was!

Each of these oral history interviews lasted at least two hours. I interviewed key figures from six to 50 hours over several years. Before I sat down with the most relevant individuals, I tried to interview each one’s best friends, worst enemies, attorney, and accountant. I prepared a detailed list of relevant questions based on the previous interview statements and all the documentation I had assembled. I explored every important event and issue they were part of, and the policies and their experiences at every casino with which they were associated.

This historical research includes only first-hand, contemporary experiences that are based on eyewitness’ observations of each event or issue covered. When an interviewee repeated what he had heard from someone else, the information was almost always highly distorted compared to eyewitness accounts of the same event. So I consigned any second-hand, hearsay information to a special file that I used to prepare questions for future interviewees. Then I sought people who had been at these events or who were involved with these issues so I could obtain their eyewitness reports.

THE SCOPE & UNIQUE FEATURES OF THIS RESEARCH PROJECT

This 48-year research program involved searching through 123,000 old newspapers, numerous books and magazine articles, 200,000 pages of FBI Headquarters and agent internal reports, Congressional hearings, legislative and court records, federal and state government agency historical records archived on the internet, and University of Nevada Reno oral histories of Nevada gambling industry pioneers and political leaders. I combined and organized all this data into source material by topic, and then I conducted in-depth, comprehensive interviews with 582 people who distinguished themselves by making important contributions to the Nevada casino industry. I integrated these detailed interviews with the enormous volume of collected documented records, and then I crosschecked all facts and sources to verify their authenticity and create the first academic analysis of the development of organized crime in the U.S. and the Nevada casino industry.

This great variety of sources produced the facts for the text and the 30 addendums. When each fact is presented, its source is identified either in the text with it, or in the extensive endnotes, such as in testimony before the U.S. Senate Kefauver Committee. This is to assist historians, researchers, readers, and critics interested in further study or to confirm the accuracy of their use. For every quote, the name of the person who said it and the source where it was found are identified either in the text, addendum, or the endnotes. Quotes that are from gambling-industry pioneers who participated in my oral histories are listed as my interview.

The facts presented in most consecutive sentences are from different sources, so a complete documentation in the endnotes would require a book much longer than this one. The simple but effective solution when dealing with newspaper reports was to not identify the specific sources when it was obtained from the following six daily newspapers - the New York Times, the Chicago Daily Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Las Vegas Review Journal, the Las Vegas Sun, and Reno’s Nevada State Journal. For every event dated in the endnotes, these six newspapers usually have an article about it in the next day’s edition, but sometimes in the same day’s edition.

This historical presentation has special features intended to make it easier to read. While a history is a chronology of events, multiple incidents that occur simultaneously can make it difficult for the reader to clearly focus on the specifics of each one. Thus, each chapter section follows a single gang or individual and takes one event or issue after another in its entirety to its conclusion.

Only key participants’ names are presented in the text to make the storyline clearer and easier for the reader. The names of people who appear briefly in a single incident are listed only in the endnotes to be available for historians, researchers, and interested readers without cluttering, complicating, or slowing reading of the text.

Each of these people’s roles is clearly identified in the text according to their relationship to the event or the key subject. For example an eyewitness or his girlfriend.

Dates in the text are replaced with the length of time in days, weeks, or months between pairs of related events to make the time frame clear. The date of every major event is presented in the source notes, and the key dates for interrelated events are listed in chronological order to create clear historical timelines for other academic researchers.

When the FBI releases document pages under the Freedom of Information Act, the names of everyone except the file subject are usually redacted (blacked out). Thus, quotes of FBI documents in the text and in the endnotes may contain five small x’s as xxxxx to indicate a redacted name was part of the quote in an FBI document.

And now here are the amazing drama-filled adventures of the most incredible gangsters in history along their routes to the Las Vegas Strip, and also the many interesting characters they encountered. These are their mind-boggling untold stories!

PREFACE

AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY

THE LEGAL RAMIFICATIONS OF HANGING OUT WITH HOODLUMS

This author’s biography describes the unparalleled, historical research program that took me inside organized crime and led to this book. It also resulted in my careers in Las Vegas Strip casino management and worldwide casino consulting. The unusual circumstances surrounding them were filled with seemingly impenetrable roadblocks that were opened up by unexpected opportunities.

My fascination with Nevada gambling began at age 7, when my parents started taking me on summer vacations to Lake Tahoe and the Las Vegas Strip. I was required to stand at a distance behind the players at the twenty-one tables to study the proficiency of the dealers and the gambling action. The first time I watched, I knew I wanted to be a twenty-one dealer when I grew up.

At age 21, I spent my summer break from San Francisco State University working in downtown Las Vegas as a dollar-an-hour shill at the Fremont Hotel, which had a large clientele of high-rolling players. The shills gambled with house-supplied money at the tables to make them seem busy during slow daytime and evening business periods.

The next summer, I began my career as a twenty-one dealer at the new Sahara-Tahoe Hotel at Lake Tahoe. I worked Friday through Monday at the casino and completed my college degree by attending classes in San Francisco every Tuesday and Thursday. I then attended graduate school at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), while continuing to deal at South Shore four days a week.

After work, I often had a nightcap at the bar with one of the table-game executives who worked behind me. I listened intently as they described their incredible career experiences. Most of these men had previously worked in the wide-open illegal casinos found throughout the country during the 1930s and 1940s. Then around 1950, local political reform movements and law-enforcement closed down almost every illegal casino in the country. The unemployed executives and dealers moved to Las Vegas because positions were readily available for experienced employees in the rapidly proliferating gambling resorts along the Las Vegas Strip and also in Reno and Lake Tahoe.

These men had lived very different lives than I had been exposed to in the genteel, middle-class, nonviolent milieu I was brought up in. Most had grown up in poor neighborhoods and had grammar-school educations at best. But they had very savvy street smarts and keen perception about people. Although they had worked in illegal operations that bribed the police to avoid arrest and closure, the police offered them no protection for their large cash bankrolls. These illegal casino operators had to defend themselves from robbers and also from gangs trying to take over their territory. They were fiercely independent individualists, the last of the frontiersmen, standing alone against a tough predatory underworld.

I was so intrigued by these men’s stories that I wanted to learn more about their backgrounds, life in the illegal-casino world, and how gaming control had developed in Nevada. It was a new and unique form of law enforcement that existed only in Nevada. I spent my limited free time in UNR’s library searching old newspapers for articles about the development of the industry. I realized the mass of available material on the subject demanded a full-time effort, but I had no way to finance a serious chronicling of this information to satisfy my curiosity or to write a book about it.

Then the Vietnam War got underway, and I soon received my draft notice. I declared conscientious-objector status and the FBI conducted the required investigation of my life to determine if I warranted this classification. Then the Selective Service System approved my application. It typically ordered conscientious objectors to spend their two years of alternative service at a hospital near their home cleaning bed pans for about $300 a month. But the FBI investigation and Selective Service interviews about my background had brought my research interests to light. It turned out that I was the only academician who had developed close personal relationships with members of organized crime. This was especially impressive at that time, because it was years before the FBI would insert an undercover agent into an organized-crime gang.

As a result, I was introduced to Joseph D. Lohman, Dean at the School of Criminology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a highly-respected criminologist, who proposed to take advantage of my trio of assets - personal contacts in the underworld, a passion for casino gambling operations, and a university degree in social psychology. He proposed to transform my research dream into a structured sociological historical study about the development of organized crime, its impact on Nevada’s casino industry, and the creation of Nevada gaming control. To encourage the former illegal gambling operators to cooperate and to demonstrate my research was not a law-enforcement sting, every question I would ask was about events at least 10 years old, so participants would know their answers were well beyond the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution.

Since Dean Lohman’s proposal would potentially expand law enforcement’s and academia’s limited knowledge about the structure and operation of organized crime, the Selective Service System quickly approved this study. It ordered me to report for two years of alternative service with the School of Criminology at Berkeley. Dean Lohman directed me to read relevant archived newspapers and other documents in UNLV’s library, interview gaming-control authorities, and hang out with hoodlums for interviews. Between mid-1967 and mid-1969, I enjoyed the glorious wonders of Las Vegas on my $300-a-month salary. I completed my two years of service and received an honorable discharge from the Selective Service for majoring in hoodlums. Yet I had barely tapped the surface of the available information. So during the next 47 years, I devoted every spare moment to finishing my research and writing this first book in a planned historical series about the Nevada gambling industry. My personal life-long research is in memory to Dean Lohman who was a very special mentor. (The Selective Service and School of Criminology draft-order and discharge documents are presented at www.BillFriedmanAuthor.com)

After discharge, I spent the next 10 years making a living as the leading after-lunch and after-dinner speaker for Las Vegas convention groups. About once a week, I taught groups of 50 to 5,000 people how to play the table games, or I told them intriguing historical inside stories about the Nevada casino industry. I also taught the pioneer course Casino Operations and Management for the College of Hotel Administration at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas under Dean Jerome J. Vallen. I wrote the book Casino Management (1974 and updated it with Atlantic City in 1982). It became the seminal work in the field, and the New York Times reported it was the most expensive required reading at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. All these endeavors provided a livable income and left me with five days a week full-time to continue my research.

I did not attempt to conceal my feelings like a reporter or a psychiatrist. On the contrary, I was a young man captivated by the subject and intently searching for the truth, and I was very open about my opinions and beliefs. My candor was important because law-enforcement policies, judicial decisions, and Constitutional interpretation in the period I was studying were very different from the times I lived in. Many times, Nevada’s top gaming and law enforcers, as well as the hoodlums who owned and operated the casinos, told me, If you don’t get back into our world, you will never understand why we made the decisions we did and why anything happened. They were right!

Learning about their world caused a major life and career adjustment. An encounter I had with Benny Binion, one of Nevada’s premier pioneer casino operators and marketers, best describes how I made my occupational decisions. Benny was an early supporter of my research, and he advised me on my career like a father figure. Because I was developing so much knowledge about the operation of the industry and I was getting to know top executives in the limited number of casinos, in 1970 I was offered executive positions by two casinos that would have paid me far more money than I had ever dreamed of earning. I turned both down because I would have had no time to continue my research. My goals and values had changed from my youth, when one of the attractions to Las Vegas was the affluent lifestyle. One day at lunch, I told Benny about these two opportunities and my decisions to pass on them. This older Irish gentleman stared at me intently for some time, shook his head, and said, You are the only Jew I have ever met who absolutely does not give a damn about money. Then, as now, my consuming passion for knowledge about this fascinating industry and these remarkable men directed my career decisions.

Then, seven years after discharge by the Selective Service System, an opportunity came along that was too enticing to pass up. Summa Corporation, owned by tycoon Howard Hughes, appointed me to be the only person to ever simultaneously manage two casinos on the Las Vegas Strip - the Castaways and the Silver Slipper. Both positions required I apply for my first state and county licenses as a key employee. This was a crisis situation because the Nevada gaming control authorities denied every one who had any association with organized crime figures, unless these were minimal and accidental. In the few cases they approved, they prohibited any further contact as a condition of licensing. If my applications were denied, it would have ended my career in the casino business, and if I were restricted from further contact, it would have ended my historical research. This was a scary prospect because I had spent my whole career researching hoods to understand what makes them tick and why they do what they do.

Fortunately, I had interviewed the key state gaming control officials extensively throughout my research and kept them posted on who I was seeing but not what I was learning. I also discussed my research with Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department detectives, including its Organized Crime Bureau. The licensing authorities and their investigators knew me well and wholeheartedly supported and contributed to my academic research into the underworld’s involvement in Nevada. They wanted me to complete my history in my spare time, so they encouraged me to continue my research. Thus, I became the only Nevada gaming licensee who was allowed to associate with hoodlums as long as they were associated in some way with the casino industry or Las Vegas.

I quickly transformed the Castaways and the Silver Slipper from long-time money-losers into top Nevada profit makers. When the figures came out for my third month of operation, Summa’s leaders called me to a corporate meeting to tell me that the month’s profits were greater than any of them had imagined possible. Except for months in which the players had big wins, the profits went up significantly every month for the next twelve years. In the process, I achieved the highest average win per slot machine in Nevada. Under my leadership, the cash flow from these two old, smaller casinos financed the entire corporate structure of the world’s largest privately-owned company.

At the first corporate meeting, Frank Morse, who was Summa’s second in command and the man to whom I reported, pulled me aside because he said they wanted to inform me who my friends were. He said, We told you up front that you were an experiment for us. We knew you had never supervised anyone or managed anything, when we made you president. Your five references were reputable professional people who were good character references, but we knew none of them knew anything about the gaming business. We still did our due diligence and talked to them. We also went to the two biggest gangsters in town for their opinions, because we know they know the most about this business. We think you should be aware that Summa has had tens of thousands of applicants over the years, but Benny Binion gave us the finest reference that we have ever received for anyone, and Moe Dalitz was just one step behind. Both were confident you were ready. You can thank them for making this job available.

I was already grateful to both Benny and Moe for having made all their key executives available to assist my historical research for the previous decade. The vast knowledge and experiences they had shared with me had prepared me well for the many challenges I faced in turning both casinos around. My professional and business careers were truly made possible by my penchant for associating with hoodlums. It should be noted that Moe Dalitz is a key figure in this book because of his large Prohibition operation, illegal casinos, and great influence in organized crime nationwide, before he built two major Las Vegas Strip gambling resorts.

I operated the highly-successful Castaways and Silver Slipper casinos for 13 years before they were sold because of Hughes’ death. (Nevada law requires that all assets be sold when the deceased has multiple heirs.) The two casino-sale contracts gave me complete unfettered control over the operations for one more year to produce additional profits for Summa. Despite assuring generous severance packages to the employees who stayed until the closings, both casinos came close to producing record profits because the regular tourist and local players who visited each one did not search for a new home until we threw a huge goodbye party and closed the doors at their favorite hangout. The Castaways’ property was developed into the first megaresort, the Mirage. The Silver Slipper was purchased by the adjacent Frontier Hotel to become another megaresort, but the state appropriated much of the Silver Slipper’s property for a freeway.

Since then, I have worked as a consultant to casinos across the country, including being licensed as a key casino executive in five states. At the same time, I consulted to casinos in countries around the world, including almost all that catered chiefly to high-rollers. Between consulting assignments, I continued to focus on my historical research, except when I wrote another business book, Designing Casinos to Dominate the Competition. It was published by my alma mater, UNR’s Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, in 2001.

Two decades after being licensed in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip at the Castaways and Silver Slipper, I was involved with another unique licensing situation. This resulted when I signed a five-month contract to manage and turn around the once profitable 1,000-room Oasis Hotel and Casino resort, with its world-class Arnold Palmer golf course. It was located in Mesquite, Nevada, 85 miles northeast of Las Vegas near the Utah border. The landlord was Si Redd, who had created giant slot manufacturer IGT. As landlord of the Oasis, he had taken over the operation from the lessees who had defaulted, and he called on me to save the operation because he was well acquainted with my great turnarounds of the Castaways and Silver Slipper. I replaced the general manager who had held the only license at the Oasis after the lessees had departed. The Gaming Control Board waived the legal requirement for me to apply for a license upon taking the position because the investigation could not have been completed during my five-month tenure, and the Board did not want to waste everyone’s time for what would be mere window dressing. As the Board told the Oasis’ attorney, We already know everything about Friedman, and we are comfortable with him. This decision was practical and justified, but it resulted in an irony. Nevada has allowed just this one casino to ever operate without anyone holding a state gaming license, not an owner nor a manager, and it just happened to be controlled by the man who was known for his relationships with hoodlums.

I have lived my life in a unique twilight realm that allowed me to seamlessly move back and forth between two separate opposing worlds that loathed each other. I was successful in dealing with both the law enforcers and the criminals because, until this book, I never repeated anything I was told. Everyone in the underworld knew I never reported about my research interview findings or personal discussions. Everyone in the overworld knew I never participated in a felony and also never revealed anything about their investigations and suspicions. The gaming controllers also knew my casino operations scrupulously followed all regulations, and I worked closely with agents to address their occasional concerns.

Since closing the Castaways and Silver Slipper 25 years ago, my consulting and writing pursuits have given me more than half of each year to devote full time to my historical research. It has been a wonderful odyssey exploring the casino pioneers’ unique and intriguing lives, struggles, and achievements along with the economic, political, and legal context in which they occurred. Now it is time to tell their astonishing stories. I hope you enjoy sharing their adventuresome lives as much as I have.

CHAPTER 1

THE PROHIBITION OPERATIONS OF LUCIANO & COSTELLO

BEN SIEGEL’S GLORIOUS DREAM

Ben Siegel opened his fabulous Flamingo casino on the evening after Christmas 1946, when the fledgling Las Vegas Strip consisted of just two other hotel/casino resorts and four tiny restaurant/bars. Beyond these few buildings was nothing but pristine desert, extending outward over the huge valley to the surrounding mountains.

The Flamingo’s opening was the first exciting event to hit Las Vegas since the town celebrated the Allies’ victory ending World War II 16 months earlier. Local residents and guests staying at the town’s few hotels jammed the new casino from wall to wall. That first night the Flamingo’s