The metal barrel was rusted and broken. Mud from the drying lake bed obscured its contents, but did not hide them entirely: a woman standing on the shore of Lake Mead screamed when she spotted it. Bones stuck out of the barrel, as if whoever was shoved inside was trying to claw their way out and get to shore. About 300 people have drowned in Lake Mead, a man-made reservoir 30 miles east of Las Vegas that supplies much of the city’s drinking water. This was different: the victim was shot to death.
Some think Las Vegas struck a deal with the devil. For years, officials left the mob and their casinos alone because they made so much money for the state. Mob operatives pilfered money from the cash boxes at poker tables and from the “count room”, where the house’s winnings were tallied.
By the 1970s, the Chicago Outfit was the city’s most powerful mob faction. But mafiosi could never get a licence to run a casino themselves; they needed a front man. That was Allen Glick, a developer from San Diego. Argent Corporation, Glick’s company, bought several dubiously financed casinos in the 1970s, including the Stardust and a resort at Echo Bay, out at Lake Mead.
A man named Johnny Pappas ran the Echo Bay property for Glick’s company. He even kept his own boat at the marina. In 1976 Pappas went out to meet someone interested in buying it. He never came home. His family say he feared for his life before he disappeared. If bookies offered odds on the identity of Hemenway Harbour Doe, Pappas would be the favourite—narrowly ahead of George “Jay” Vandermark.
Vandermark oversaw the slot machines at the Stardust, which by the 1970s was run by Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, a sports-betting genius—and the model for Robert De Niro’s character in “Casino”, Mr Scorsese’s 1995 film about the mafia’s reign in Las Vegas. Glick was his boss on paper, but he probably answered to the mob. The slots made a lot of money for both the Stardust and the Outfit. The Nevada Gaming Control Board alleged that Vandermark stole $7m-15m from Argent. He fled Vegas in 1976 when officials cottoned on to his racket, and was last seen in Phoenix later that year.
But who was the trigger man? Back then cash was everywhere, and the bosses in Chicago needed someone to make sure their money actually made it all the way back to the Midwest. They needed an enforcer.
Enter Tony Spilotro, who arrived in Las Vegas in 1971. He made up for his short stature with prodigious belligerence (Joe Pesci in “Casino”). When Spilotro was coming up on Chicago’s west side, his gang allegedly put an ice pick through another man’s testicles, and he squeezed his head in a vice until an eyeball popped out. His reign in Vegas was bloody. In 1974, the Los Angeles Times reported that there had been more mob killings and violence in the past 24 months than in the previous 24 years. The fbi suspected Spilotro of about two dozen murders, but he was never convicted. He owed that to Oscar Goodman, Spilotro’s defence attorney, and, later, a three-term mayor of Las Vegas.
A mafia lawyer turning mayor may seem odd. Not in Vegas…………