1936 Gambling disputes ending in someone’s death typically involved men, were over alleged cheating and happened at saloons or other enterprises offering games of chance. However, the circumstances behind the 1936 case of Paul F. Rohl, 33, in Los Angeles, California differed. Death Comes to Light Police officers responded to a call about a…
1935 Hollywood movie studios released more than a handful of gambling-related movies in 1935. This seemed unusual given the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America’s (MPPDA) recent re-commitment to ensuring movies didn’t contain content it considered risqué. Impetus Behind the Code The MMPDA — today, the Motion Picture Association — adopted the Motion…
1938 In the following verse, penned about the S.S. Monte Carlo following its demise, the writer Ida Clarise Gowan uses a hostile, derogatory and accusatory tone. She personifies, or gives human qualities to, the ship, such as being greedy and taking advantage of people. Gowan, then a Coronado, California resident, employs hyperbole by incorporating words…
1932-Today Though local, state and federal authorities were working to eradicate all gambling ships moored off of the Pacific Coast, the S.S. Monte Carlo met its demise at the hands of an unexpected interloper, Mother Nature. On a Stormy Night On New Year’s Eve in 1936, the waterborne casino, closed for the winter, offshore…
1936-1950s The Palace Club introduced a new casino game to Nevada’s “Biggest Little City” on May 1, 1936. Renoites quickly discovered it, and its popularity soared, leading to a solid run over about a decade. The emergence of this enticing gambling offering was “a major event in the development of Reno’s gaming,” Raymond Sawyer…
1965-1969 In its July 1966 raid of Kress Manufacturing Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents seized a treasure trove of crooked gambling equipment that seemed headed to various Nevada casinos. The haul included “hundreds of decks of marked cards and hundreds of pounds of crooked dice” (Nevada State Journal, July 27,…
1937-1947 More so than craps, roulette, 21 and slots, all on offer, tango enraptured gamblers at Club Fortune, then “the outstanding night spot in Western Nevada,” according to the Reno Evening Gazette (Jan. 12, 1953). Tango was “the Reno name for the well-known bean game,” as described in the newspaper column, “In the Biggest Little…
1920s-1960s Joseph “Doc” Stacher (né Gdale Oistaczer)* was a New Jersey-based Mobster who made his foray into organized crime with Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky’s Bugs and Meyer Mob in Manhattan, N.Y. and then with Abner “Longie” Zwillman’s Third Ward Gang in Newark, N.J. Eventually, he teamed up with local Mobsters, including Zwillman…
1958 Myrton “Mert” C. Wertheimer was murdered, William “Bill/Curly” J. Graham ordered the hit and Frank “Frankie” Frost carried it out. This was hearsay from Los Angeles Mobster and made man, Aladena James “Jimmy/The Weasel” Fratianno, as documented in Ovid Demaris‘ biography of Fratianno, The Last Mafioso. Page 173 (hardback version) contains a conversation relayed…
1953-1955 When sheriff’s deputies responded to a 10:45 p.m. call from Dixie’s Log Cabin* on January 11, 1953, they found a man, injured and lying in the parking lot there. He was Raymond “Bud” Dutcher, 38, married and with a two-year-old daughter. He’d worked previously as a taxi and bus driver, a semi-professional baseball player,…