The Battle for Las Vegas: The Law vs. The Mob (4 page)

3

Lefty and Tony

T
wo of the key figures on the Las Vegas scene during the mob’s heyday were Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and Tony “the Ant” Spilotro. They were both born in Chicago and grew up in the same neighborhoods, where they met and became friends. Each became involved with the Chicago Outfit in a different capacity. Rosenthal, because he was Jewish and ineligible to become a made man, was connected simply as an “associate.” Spilotro was a full-fledged member of the organized-crime family. Nevertheless, both men became highly adept in their respective areas of expertise. Following is a brief look at their lives through 1971, when Spilotro imposed himself upon Rosenthal’s relatively peaceful life in Las Vegas.

Frank Rosenthal

Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal was born in Chicago in 1929, the son of a produce wholesaler. However, his father’s business didn’t appeal to young Frank, who, as he grew up, became more interested in what was going on at racetracks and ball-parks than in the price of oranges. His innate talent for sports wagering caught the attention of professionals and at the age of 19, Frank was offered a job as a clerk with Bill Kaplan of the Angel-Kaplan Sports Service in Chicago.

Lefty developed his oddsmaking skills with the help of Kaplan and some illegal bookmakers, and he did so quickly. He was a natural when it came to formulating betting lines on sporting events. As the years passed, Rosenthal gained a reputation as one of the premier handicappers in the country, and was a top earner for the Outfit’s illegal gambling operations. Lefty was on top of his game, but fame and fortune had their price.

In 1960, Rosenthal’s name appeared on a series of lists of known gamblers produced by the Chicago Crime Commission and he decided it was time to get out of town. The following year Frank moved to Miami, hoping to keep a lower profile.

But his reputation and known affiliation with organized-crime had preceded him to Florida. It wasn’t long before the numbers guru came to the attention of the Senate’s McClellan Committee on gambling and organized crime.

In 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to look into illegal gambling activities. Lefty was called to testify before Senator McClellan’s committee. During his appearance, the bookmaker was less than candid, invoking the Fifth Amendment 37 times. A few months later, Rosenthal was among a large number of bookies and players arrested as part of an FBI crackdown on illegal gambling. The Miami police then got in on the act and were soon arresting the 32-year-old on a regular basis. The same cops who had initially turned a blind eye to his bookmaking activities were now putting on some big-time heat.

Things got worse for Rosenthal in 1962 when he was indicted for attempting to bribe a college basketball player. Although he maintained his innocence, he eventually pled no contest to the charges.

Despite his altercations with the law, Lefty persevered, and was still in Miami when his old buddy, Tony Spilotro, arrived in 1964. However, the FBI was keeping an eye on Rosenthal and the presence of Spilotro, a suspect in multiple murders in Chicago, only increased the gambler’s unwanted visibility and made his public life more difficult.

By 1966, Lefty had had his fill of Miami and decided to move to a location where people in his line of work were treated with a little more respect. He settled on the booming gaming city in the desert, Las Vegas. Not long after his arrival in 1967, he bought into the Rose Bowl Sports Book, later relocating to the Strip and the mob-controlled Stardust. Lefty was moving up fast and his future looked bright. But in 1968, something happened that had a major impact on his life, and eventually the lives of several others. He fell in love.

Geri McGee moved from California to Las Vegas in the late 1950s. An attractive woman, she worked as a topless showgirl at the Tropicana and Dunes and as a cocktail waitress and hustler around the casinos. When Lefty met her it was love at first sight, at least on his part. He was in a hurry to tie the knot, but Geri had reservations about settling down. Her concerns faded when Lefty placed a hefty stash of cash and jewelry in a safe deposit box for her to keep if the marriage didn’t work out. The two were wed the following year.

Initially, everything went well for the newlyweds. Geri liked to spend money and her husband made plenty of it. But in 1970, Lefty was indicted again for bookmaking. This was the kind of thing that could jeopardize his eligibility to be licensed as a casino manager. His links to organized-crime figures posed a similar threat, since the Nevada Gaming Control Board was likely to deny licensing upon learning of such relationships. Consequently, in 1971, as Lefty ascended to a manager’s position at the Stardust and struggled to keep his nose clean, it came as an unwelcome shock when his lifelong pal, the increasingly notorious Chicago gangster Tony Spilotro, moved to town.

Anthony Spilotro

Tony Spilotro was born in Chicago on May 19, 1938. He was the fourth of six sons born to Italian immigrants Patsy and Antoinette Spilotro. Patsy opened Patsy’s Restaurant at the corner of Grand and Ogden avenues. Although the eatery became a hangout for members of the Outfit, there’s no evidence that Patsy had any involvement in criminal activity.

Like Lefty Rosenthal, young Spilotro shunned involvement in his father’s business. The street interested him more than spaghetti. In school, he developed a reputation as a tough kid, bullying and intimidating classmates and teachers alike. Several of his fellow students said he exhibited the “little-man’s syndrome.” Some speculate that his diminutive size, around five-feet-five, may have earned him the nickname “the Ant.” Others say it was simply short for Anthony. Nancy Spilotro, Tony’s wife, isn’t sure where the name came from, and thinks it was a creation of the press. Another relative believes it’s a derivative of “pissant,” an epithet assigned to Tony by a Chicago cop. In any case, it was a handle Spilotro didn’t like.

By 1955, his father had passed away and Tony was thrown out of school for continued misconduct. Now on the streets full-time, Spilotro took up with other kids in the same situation. He was soon the scourge of the neighborhoods, stealing cars, robbing stores, and developing a reputation for viciousness. When Tony was 18, his actions caught the attention of Sam “Mad Sam” DeStefano.

DeStefano was connected to the Outfit and operated a loan-sharking business. He was known to friend and foe as being completely insane. When he dealt with his enemies, his depravity knew no bounds. Mad Sam preferred to use an ice pick on his victims, but wasn’t above slicing, shooting, or incinerating them, depending on his mood. Although he was unstable, the bosses kept him around; he was a good earner. In addition to being an accomplished torturer and killer, Sam had another talent. He could spot street kids who demonstrated the same capacity for brutality that he had. DeStefano liked what he saw in Tony Spilotro and recruited him as an enforcer; Spilotro accepted.

On January 15, 1961, Tony took a break from his normal activities to marry Nancy Stuart. Born in Milwaukee in 1938, she was living in Chicago when they met. According to John L. Smith’s book
Of Rats and Men,
while the Spilotros were on their honeymoon in Belgium, Tony was thrown out of the country for possession of burglary tools.

Back in Chicago, Tony continued to work as one of Sam’s heavies until 1962, when he got his big break. On May 15, two minor hoodlums, Billy McCarthy and Jimmy Miraglia, committed a fatal offense. They killed a couple of Outfit-connected guys—the Scalvo brothers—without permission, and they did it in a mob-inhabited residential area that the bosses had declared off-limits for murders. The powers-that-be wanted the culprits found and taken care of. The man who accomplished that task was bound to achieve an elevated status within the Outfit. Allegedly, Mad Sam suggested that Tony take a stab at it.

Opportunity had knocked and Tony wasn’t shy about opening the door. In short order, he and his associates picked up McCarthy, but they still needed the name and location of the other condemned man. Their prisoner declined to cooperate, despite a severe beating. Surely, they thought, an ice pick to the scrotum would loosen the stubborn man’s tongue, but it didn’t. Getting frustrated, Tony decided it was time to quit playing nice and really apply some pressure. For McCarthy, it proved to be an eye-opening experience.

Putting McCarthy’s head in a vise, Tony resumed the questioning. Unfortunately for his victim, Spilotro didn’t allow Fifth Amendment privileges during his interrogation sessions. Each time McCarthy refused to respond, Tony turned the handle on the vise, compressing McCarthy’s skull. He finally obtained a breakthrough when one of McCarthy’s eyeballs popped out. This was too much for the tough and loyal McCarthy to bear; he gave up Miraglia. The bodies of both men were later found in the trunk of an abandoned car in what became known as the M&M Murders. After this successful debut, Tony became a made man in the Outfit.

In 1963, Mad Sam got into a dispute with Leo Foreman, a real estate broker and one of his collectors. Not long after, Spilotro and an associate named Chuck Grimaldi reportedly lured Foreman to the home of Mario DeStefano, Sam’s brother, in Cicero. The two beat Foreman, then dragged him into the cellar, where Mad Sam was waiting. Skipping an exchange of pleasantries, Sam got right down to business. He took a hammer to Foreman’s knees, head, groin, and ribs. Next came twenty ice-pick thrusts, followed by a bullet to the head. The realtor’s battered body was later found in the trunk of an abandoned car.

In 1964, with the heat mounting over the growing number of unsolved homicides in Chicago, the Spilotros spent some time in Miami. They had many friends and acquaintances there, including Frank Rosenthal. In 1966, they adopted their only child, an infant son, Vincent.

As the 1960s came to an end and the ’70s began, the Chicago bosses initiated a cash-skimming operation involving the Las Vegas casinos under their control. They covered themselves by installing a front man as the gambling establishments’ owner and appointing Lefty Rosenthal to manage the properties and keep an eye on things. This ensured that the casino count rooms could be accessed and cash removed before ever being recorded as revenue.

Having businessmen in place was great in theory, but there was a lot of money involved and Las Vegas was growing by leaps and bounds. What if someone tried to skim the skim or otherwise rocked the boat?

To protect its interests from such problems, the Outfit needed someone on the scene with special talents, someone whose reputation served to discourage anyone from pilfering or causing other difficulties. And if intimidation wasn’t enough, it had to be someone who wouldn’t hesitate to take any action necessary to resolve the situation.

There was no need to recruit for the position; one of the Outfit’s current members fit the criteria perfectly. Tony Spilotro was on his way to Sin City.

4

Mob-Run Las Vegas

T
he year was 1971. Don McLean’s
American Pie
and Ike and Tina Turner’s
Proud Mary
appeared on the pop music charts. After ten years there, American soldiers were still fighting and dying in Vietnam.

In Clark County, Nevada, the population had reached 275,000. Local law enforcement in the city of Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County was the responsibility of two separate agencies. The Las Vegas Police Department handled the city. Everything else, including the Strip, came under the jurisdiction of the Clark County Sheriff’s Department.

The gambling and tourism industries were flourishing. In the gaming arena, a milestone occurred when the Silver Slipper on the Strip and the Union Plaza downtown became the first casinos to hire female card dealers. Top entertainers appeared in casino showrooms and lounges. More than seven million tourists spent some time, and a lot of money, in the desert oasis.

Just as the gambling and entertainment drew the tourists, the money attracted the criminal element. Organized-crime families across the country considered Vegas an open city. Each of them was welcome to set up business there and many did. The various mobs exercised hidden ownership and control over several of the major casinos, most of which had been built with financing from the Teamster Pension Fund. The dominant group, however, hailed from Chicago.

Las Vegas locals and long-time visitors often speculate on what it was like to work in the casino business during those days. The following stories provide a little background on the way business was conducted back then. They come from three former casino insiders, all of whom were in supervisory or managerial positions and rubbed elbows with the wiseguys on a regular basis. Each man relates how his particular employer dealt with specific situations. To protect their identities, they’re referred to here as Mario, Mickey, and Sammy.

The Insult

This incident took place in the late ’60s, in the Crown Room of the International Hotel (now the Las Vegas Hilton).

“It was about three in the morning and another guy and I stopped in the Crown Room with our dates for a drink,” Mario began. “I’m not going to name the other guy. But he was a real heavyweight in the casino business and his first name had a strong military ring to it.

“Anyway, there was a band from San Francisco on stage. They were rising stars and were being billed as the next coming of the Beatles. I don’t know if it was because of booze or drugs, but this one guy turned out to be a real jerk. He looked at our table and said over the mike to my buddy, ‘What’s a bald old man like you doing with a pretty girl like her?’

“We let the crack slide, but the idiot wouldn’t drop it. After a couple more wisecracks, my friend got up and made a call on a house phone. The president of the International lived in a suite at the hotel. Within a couple of minutes he showed up wearing pajamas covered by an overcoat. He went right to the stage and ordered the band to pack up their equipment and get out. Not just out of the hotel, but out of Vegas.

“The next day my friend made a call to the musicians union and the band suddenly couldn’t get any bookings. They folded not long after that. Several years later I met one of the band members when he was in town for an electronics convention. We talked for a while and he said there were no hard feelings. After the band learned who they’d been throwing insults at, they considered themselves lucky to have gotten out of Vegas in one piece. It could have been worse.

“That’s the kind of clout people like my friend had at the time. They could get top-of-the-line entertainers into their joints by making a phone call, and they could end someone’s career the same way.”

Cheaters

Customers who were caught cheating the casinos met different fates, depending on whom they had plucked and for how much.

“At my place on the Strip, we didn’t go for the rough stuff,” Mickey said. “You might mess a guy up a little and he comes back later with a gun or goes to the cops or the Gaming Control Board. The main concern was recovering our money and making sure the cheater knew he wasn’t welcome back. But the cheats didn’t know that when they got hustled off to the back room. I’m sure a lot of them thought they’d never be seen again.

“Usually they’d offer to give it up [the money],” Mickey continued with a smile. “They weren’t very wise-assed or resistant at that stage of the game. But sometimes we’d make them lose it back. I remember this one guy who’d taken us for ten grand. We told him he could resolve the matter by going to a roulette table and staying there until he lost every dime. It was made clear to him that we’d be watching. After he’d lost his winnings he was to get out and never come back, not even to use the restroom. The guy couldn’t agree fast enough. He dropped the money he owed us, and a thousand of his own for good measure. We never saw him again.”

Sammy’s experience with cheaters at a downtown casino was slightly different. “If it was only nickel-and-dime stuff, we’d just toss them. But if they took us for anything substantial, they’d be in a cast or on crutches for a while.”

None of the roughed-up cheaters ever returned looking for revenge either. “Before we turned them loose, they understood what would happen if we ever saw them around again.”

Mario’s Strip employer reacted to some cheaters in a similar manner: “We had a room we jokingly referred to as the torture chamber. Some of the cheats left there with broken limbs. But I think the bigger problem for us was the deadbeats.

“These weren’t cheaters. They were honest gamblers who, due to stupidity or bad luck, lost all their money and had to ask for casino credit so they could play some more. The amounts differed with each individual, but a hundred thousand dollars or more wasn’t unusual. We checked these people out before extending the credit, of course. We knew where they lived, their income, and all that before they were approved.

“Most of them paid the money back without a problem, but a few seemed to forget about what they owed as soon as they got on the plane for home. We’d wait for a while, and if we didn’t hear from them they’d get a phone call from one of our executives. The tenor of the conversation would be cordial and go something like this: ‘We really appreciated your business and hope you come back soon. The next time you’re in town your meals, room, et cetera are on us. Oh, and by the way, to avoid any embarrassment, you really should take care of your marker.’

“That would do the job most of the time. If it didn’t, someone would pay a personal visit. It wouldn’t be pleasant for the deadbeat, but we invariably got our money back.”

The Skim

All three sources admitted that cash—lots of it—was removed from the casino count rooms before it was ever counted. At first the skim involved only the take from the table games, but eventually slot machine revenues were subject to manipulation as well. After the machines were emptied, the bags containing the coins or tokens were brought in and weighed to determine how much value they held. The scales were adjusted to show a lower-than-accurate weight, allowing a percentage of the take to go unrecorded. Whether the source of the money was from the tables or machines, the bottom line was the same: It was as though the money never existed. Although this activity was common knowledge to many of the managers, they typically weren’t directly involved in the process. And it wasn’t wise to show an interest in who took the money or where it went.

Sammy believes that authorities suspected him of being a courier for the skim. He cited an incident from the mid-’70s, when he was employed by one of the casinos under investigation. “My family and I flew to Phoenix for my father-in-law’s funeral. I had a rental car reserved and when I went to pick it up, the guy told me the FBI had been asking about me. They wanted to know how long I’d have the car and where I’d be staying. That kind of thing. I just went about my business and never heard anything more about it.”

The Wiseguys

According to Mario, Mickey, and Sammy, the wiseguys who ran or hung around the casinos weren’t all that imposing. On the contrary, Mario said: “As long as you didn’t cross them, they were mostly pretty good guys. They tended to be generous and helped a lot of the regular employees who were having financial or personal problems.”

Sammy witnessed less interaction between the wiseguys and casino employees, but noted, “I never had any problem with them. In fact, I liked most of them. I did my job and they didn’t bother me.”

Mickey agreed. “As long as you did what you were supposed to do and didn’t stick your nose where it didn’t belong, you had nothing to worry about. But if your curiosity got the best of you and you got too inquisitive, well, that could get you in trouble.”

Tru Hawkins

Tru Hawkins, a radio personality on Las Vegas radio station KDWN, provides a different perspective of Vegas at that time. Hawkins’ family moved to Las Vegas from California in 1945, when Tru was two years old. He got his first entertainment-related job, monitoring the KLAS radio transmitters at night, in the early 1960s. Later in the decade, he landed an on-the-air spot with KORK radio. An adult music station, it featured songs by artists currently appearing in Vegas. In the mid-’70s, Tru became the first morning man at KDWN, which also played adult music. The station later converted to talk radio and Hawkins now hosts the popular “Tru Hawkins Show.”

Tru has personal recollections of Las Vegas from throughout the years, as well as stories his father shared with him about his employment at the Riviera starting in the mid-1950s.

“My father was hired at the Riviera as a cashier. He had a reputation as someone who could keep his mouth shut and it wasn’t long before he was promoted to be manager of the casino cage. The money was stored in locked boxes until it was transferred to the bank. It was the practice to place one of the boxes filled with hundred-dollar bills on a shelf next to the back door to the cage. Mysteriously, in a short time an empty box would replace the full one. Those employees who were aware of the switch knew better than to question what was going on. Too much curiosity could be hazardous to their careers, or even their health.”

Based on Tru’s own experiences and what his father told him, two different pictures of the mobsters emerge. “If they liked you, they could be kind, considerate, and generous. On the other hand, if you crossed them, they were capable of cutting out your liver without thinking twice about it. Most everybody who worked around those guys knew that’s the way it was.

“When I’d bump into one of the heavies, they’d ask, ‘How ya doin’, kid? Ya need anything? Can I do anything for you?’ There was this one wiseguy who was a suspect in multiple murders. He learned that the son of one of the employees at the casino he was affiliated with had a serious medical problem that couldn’t be treated locally at the time. He arranged for the kid and the parents to be flown to the UCLA Medical Center and stay there until the boy was taken care of. He didn’t even discuss it with the father ahead of time. He just told him that everything was arranged and to be on the plane. It didn’t cost the parents a dime.”

Tru’s occupation also allowed him to meet with Lefty Rosenthal on occasion. “In the ’70s, I was working at the radio station and moonlighting as an announcer at KTBT-TV. At the same time, Frank Rosenthal was doing a weekly variety show that was taped at the Stardust and broadcast from the TV station. I ran into Lefty around the station every so often. He was one of the most charming guys you’d ever want to meet. But I knew he wasn’t anybody you’d want to get on the wrong side of.”

Regarding Las Vegas itself back then, Tru remembers it as a great place to live. “It was growing and there was a lot of stuff going on, but it was still a small town in a way, too. There’s no place else I’d have rather been.”

Joe the Bartender

“Joe” arrived in Las Vegas in 1966 and worked as a bartender in several clubs and casinos through the 1980s. He has his own memories and opinions of that era.

“It was a great town then, small and almost crime-free. Everybody knew there were mob guys running things and you didn’t cross them. I wasn’t in the gaming part of the operations and had very little contact with the wiseguys. I made sure I kept it that way.”

Joe remembers a particular incident illustrating how the casinos dealt with employees who had sticky fingers. “I was working at a Strip casino and when I came in for the graveyard shift one night, I saw one of the dealers being escorted into the dealers break room by some security types. The dealers on break left the room in a hurry. Shortly afterward, a terrible series of screams came from inside. It turned out that the dealer had been caught hiding chips in his tie. He’d apparently been stealing for quite a while and had to be taught a lesson. They broke every one of his fingers on both hands and then threw him out. They also put the word out on the guy to the other casinos so that he’d never be able to get another casino job. It wasn’t pretty, but that’s the way it was. It sure made the other employees think twice before they’d try to give themselves a pay raise.”

During those days, many entertainers would stop in the casino lounges for a drink after a performance and mingle with the patrons. Joe got to meet several headliners, including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Elvis Presley. “Almost all of them were great guys and treated the hired help with respect. There were a few assholes, though. These were the arrogant types who looked down on anyone getting paid an hourly wage. Fortunately, they were in the minority.”

According to Joe, in addition to being a nice guy, Frank Sinatra was also generous. He related what he called a story “well-known to be true.”

“I think it was in the late ’60s and Sinatra was appearing at Caesars Palace. It happened that the daughter of one of the cocktail waitresses had been severely burned in a fire. The waitress, a single mother, was trying to take care of the kid and hold down her job at the same time. Her situation was the talk of the casino workers. Sinatra heard about it and had the waitress sent to his suite. She was nervous, figuring he probably wanted a little hanky-panky. When she got to his room, he asked her how much she earned in a year, including tips. She told him and he had his assistant write her a check for that amount right on the spot. Sinatra told her to take a year off and tend to her daughter. Her job would be waiting for her. That’s the way it was then. Even the stars cared about the little people.”