1936 A single penny got Los Angeles store owner Ethel Jamison convicted. One day at her shop, Police Officer James Mulligan placed a penny in the slot machine, pulled the lever, received a penny premium and cashed it with her. He arrested her, as slot machines were illegal in California, and the case went to…
1952 The life of wealthy, prominent businessman with several connections to the gambling industry, Thomas “Tom” A. Keen, 56, was abruptly ended at about 10:07 a.m. on Tuesday morning, February 5. After giving some duck eggs to a neighbor, this San Mateo, California resident walked back home. He grabbed his coat, kissed his wife good-bye…
1949-1950 During the Prohibition years in California, 1919 to 1934, San Mateo County was a hotbed for illegal vices — gambling, prostitution and drinking. Even a Mobster, Hillsborough-based Sam Termini, said the county was the state’s most corrupt one in 1930. This was under the watch of James J. McGrath, the sheriff for 24 years…
1969 A group of Southern Californians, winding down from a Monday night of gambling at the El Capitan Club in Hawthorne, Nevada, were on the “Gamblers Special” flight back home. The plane never made it. Instead, it vanished in the wee morning darkness. Adverse Weather Predicted Piloted by Fred Hall, the twin-engine Douglas DC-3,…
1940-1953 In 1946, Pat Mooney, chief field deputy of the Nevada Internal Revenue (IR) Bureau office, made gambler-Mobster Elmer “Bones” F. Remmer* an offer he couldn’t refuse. If the gambling club owner purchased $52,400 ($699,000 today) worth of shares in the Mountain City Consolidated Copper Co. (MCCCC) then his 1945 federal tax debt in that…
1906-1967 Frank “Frankie” Frost (1898-1967) spent about two decades working in Reno’s gambling scene and had close relationships with those in power locally, including gambler-Mobsters William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay and banker and businessman, George Wingfield, Sr. Frost had a checkered past, which eventually got him blacklisted from Nevada’s gambling industry. Here we…
Hi Subscribers, I’m excited to tell you I just released another book, The Ends. It’s in the true crime genre but does contain some gambling. Here’s a brief synopsis: Shortly after World War II, two 20-something lovers with troubled backgrounds left a Maine fishing village on foot to start life anew, together, somewhere far away. At…
1851 Roving gambler William “Lucky Bill” B. Thorington’s stint in Hangtown (today Placerville, California) was brief because he literally thimblerigged a prominent local out of $1,500 to $2,000 (more than $39,000 to $52,000 today) and that angered the men in the camp. Despite a potential lynch mob after him and his companion card sharp Sidney…
Late 1840s-1858 A list of Western United States’ gamblers would be incomplete without William “Lucky Bill” B. Thorington.* A thimblerig master, he plied his craft in the Western mining camps and towns from Sacramento to Ragtown, Hangtown to Salt Lake City, during the late 1840s and ’50s. Thimblerig, also known as the shell game and…
1938 Gambler Tony Cornero Stralla offered to donate a day’s worth of revenue from his Southern California casino boat, the Rex, to Zoo Park at 3800 Mission Road in Los Angeles. The attraction, then owned/operated by the California Zoological Society and formerly the Selig Zoo, was teetering on bankruptcy and its animals were facing starvation.…