1972-1977 A $25,000 ($146,000 today) offer for the murder of 27-year-old John “Johnny” W. Hicks had been circulated, it was rumored throughout Las Vegas in mid-1972. The son of Marion B. Hicks, previous owner of the Thunderbird Hotel, and his wife Lillian, then proprietor of the Algiers Hotel next door, Johnny was working as an…
1948 When Pasadena, California vice squad officers got a tip that chef/restaurant owner Paul B. Weston, 56, was sidelining as an illegal bookie, they raided his home and found gambling paraphernalia — where else? — under the stove. And, sealing Weston’s fate, while the police were in his residence, they fielded 10 phone calls to…
1976 “Next time try London. The odds are better,” boasted a sign in the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas in 1976. The posting of this ad and possibly others resulted from an agreement between gambling industry representatives in London and Las Vegas to “swap promotions and high roller lists” (Las Vegas Sun, Oct. 15,…
1919 Outside many of Reno’s gambling saloons were benches, on which club-goers, typically men, whether or not they’d been gambling, were welcome to sleep the night. (At that time, some forms of gambling were legal in Nevada and the state’s Prohibition law had gone into effect on January 1 of that year.) “Upon leaving in…
1958 Tourists Robert and Lola McDurmon may or may not have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you look at it. After taking in four shows on the Las Vegas Strip, the couple from Oxnard, California unwittingly witnessed a crime drama unfold up close. After pulling into the parking…
1954 “If the Streeter suggestion should catch fire and the state took over gambling, it would be the damnedest experiment tried in the United States, and Nevada would have more hoodlums per square block than it has jackrabbits per square mile,” read a non-bylined Nevada State Journal op-ed piece, referring to the idea of Jack…
Join me for a super fun, interactive class — Casinos, Characters and Crimes — about gaming during Nevada’s early years (1861 through 1931). We’ll conduct a mock trial (a minor v. a gambling saloon), create a timeline, hold a mobster lineup and even do some gambling, Native American style. . . We’ll discuss major events,…
1946 Owners of the Casa Vegas gambling club in Southern Nevada, Duke Wiley and Eddie Alias, announced their plan to acquire and convert a surplus, four-engine transport plane into a casino in the air. Slated solely for the then three-hour flight between Las Vegas and Reno, it was to offer on-board roulette, music and entertainment.…
1948 The November 22, 1948 issue of Sports-Week roiled Nevada Wolf Pack fans and supporters. Bevy Of Allegations An article in that edition of the nationally circulated digest charged that the University of Nevada* (UN) football team had thrown the game against Santa Clara two weeks earlier, on November 7, “for the specific benefit…
1972 Twenty-six years after the gangland assassination of mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and his debut of the Flamingo in Las Vegas, a trap door was discovered in one of the hotel-casino’s offices when the carpet was pulled up during some remodeling. It hid a 15-inch-square safe encased in cement, which was believed to have been…