1940 After some angry husbands in Los Angeles, California complained their wives were gambling away the grocery money, two vice squad officers raided the Monday night birthday party of Ann Dicker, a 73-year-old great-grandmother, at which she and seven guests were playing poker. (The policemen had climbed up the drainpipe to stealthily reach her second-floor…
An unpleasant, self-described “big gun,” Elmer “Bones” F. Remmer (1898-1963) was “once one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s flashiest and most successful gambling czars,” having owned numerous clubs in which he offered illegal games of chance, noted the Oakland Tribune (June 12, 1963). Before solely working in Northern California, Remmer worked in Northern Nevada…
1956 She wouldn’t budge. C. Johnson was playing a slot machine from a stool that was blocking the aisle in a downtown Reno, Nevada casino. When employees asked the Oakland, California resident to please shift a bit so others could pass, she adamantly refused. They offered to move the game to a spot with a…
1960-1967 Los Angeles mobsters, Louis Tom Dragna and John “The Bat” Battaglia, conversed in a hotel-casino cocktail lounge on the Las Vegas Strip one day in February 1960. But their visit was cut short when Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) agents appeared with local police who arrested the two. They charged them with vagrancy and…
1920 It was 3 a.m. on a Monday. About 15 men were gambling in the Desert Club. One who’d been there all night, sitting alone, watching and waiting to make his move was George Strickland. In his mid-30s and a self-named Wobbly, he’d arrived in Tonopah, Nevada, a few days earlier. Suddenly, he stood, brandished…
1955 When Nevada legislators legalized gambling in 1931, they didn’t consider one significant caveat. The omission came to light in January 1955 when an industrious Las Vegas casino patron was arrested for using Mexican 10 centavo coins in 25 cent slot machines — an act called slot slugging. Apparently, the coins fit perfectly. The judge…
1908 Two deputy sheriffs in the mining camp of Rawhide, Nevada,* were on the take. For a regularly paid fee, they allowed establishments to operate legal games without a license and/or run banned ones as well. Sometimes they allowed gambling houses that paid heavy license fees on some games to conduct others without paying for a…