Interference (40 page)

After Saratoga went sour in 1975, Rand filed a $560,000 lawsuit against Glick, charging that he had defrauded her in a San Bernadino, California, land deal.

On November 9, 1975, the fifty-four-year-old Mrs. Rand was found shot to death in the kitchen of her Mission Hills house. Her body had been hit with five bullets fired from a high-standard, .22 caliber, semiautomatic pistol with a well-tooled silencer. Holes had been drilled through the barrel of the gun to dissipate sound; and the steel-wool-packed silencer sleeve fit over the barrel to further muzzle the shots. One bullet was found in her back, one entered her brain through her left ear, and three were clearly
visible under her chin. All five had been fired at close range.
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She had been killed between 3:00
P.M
. and 5:30
P.M
. There were no indications of a forced entry, and nothing of value had been stolen. Her body was found by her husband, Dr. Philip Rand, a prominent San Diego obstetrician.

A homicide officer with the San Diego Police Department told me that when he saw Rand's body, he also saw a message delivered. “The configuration of the wounds made us believe that the murder was a warning as well as an indication of why Mrs. Rand was killed. To me, when somebody gets shot like that, it means that they have been talking too much and were being silenced. According to our information, she was going to expose someone's activities.”

On advice of counsel, Glick refused to respond to oral questions about the murder from the San Diego police. Instead, he asked that all questions be submitted in writing through his attorney. His refusal to cooperate raised suspicions and placed him at center stage in the investigation.

Underworld figure Jimmy Fratianno told my associate, William Scott Malone, “Well, Frank Bompensiero [the onetime head of the San Diego Mafia] told me that Spilotro killed Tamara Rand. And Tamara Rand had a lot to do with Glick. I don't know if she was his secretary or whatever it was, but she was very close to him and had a lot of information. And they [the underworld] found out that she was going to tell the FBI or whatever. And they just killed her. They didn't want Glick to get in no trouble. That would mean that they would lose the Stardust.”
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After the Rand murder, heat started coming down on Glick's partner Al Davis. When challenged about his view about the NFL rule forbidding associations with gamblers, particularly his business relationship with Glick, Al Davis answered in a deposition, “Sometimes there is association with gambling, and sometimes there is the appearance of being associated with gamblers, and I think direct association is wrong.” When asked to explain what he meant, Davis responded, “It is what is. You know, when I came into the National Football League, many of our owners owned horses, owned dog tracks, owned all the familiar gambling habitats of gamblers and gambling. We have learned to accept this in the National Football League. We have people, as I say, who own hotels in Las Vegas, and it is not frowned upon. We have learned to accept in our business a differentiation between
association and appearance. That is the point I was trying to get across.”
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Rozelle had become increasingly critical of Davis and advised him to “divorce” himself from his business ties with Glick. However, Rozelle did not force the issue, saying publicly that Davis's investment in the Eastmont Mall was “just a tax shelter.”
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NFL Security chief Jack Danahy recalls, “Glick was the subject of a big FBI investigation. And he was of interest to us because he shared ownership with some of our people [in the NFL]. There was the shopping center he had with Al Davis, but our people found out a lot about Glick after they bought it. He was just coming under FBI scrutiny. And you couldn't just walk up to Al Davis and say, ‘You gotta sell this thing.'

“There were several other people involved, and they bailed out of it. We went to them and said that this guy [Glick] was bad news, and they severed their relationships with him. Al Davis said, ‘As far as I know, this guy is a lawyer, and he's my partner.' Pete consulted with the league lawyers, and they said we couldn't do anything. Later on, of course, it developed that Glick was a front man for the mob.”

Although NFL coaches Chuck Knox, Don Shula, and John Ralston gave up their interests with Glick's businesses, Davis refused to. As a consequence, he was investigated by the NFL, and his tax returns were mulled over by the IRS.

Reflecting on the Glick matter, a longtime supporter of Davis told me, “I'm not too hard on him for this. Davis appears to truly love professional football, and it is hard for me to believe that he would ever do anything that could jeopardize his ownership of the Raiders. Surely, he understood that his relationship with Glick could do just that. His enemies in the NFL saw this as a means to run him right out of football.”

Meantime, Lefty Rosenthal, who was still the director of Argent's Nevada operations, was beating his chest around Las Vegas, boasting that he was the real decision maker behind Argent and that Glick was merely his moneyman. Such indiscreet comments prompted federal and state investigators to believe that Glick was indeed only a front man, wittingly or unwittingly, for Rosenthal, Spilotro, and/or the crime syndicate. And the Rand murder had only heightened their suspicions.

“One of Lefty's biggest problems was that he loved the publicity,” Marty Kane, a top Rosenthal associate, told me. “That's
when he got into trouble. When the politicians came after him, instead of backing off, he challenged them.”

Rosenthal's reapplication for a casino license was rejected in January 1976. The commission cited his criminal record and underworld associations as the reasons for the denial. The panel also noted his 1960 nolo contendere plea in North Carolina for attempting to bribe a college basketball player during the NCAA tournament. The chairman of the gaming commission, Peter Echeverria, said, “In my three-and-a-half-year tenure I have never found an applicant whose background was so repugnant. As far as suitability, Rosenthal would be at the bottom of the list.” Consequently, Rosenthal was finally released by Glick.

Surprisingly, Glick had testified on Rosenthal's behalf at the hearing, saying that to deny Rosenthal licensing would “certainly be one of the greatest mistakes ever to take place in the State of Nevada … I decided unilaterally—and I want to emphasize unilaterally—that what would be best for Argent would be to have Frank Rosenthal as my personal adviser.”

At the time of the commission's decision,
Rouge et Noir News
, a newsletter for the casino gaming community, protested, “Rosenthal's background was well known to the enforcement officials when his services were engaged by Glick. We thought that Rosenthal had an excellent chance of approval because a rejection on the basis of 15-year-old data would make Nevada authorities look ridiculous. They could have acted on the same background data immediately on hearing of Rosenthal's appointment about a year ago. If Rosenthal was not suitable a year ago, why didn't the Nevada authorities act then?

“The Rosenthal case begs the question as to how many undesirable employees continue in their jobs only because the Nevada gaming authorities haven't chosen to classify the position as requiring a key employee designation. And what undesirable employees remain at jobs just below the ‘key employee' designation to avoid a thorough investigation of their backgrounds?”

After Rosenthal was ousted from Argent, he was replaced by another Chicago mob associate and former Caesars Palace executive, Carl Thomas, who pinch-hit for Rosenthal and continued to manipulate Glick.
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The government's suspicions about Argent were confirmed in June 1976 when the FBI filed an affidavit in federal court charging that the Balistrieri crime family had received over
$100,000 in skimmed casino money from Argent. The affidavit stated that the Balistrieris were “answerable to the Chicago organized crime family which controls Anthony Spilotro's illegal activities in Las Vegas and the Western United States … Based upon electronically intercepted conversations demonstrating Anthony Spilotro's … influence with various aspects of the Stardust and Fremont Hotel/Casinos, Spilotro and the organized crime figures to whom he reports in the Midwestern United States have an undisclosed control over and proprietary interest in the Argent Corporation, in its operation of the Stardust and Fremont Hotel/Casinos, and that Allen R. Glick is merely a straw party controlled by the organized crime syndicate, and designated by them to be the licensee, on paper, in the State of Nevada.”

Ironically, it was the July 1975 disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa
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that had ignited the federal government's renewed interest in organized-crime investigations, particularly in the areas of pension-fund frauds and general labor racketeering, for the first time since the Kennedy administration.
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Among the major targets of federal law-enforcement agencies was the Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund.
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32 Colonel Culverhouse and Major Realty

ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON in December 1974, Carroll Rosenbloom, overwhelmed by work and responsibilities, began complaining of flu symptoms and stomach cramps. He was taken to the hospital where it was discovered that he had suffered a heart attack. Although the attack was considered mild, Rosenbloom did not respond well to treatment, and his doctors feared that he could have another. To him, the worst consequence was that he missed the Rams' 1974 divisional championship game against the Washington Redskins, which his team won, 19-10, and the NFC championship game against the Minnesota Vikings, which it lost, 14-10.

Eleven months after his coronary, the sixty-eight-year-old Rosenbloom was admitted to Daniel Freeman Hospital for cardiac bypass surgery. Afterward, Rosenbloom became a new man. Interviewed by
Los Angeles Times
reporter Charles Maher, Rosenbloom told him that after early morning business phone calls, “I'll check with the Ram office to see what they have scheduled for me. Then, before I do anything else, I'll stretch. I'm a great believer in stretching. Then I check the tide in your newspaper so I can get down on the beach and run when the tide is low … I'm out there about an hour and fifteen minutes. I call it roving. The dogs go out with me and Chip [his youngest son] does when he's here. We'll run a while, then walk very fast, then jog a little.” Rosenbloom also swam, played tennis, had daily rubdowns, ate right, and generally took care of himself. To beat
the tension of Los Angeles traffic, he bought a red-and-white Bell 206B2 helicopter. He drove his Mercedes roadster just for fun.

Rosenbloom removed himself from all corporate boards and concentrated on a handful of investments and some oil drilling, particularly in Louisiana. The business meetings he did have away from home were generally held at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which was near his Mediterranean-style Bel Air mansion.

Rosenbloom also owned a two-story “summer house,” worth an estimated $2 million, located on three oceanfront lots in Trancas Beach, just north of Malibu. His neighbors included Jack Lemmon, Steve McQueen, Dinah Shore, and Billy Wilder.

Along with his wife, Georgia, the ball club became the center of Rosenbloom's universe, even though he referred to the Rams as “a hobby” and not a full-time job. At Rams games at the Coliseum, there was Carroll's Corner, a vacant broadcasting booth on the stadium's second tier where Rosenbloom's male friends would congregate. “Carroll only felt comfortable with guys in his Corner,” said one of his associates. “He wouldn't even leave to go to the bathroom. In front of the guys, he could just take a piss in a Dixie cup.”

Georgia Rosenbloom had the nearby Georgia's Grandstand that was high above the crowd in the eastern end zone of the stadium.

Despite his changing life-style, Rosenbloom still enjoyed finding adversaries and going to war with them. His most bitter conflict was with a most unlikely foe: Pete Rozelle. During the mid-1970s, the two men were locked in a bitter feud. It was sparked in 1975 when the commissioner invoked the Rozelle Rule after the Rams signed wide receiver Ron Jessie away from the Detroit Lions. The Rozelle Rule permitted the commissioner to award compensation when two clubs could not agree after one team had signed a veteran as a free agent who had played out his option. As compensation for Jessie, the Rams were forced by Rozelle to give the Lions the Rams' star running back Cullen Bryant.

As a means of revenge, Rosenbloom was thought to have been behind Bryant's subsequent legal action, challenging the Rozelle Rule; Bryant had retained one of Rosenbloom's attorneys. At the time Bryant filed suit, the NFL was locked in another litigation with John Mackey, an all-pro tight end with the Baltimore
Colts and the president of the NFLPA, who had earlier challenged the rule and was awaiting a decision.
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In the midst of the Mackey trial—and after a Los Angeles federal judge chided the NFL during an initial hearing in the Bryant case—the commissioner relented and permitted Bryant to stay with the Rams but gave the Lions the Rams' first- and second-round draft choices in the next college draft.

Although Rosenbloom won his battle, he became the target of severe criticism, particularly by the Lions' management. The club's head coach, Rick Forzano, described Rosenbloom as being the “most selfish owner in football … Rosenbloom wants to win so badly he would really go as far as this—to cheat another team. He is hurting professional football.” William Clay Ford, the Lions' owner, wrote to Rosenbloom, expressing similar sentiments. Rosenbloom's replies to both men were predictably acrimonious, and he wanted Rozelle to fine the Lions' ownership for attacking him.

Rozelle refused and again began to feel the wrath of Carroll Rosenbloom, who hired a private investigator to probe Rozelle's past. Rosenbloom's detective came up empty. Author David Harris notes, “Pete Rozelle was an exceedingly difficult person upon whom to find dirt. The commissioner didn't run around with women, and, though he drank, it was rarely to excess. He had nothing to do with Las Vegas, and his only significant involvement with gambling was navy poker games during World War II. He was scrupulous about his personal behavior and seemed to take to the role of Caesar's wife with an almost religious intensity.”
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