Interference (76 page)

3
.  Spilotro, using the alias Anthony Stuart, also ran the Gold Rush jewelry store at Jay Sarno's Circus Circus casino. Spilotro's small business served as a fencing operation for stolen goods. Circus Circus had received $20 million in loans from the Teamsters' pension fund. Spilotro also had operations at the Dunes, which was owned by Morris Shenker, one of Jimmy Hoffa's attorneys. Spilotro was a close friend of several celebrities, including Robert Conrad and Barbara McNair. Spilotro was suspected of engineering the 1976 murder of McNair's husband, Rick Manzie, a small-time Chicago hood.

At the time of Glick's purchase of Argent, Spilotro was still reporting to Chicago Mafia capo Joseph Lombardo.

4
.  Glick responded to my written questions in writing—via his attorney, Louis R. “Skip” Miller of Christensen, White, Miller, Fink & Jacobs of Los Angeles.

5
.  In May 1975, in a Las Vegas parking lot, Buccieri was found behind the wheel of his car with five bullets in his head. Buccieri, the former partner
of Tito Carinci in Newport, Kentucky, had also been a close associate of Gil Beckley.

6
.  Derlachter, formerly of St. Louis, was the executive vice president of the Sargent-Fletcher Corporation, formerly known as Fletcher Aviation, a major aerospace company owned by Wendell S. Fletcher, who owned a 15 percent interest in the Dunes hotel/casino in Las Vegas. Because of his job, Derlachter, who also worked at the Dunes part-time, had received a high-level security clearance from the Department of Defense.

7
.  Parvin-Dohrmann Company had been owned by Albert Parvin, who had been accused of being a front man for Meyer Lansky. One of Parvin's employees was Edward Levinson, who had been implicated in the Bobby Baker scandal and was identified as Lansky's bagman in Las Vegas. Parvin had purchased the Stardust from Cleveland mobster Morris Dalitz.

Parvin became embroiled in a massive federal investigation in 1966 after it was discovered that U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas had received $12,000 a year since 1962 from the Albert Parvin Foundation, which was funded by the Flamingo hotel/casino.

In the wake of the Douglas scandal, Parvin sold his casino interests in 1969 to businessman Delbert Coleman, reputed to be a front man for Los Angeles attorney/organized-crime figure Sidney Korshak. It was Korshak who had received a $500,000 finder's fee for his role in Dalitz's sale of the Stardust to Parvin.

Through a complex—and illegal—series of manipulations, the stock of the company suddenly became hugely inflated. But, before the SEC stepped in to investigate, the Coleman/Korshak group attempted but failed to sell the company to San Diego Chargers owner Gene Klein, who told me that he canned the deal because he didn't trust Coleman.

Subsequently, Denny's Restaurants purchased Parvin-Dohrman, just before the company's stock collapsed and its trading was suspended by the SEC on the American Stock Exchange. Coleman desperately tried to lift the suspension—which led to an alleged attempt to bribe U.S. Speaker of the House John McCormick through a Washington lobbyist who later pleaded guilty to influence peddling.

Questioned by the SEC, Korshak, a target of the SEC complaint, told investigators that he also represented Gulf & Western, the Hyatt Hotel Corporation, and Hilton Hotels, owned by Barron Hilton, who at the time still owned 30 percent of Klein's Chargers.

An eventual settlement was reached with the SEC, which forced Coleman to resign as the head of the company. Parvin regained control of the corporation and changed its name to Recrion. He gave Korshak another $500,000 finder's fee for making the arrangements.

8
.  Regarding the purchase of insurance, Glick told me, “Dorfman was head of an insurance company that provided insurance to Recrion before I bought it, and we continued the policy and renewals.”

9
.  Glick's Hacienda also came under the Argent umbrella, as did the Marina Hotel in 1975.

10
.  Prior to the creation of the Stardust Sports Book, there were sixteen such wagering parlors in Nevada. In 1975, the Nevada Gaming Commission
permitted the state's hotels to open legal sports-bookmaking operations.

11
.  Explaining the collapse of the company, Glick told me, “Saratoga was a highly leveraged real estate company with good property, but the real estate recession in Southern California in 1973 forced it into a cash flow crisis and ultimately bankruptcy. I had personal guarantees that were called on and to protect creditors and some of the very good properties, I had to get involved again and pledge money to make a plan of arrangement. Wittman left when the largest lenders and the creditors committee forced him to resign on the eve of the filing. Prior to the filing, the creditors had a committee to see what was happening, and they and Wittman could not work together.”

12
.  Investigative reporter Jeff Morgan of
The Oakland Tribune
first broke the story about the Glick-Davis business partnership in the Eastmont Mall on June 1, 1975.

13
.  Deposition of Allen Davis, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission v. National Football League, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Civil Action No. 78-3523-HP.

CHAPTER 29

1
.  Tony Salerno, the top capo in the Genovese crime family, was still running the group's bookmaking operations.

2
. 
The New York Times
, 22 August 1974.

3
.  A similar suit was filed at the same time by all-pro guard Ken Gray of the St. Louis Cardinals. He won in an out-of-court settlement with undisclosed terms.

4
.  The eight Chargers players were Deacon Jones, Tim Rossovich, Coy Bacon, Dave Costa, Jerry LeVias, Rick Redman, Walt Sweeney, and Bob Thomas.

5
.  Arnold J. Mandell,
The Nightmare Season
(New York: Random House, Inc., 1976), p. 50.

6
.  Klein remained with National General as a paid consultant until 1980.

7
.  La Costa was owned by Cleveland/Las Vegas mobster Morris Dalitz and his partners. The development received nearly $100 million in loans from the Teamsters' pension fund.

8
.  Looney was killed in a motorcycle accident on September 24, 1988, in southwest Texas.

9
.  Over the next six years, Herron was arrested four more times for drug-related offenses. In 1978, he was arrested in Atlanta after receiving a package containing half a pound of 60 percent pure cocaine. He was later convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

10
.  Bernie Jackson later became a New York state supreme court judge.

11
.  In 1978, Werblin left the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority to become head of Gulf & Western's Madison Square Garden Corporation. At the time of Werblin's move, G & W also owned and operated Roosevelt Raceway in Long Island and Arlington Park in Chicago as well as New York's Madison Square Garden.

CHAPTER 30

1
.  In New Jersey, voters approved casino gambling in Atlantic City in a November 1976 referendum. Resorts International became the first corporation to apply for a gaming license the following year. The Resorts casino opened over the Memorial Day holiday in 1978. Six months later, Florida voters decisively rejected an attempt to establish casino gambling in that state.

A movement for state-run casinos was also being conducted in New York. The principal spokesman for the drive was Robert Tisch, the president of Loews Hotels and the chairman of the New York City Convention and Visitors Bureau. Loews already had casino holdings in Aruba, Monaco, and Puerto Rico. It also owned a hotel on Paradise Island. Its casino was operated by Resorts International.

In 1987, Loews purchased the Columbia Broadcasting System.

2
.  The Commission on the Review of the National Policy Toward Gambling's tainted work was the last federal effort to examine sports gambling in America. In 1974, the Justice Department estimated that the volume of illegal sports gambling was between $29 billion and $39 billion annually. Most experts on gambling disagreed with those figures, insisting that they were too low.

3
. 
The Washington Post
, 5 February 1978.

4
. 
The Gold Sheet
, 11 September 1976.

5
.  In 1974, Snyder served as spokesman for Dell O. Gustavson, the owner of the Tropicana hotel/casino in Las Vegas, which was under siege by the Nevada Gaming Control Board because of questionable credit operations involving the Detroit Mafia. Earlier, Snyder, who had owned a public-relations firm, had been placed on a $7,500-a-month retainer by Howard Hughes. Snyder's company was implicated in the illegal 1968 takeover of Air West by Hughes and was enjoined with others in litigation by the SEC—because of acts of fraud and financial manipulation revolving around the Air West sale. Snyder did not contest the decision.

6
.  Jimmy the Greek with the editorial assistance of Mickey Herskowitz and Steve Perkins,
Jimmy the Greek by Himself
(New York: Playboy Press, 1975), p. 149.

7
. 
Ibid
., p. 217. Specifically, Snyder wrote, “I never subscribed to the theory that the casinos were linked, or backed, by a national syndicate, what conspiracy fans have sometimes called ‘The Organization' … Crime has always struck me, an observer of the passing scene, as notoriously disorganized. If it were not, if there really was such a thing as ‘Organized Crime,' it would run the country.”

CHAPTER 31

1
.  Glick had been hoping for another $40 million from the Teamsters' pension fund to remodel his casinos. All hopes for that were dashed after Glick's chilly meeting with Civella.

Civella was sentenced to prison again after his conviction for operating an interstate sports-bookmaking operation in July 1975.

2
.  It was difficult for law-enforcement officials not to notice that onetime Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana had been murdered in an almost identical manner in June 1975—just before he was to have testified before a U.S. Senate select committee investigation on the CIA/Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. Giancana was shot by the same type of weapon that killed Rand. He was hit in the neck and the mouth, and five times through the head. Although the murder remains unsolved, law-enforcement officials believe that Giancana had been taken out by his bodyguard Butch Blasi.

Chicago mobster Johnny Rosselli, who did testify before the Senate select committee, was found murdered, dismembered, and decomposed in a fifty-five-gallon drum floating in Biscayne Bay—in August 1976. He was last seen on a boat owned by Santos Trafficante.

3
.  Federal investigators believe that one of Spilotro's two possible accomplices in the Rand slaying was William “Butch” Petrocelli, a low-level Chicago underworld figure. Thought to have killed another possible federal informant, Chicago restaurant owner Nick Yalentzas, in 1980, Petrocelli was known to have been in a San Diego motel near the Rand house on the day of the murder. His longtime partner, Harry “the Hook” Aleman, was suspected as being the second man. Aleman was convicted of racketeering charges in 1978 and imprisoned. Petrocelli was found dead in early 1981 in his car with his throat cut, his body partially burned, and his mouth taped shut.

4
.  Deposition of Allen Davis, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission v. National Football League, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Civil Action No. 78-3523-HP.

5
.  Rozelle also had been critical of Davis's friendship with oddsmaker Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder. In a sworn deposition, when Rozelle was asked whether he had ordered Davis to sever his ties with the gambler, Rozelle replied, “I did not order him to. I told him I thought, because of the publicity he was getting at that time by being seen with Jimmy, it would be probably better if he wasn't seen with him a lot.” Rozelle added that he relented after Snyder was hired as a commentator by CBS. After that, “I didn't see any more criticism that I can recall of Al's being seen with him.”

6
.  Rosenthal appealed the commission's decision, charging that his constitutional rights had been impinged upon. Clark County Judge Joseph Pavlikowski overturned the decision in November 1976, saying that many of Nevada's gaming laws were unconstitutional and that the state legislature had given the state's gaming commission too much power. “The absence of standards,” the judge said, “creates a void in which malice, vindictiveness, intolerance, and prejudice can fester.” Pavlikowski ordered Rosenthal reinstated.

Immediately, Rosenthal returned to Argent, officially as a “low-level employee,” specifically under the guise of the Stardust's director of food and beverages. However, regardless of his position, he resumed his duties as the key operator of the company's casino holdings, replacing Carl Thomas.

The Nevada Gaming Commission immediately appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court in Carson City, which overturned the lower court decision in February 1977, citing that qualifying for a gaming license was a matter for the
state, not the federal government, to decide. Essentially, the court ruled that possession of a gaming license was a privilege, not a right. Rosenthal was ousted from the Stardust again.

7
.  Federal officials believe that Hoffa was killed by longtime underworld associates. Government investigators believe that Hoffa was murdered by Salvatore Briguglio, a top associate of Genovese capo Anthony Provenzano. They also suspect that Provenzano had acted on orders from eastern Pennsylvania/ upstate New York crime boss Russell Bufalino, who was serving as the interim head of the Genovese family. Like Sam Giancana, Hoffa was murdered in the midst of the investigation of the plots to kill Castro. Bufalino, a close associate of Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante, had been brought into the plots, along with four other mobsters, by Hoffa in the spring of 1960.