Latest / Hey BigHead: The Vegas Local Podcast / The Mob Museum & History of Made Men in Vegas | Ep 323

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The Mob Museum & History of Made Men in Vegas | Ep 323 · Hey BigHead: The Vegas Local Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: All right, boys and girls, we're back once again.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Julie made fun of me for saying every episode that this is I'm so excited it's gonna be the best episode ever.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: So now I just don't say that anymore.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I actually I do think this is gonna be the best episode we've ever had.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I'm really I am excited about this.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my, my, my.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know how excited I am because this is the nicest I've ever dressed up for any guest that we've had on YouTube.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, you took off your t-shirt.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: I did.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I wore the t-shirt.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel I didn't feel like the old school Beatles tea was probably appropriate.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe it was.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, maybe we'll see.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um today we have a staple in this Las Vegas community.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: The Mob Museum has graciously accepted our invite to come on this day, uh come on the show, I should say.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we have Claire White from the Mob Museum here with us on our couch.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being here, Claire.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks for having me.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, can you fill us in of what your job is at the Mob Museum?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm the senior director of education, uh, which means that I oversee our team of educators who lead programs and tours and talks throughout the museum, as well as our classroom outreach programs.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_04: So we go out and talk to school children here in Las Vegas and Clark County, about 10,000, 11,000 every year.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_04: We also do virtual programs for all ages around the country.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_04: And uh I also contribute to research exhibits and all that.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a historian at heart.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: How old are the kids that you go to?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_04: Uh we visit students as young as seven, so as young as grade two, but we don't talk about the mob really until we get to middle and high school.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm a Las Vegas local.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, even though, you know, our mission is to tell the uh impact of organized crime and law enforcement on American society, huge piece of that, of course, is Las Vegas history.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_04: So when we're in elementary schools, we're talking more about Las Vegas topics, you know, anything from the Hoover Dam to the casinos, and then also a little bit of forensic science.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you been with the mob museum?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it'll be 11 years in August.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, look at you.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: What's some of the so obviously you you obviously know your stuff, and I'm sure we're we're gonna get into this, and I'm sure you're gonna blow my mind with a lot of fun facts and this and that.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: But what is the criteria going into it?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what did you need to know before they were like, yes, you can be part of this team?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_04: So I was hired actually to create our classroom outreach program.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I've been working in museums since I was still in college.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_04: I I went to UNLV.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh my first museum job was at the Liberace Museum when it was still in its like original full form over there on East Trop.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: And so I knew a lot of Las Vegas history already.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I would say that for me, what they what they hired me for was my ability to create museum programs, so kind of how to reach all ages in an informal setting, as well as my Las Vegas history.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_04: And kind of I've built the mob history, I've built the mob history over time.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why is history so important to you?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_04: History is so important to me because I think, you know, it's it is a cliche, and some historians will even tell you it's not true.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_04: But if we don't know our history, we are doomed to repeat it.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think that's a major thing.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: And I think also for me, it it does build commonality whether we realize it or not.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I I was not born here, but I went to school here.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_04: My family moved here when I was still young.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I think understanding what Las Vegas was like before I was here, as well as everything that it's been in the last 30 years since, I think is is important, not just for myself, but also because it helps build community.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_04: And and especially here in Las Vegas, I think that's something that we need more of.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well said.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I I'll admit, and I feel bad for saying this, I've never been in the mob museum.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: But we had Jonathan Jocelyn, and we asked him, what are some important things that we need to check out if we're in downtown Vegas?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: One of the first things he said was the mob museum.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I definitely gotta check it out now.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_04: That is that's a huge compliment.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, we hear it all the time.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_04: I I will say I'm always sad when someone says they haven't been to the mob museum, but on the flip side, I do understand.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, us longtime Las Vegans, the last thing you want to do is get on the 15 and drive downtown in your off time.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_04: So I get it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, we we we think there's something for everyone.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_04: There's always exhibits being updated, there's so much local stuff.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, even if you've only been here 10 years, you're going to see things that you're like, oh my gosh, I remember when the Tropicana was still there.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_04: You know, things move fast here, and and and you get to be kind of an insider quickly if you if if you want to be.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna change that very soon.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're we're gonna change that issue.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're good.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Big head outing.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Big head team outing.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody get ready.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Wear your nicest apparel.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: We can get drinks afterwards too.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: You and the drinks, Julie.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: We need to talk about it.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, sorry.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_04: That is actually important though, because you know, there are very few museums in the world that have a fully operational speakezy bar in their basement.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_04: And we not only do that, but we also make our own moonshine.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_04: So do you really?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_04: The drinking part is we're that doesn't bother us.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_04: That's important.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: We love that.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: We love that important.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: We had Stephanie Rosenthal on.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you saw that check it out.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: She was phenomenal.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: The daughter of Frank Rosenthal, who was portrayed by Robert De Niro in the movie Casino.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know much about her.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I I just knew the movie Casino, I've seen a thousand times, but that's pretty much the extent of what I knew.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: I knew it, I knew parts of it were based on a true story.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: But when she came in, one, she was such a strong woman that I was even a little taken a little off guard, just how much she was just like her dad, how much I felt like there were so many characteristics of her dad that she conveyed.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she was such a great just guest to have on.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: She told incredible stories, obviously loved and respected her dad, loved her mom too, but had more time with her dad, and was such a great uh guest to to share in those stories.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it was personal, a lot of it was things that aren't easy to kind of talk about, especially when your family is you know on this movie that millions and millions of people have seen.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, she was fantastic, and I I I I love I love going back to that episode every now and then.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do you get people asking you a lot about the movie Casino and other types of mob movies that are made?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_04: Very much so.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I think so many people what they uh know or what they think they know about the mob does come from movies, and so we get so much of that.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_04: Uh people often ask us how realistic or unrealistic certain mob movies are.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_04: You know, casino's a great example.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, and you know, I certainly can't speak to it the way that Stephanie would be able to.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_04: But we have a lot of people at the mob museum over the years, some who have since passed from when I first started, but you know, people who who are portrayed in the movie uh from both sides of the law.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_04: And everyone says, you know, other than the fact that it's all fake names, that Casino is one of the most accurate mob movies you can get.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, I think for us, incorporating that pop culture is in fact important.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_04: In our retail store, we have an exhibit that's all about mob movies.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_04: So we have costumes and props from, you know, uh TV shows like Boardwalk Empire and Breaking Bad as and The Sopranos, as well as movies like Pulp Fiction and of course Casino, and you know, making people feel like, yeah, if if you know mob movies, you you do know a little bit of the story.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_04: Like that's it's okay to get get your mob history at least in part from those mob movies, and then you know, we can kind of build on top of that.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel about shows like Sopranos and which is my favorite show of all time, and movies like Casino?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So many people glorify the the that's that side of the mob that, like, oh, that's such a great time to be in, or oh, I love this movie, I love Tony Soprano, whatever it is.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now that you know so much of what you know, how does it feel from your end of when people say and they they glorify like a Tony Soprano?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_04: You know, for me, there's there's two sides of it.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_04: So I think everyone loves a story with an anti-hero or or you know a redeemed villain.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that as long as you look at it from that context, I think it's wonderful.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but I do think it's really important to understand that, you know, uh the Sopranos is as much fiction as it is fact.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and the idea that a mobster, as long as he says sorry, and as long as he comes home to his wife every night, like that makes all the other things okay.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_04: I don't agree with that.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, there's people pay a debt in society when they're caught for criminal behavior because it's it tears at the fabric of society.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, a lot of of mobsters whose stories we tell in the museum, uh, we know that they are people, we know that they're families, we know that they have many redeeming qualities, but it definitely for me does not justify the criminal behavior that they participated in.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well said.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds good.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I want to get back to the movie casino because we we have a few questions about uh not Frank, but his uh associate.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: How how would you even how would you even call me?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like associate is the right word for Tony Spilatro.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So what can you tell me about Tony?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: We we we we've discussed Frank over and over again for sure, but what can you tell me more about his associate, Tony?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_04: So Tony Spilatro was brought into Las Vegas as an enforcer.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so when he came to Las Vegas, he was not a made member of the Italian-American Mafia, but he was uh a high enough ranking associate that he was trusted to be the uh muscle behind the skim.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_04: And so what that essentially means is while Rosenthal is the one in the count room with a couple of his associates making sure that the money is coming in and out at the appropriate pace, Spilaccio is the one who is uh keeping his eyes and ears, making sure that no one is going to uh jeopardize that skim and then doling out punishment in whatever form that may take, if need be.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like that sounds like the Joe Pesci character that I saw at Casino.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's pretty spot on.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Where is he from?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_04: From Chicago.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_04: From Chicago.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and you know, by by the 1970s in Vegas, uh Chicago is not the only organized crime uh group here, but they're huge players.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_04: So many of those names that you hear of in that time period, from Rosenthal to Splacho to others, you know, they're coming from Chicago.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um and he already had a reputation in Chicago before he ever even comes here.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: At what point during his venture here did he decide he'd rather kind of take it up a notch and kind of be like the king of the streets?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_04: So he comes to Las Vegas in the early 70s.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: I think 71 is the first year he's like officially here.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_04: So certainly not the first time he would have been in town.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um and by the late 70s, a couple things are happening.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_04: I think the the first thing that's happening is he's maybe realizing that as uh as lucrative as the Las Vegas rackets are, that you're not necessarily getting uh your dues back in Chicago.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_04: That the guys, the bosses in Chicago are still sort of thinking of Las Vegas as, yeah, that's our cash cow, yeah, that's where, you know, that's our bank account, but the guys who are out there, they're still sort of our second stream guys to some extent.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so I think that really um my understanding and what I've heard and kind of what I perceive is that he really did bristle at that in a way that some other guys did not.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_04: And so working with uh other people he already had strong relationships with, like Frank Colotta, they realized like we can do all of these other things, and technically by the the code of the outfit, it's not allowed, but no one's really gonna stop us.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_04: And so, you know, he he translates what had been kind of mob-approved businesses.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_04: So he ran a souvenir shop at the Circus Circus, he had a pawn shop, he takes these businesses that were essentially okayed by the outfit, and he says, Well, in order to make more money, like let's start a fencing operation, let's start these burglaries, let's do all of this stuff.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_04: And and so by 1978, 1979, he's really seen himself as that is his persona, even more so than the enforcer persona.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And on the other side of the fence, because I feel like most people that are interested in in watching the movies or or reading about it, they always talk about the mafia members themselves, not necessarily the law enforcement that's also involved in that.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know much about this person, but what can you tell me about Sheriff Ralph Lamb and his involvement in this time period?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_04: So Sheriff Ralph Lamb was uh kind of coming to the end of his time as sheriff in the 70s, but he's really in uh he's invaluable to the city of Las Vegas in terms of the reputation that he builds for uh his expectations for organized crime when they're here in the city.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so you know, longtime sheriff, and he I he's kind of this, he's he's a study in contrasts.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_04: So he's a Lincoln County boy, he's a cowboy, he wears boots and a and a hat most days on his shift.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but then he also, you know, provides opportunities for women and uh has some of the first kind of computer databases for Metro to use.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_04: And he starts tracking criminal behavior in a way that most, you know, small-town cowboy sheriffs aren't going to necessarily want to track that data.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um and one of the things that he really does hyper focus on is uh Metro has this blue book uh where essentially it's what so if you go kind of back to the early 1900s, a lot of law enforcement agencies would have what's called a rogues gallery, and they'd literally just have like a book or a wall that has every criminal who's been booked in the last, you know, sure, depending on the jurisdiction, 10 days or a hundred days or ten years.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_04: And so he turned it into a book.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_04: And if anyone with organized crime came in off a highway 91 or through the airport, he was he himself or someone he kind of told to go see them would check him out and be like, How long are you staying?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_04: What are you doing here?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_04: And if you if he even got a whiff of you doing something criminal, he was you know, he was stomping down to the floor of the desert inn and ripping you off a craps table.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's the kind of stuff he did.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of like the the Vegas community and society at that time, I actually have no idea how much of the community was involved with the mob.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Was Sheriff Ralph Lamb like a controversial figure in the community or like generally accepted or he was he was pretty accepted and pretty uh well liked.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_04: Uh definitely his reputation was was overall a positive one.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's like anything, um any person in a public office, political or otherwise, you're gonna have people who really don't like you and you're gonna have people who really love you.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but you know, certainly in that period, most people thought of this as a as a necessary way of doing business.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Was it successful, you feel?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_04: I you know, I think it was.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um I I I I think he he accomplished what he sought to accomplish.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_04: I do also think that the mob was largely self-regulating.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the mob in Las Vegas knew that the only way to keep tourists coming was to keep the streets fairly clean, to keep violence out of the headlines.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, I certainly don't say this to discredit Sheriff uh Lamb, but I think a lot of the stuff that he did uh reinforced rather than actually kind of regulated the mob organically.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: During this time, and this is me again, not got going to the mob museum yet, so I this may be a dumb question.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Was there who was at the top of the food chain in Las Vegas for the mob?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or was it were they here in Vegas or were they back home in Chicago or elsewhere?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_04: For the most part, the bosses weren't here.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: So So when you say self-regulated, who was who was regulating them?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_04: The you know, I think I think the thing we have to keep in mind is uh that the mob as early as the 1920s or 30s kind of already had this system in place where it didn't matter if your boss was there, you still knew what you were doing.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_04: So I mean it's it's like the the old school mobster version of work from home.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_04: Like someone still knows what you're doing.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't, it may not feel like they know what you're doing, but they have their ways.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so you know, the the boss of the Chicago outfit, uh, regardless of whether we're thinking about the 60s or the 70s or the 80s, he's not in Las Vegas.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_04: The boss of the Kansas City outfit, he's not in Las Vegas.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_04: But there are enough people who are keeping tabs on what is happening here uh that, you know, the minute you get into a a dispute with someone from another family, yeah, your boss knows.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't want to jump the gun, but I feel like this is a lot of how Big Head is structured.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like even though you guys work from home, I I I know what you're doing.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: He has no idea what we're doing.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know exactly what you're doing.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um I mean, you do have to be a a good mob boss for that, for that.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, right.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: There definitely some management skills, some of the things.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to be fair, me and Brandon have laughed that we are more productive when we work from home because we talk less.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: If I like Michael Scott, if I'm like Michael Scott in the office, I'll just keep you guys so distracted during when you're in the office.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me on the case.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had one more question from me about Sheriff Lamb.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: When I was, you know, compiling research uh to send y'all's way about what we were curious about.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: I had read that he de loused people.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, my definition of Deloust is to remove lice from somebody's head.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what that means in this term?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_04: So uh I've never read the official record of what he did to mobster Johnny Roselli.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but generally in that time period, if we're talking about law enforcement de lousing, uh, it would literally mean spraying them down with like pretty much power washing someone.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um which I mean is a is a intentional choice.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_04: It's a power move.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: I've the one time I got myself in the toe with a power washer, I thought I was gonna lose my toe.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, not thankfully not a true, true power wash, but I mean it's uh it's a hard hose down.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um and and uh, you know, the the only mobster I've heard that he did do that to is Johnny Roselli.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, um uh it's interesting because I think in some sense that I'm totally going on a tangent here, and I feel like this is gonna get cut and that's fine.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_04: But please give us tangents.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I could listen to you talk about the mafia for days.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_04: This is gonna go so beyond the mafia.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_04: Bring it on.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I feel like sometimes we think that we're so much more obsessed with like health and germs today, but back in the like pre-1960, uh they were so there were there was like so many protocols of what you did when someone went to prison or jail in order to keep infectious disease down.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_04: And again, I don't know specifically how many people Sheriff Ralph Lamb was de lousing.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_04: Like this is you can't have lice, you can't have uh VD, you can't have like a cough, like uh you don't what if someone has tuberculosis?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_04: What if someone causes like a huge lice epidemic at the county jail?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's it's a different time.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely different.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And just uh I'm I'm gonna go off on a tangent with it here, just randomly.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to get political with it.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: If the pandemic like COVID happened during that era, how do you think the mafia would have handled COVID at the time?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_04: Oh god, that's that is such a hard question.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um I I mean I think I I think the actual answer is they would have been less concerned about the health crisis and more concerned about the profit.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_04: Money.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_04: So I mean, like toilet paper would have been a solid racket.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_04: And in fact, actually was a racket in Buffalo.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_04: Like in in real in real 2020, 2021.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so in Buffalo, New York, there's like this this whole they truly believed they'd stamped out the the mafia completely.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_04: Like throughout the 90s, early 2000s, you'll see newspaper articles that are like, we took them out.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_04: Like Rico may not have been successful in Chicago or you know, the Bronx or insert wherever, but it was successful here in Buffalo.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_04: I first of all, not true.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_04: That's a bold claim.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, real bold claim.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bold move.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_04: Second of all, some of the like biggest uh convictions related to like racketeering during COVID came out of Buffalo, and it was all I cannot think of the guy's name, but it was all this one.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Mob boss who yeah had like personal protective equipment rackets going on.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_04: So I think the answer to your question is the mob would have been uh, you know, fencing masks and toilet paper off of the back of trucks.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: I bet you haven't talked about that on any other podcast.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_04: I have not.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: The toilet paper buffalo racket of 2020.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: I would have been buying toilet paper from the mob because that was a panicking moment when we all went to the store and there was none.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: I bet it was at least at least double triple ply.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: The good stuff.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: The good stuff.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: What about Jimmy Hoffa and his connection to not only the mob, but in in Vegas too?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows about Jimmy Hoffa, about, you know, where is he, all that stuff.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: But what kind of connection did he have here in town?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_04: So from the 60s on, um, you know, pretty much until the end of the mob era in Las Vegas, so you know, late 80s, early 90s, the money is coming from the Teamsters Pension Fund.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_04: Like the Teams Teamsters Union Pension Fund is what is financing not just our casinos, but uh by extension, loans from the pension fund is financing uh convention centers and hospitals.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I won't name names, but you know, uh all of that, all of that investment money uh is primarily coming from the mob's relationship with the uh uh kind of the congl conglomerated Teamsters unions across the Midwest.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_04: And so men like Jimmy Hoffa have pretty deep relationships with Kansas City mobsters, uh Milwaukee mobsters, Cleveland mobsters like Moe Dailitz, who, you know, uh financed the Desert Inn, later helped finance the convention center, Boulevard Mall, Sunrise Hospital, a lot of these major community uh uh, you know, centers.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_04: And the the idea was, you know, that this was uh these pension funds, it's a lot less regulation than a 401k.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_04: Like a 401k today, your 401k is definitely still invested in real estate.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_04: Like I'm con I'm telling you, regardless of what your, you know, whatever your year is that it says, like some of that's real estate investment.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, but there's someone regulating that.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_04: The Teamsters Union, like no one was regulating that.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_04: A hundred percent of money could be invested into one Las Vegas casino, and who's gonna say differently?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's so interesting.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then alongside Jimmy Hoffa, and and obviously, please correct me if I'm wrong, but Mo Dalitz was involved in that too.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And to my knowledge, he's I guess both of them are are known as philanthropists around the city.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: So how how did that play out for for Mo Dalitz?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Is it the same story or does he have a slightly different involvement?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_04: So Mo Dalitz uh was a clean- I know I needed the phonetic spelling.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: So phonetically spelled that out.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: I should have.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_04: You know, um, oh gosh, this is this is a controversial take.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_04: And I I'm confident about Dahlitz, although some people do pronounce it Dalitz.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: Uh that it, you know, last names are so You never know.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_04: Like But I trust you.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna I'm gonna switch my policies.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: My trust is in you right now.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, thank you.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um so Mo Dahlitz was uh originally a Detroit era Detroit city bootlegger.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_04: So in the 1920s, as like a teenager, he's running alcohol from Canada down to Detroit, gets a reputation that way, um parlays that into illegal casinos across Ohio, Kentucky, uh, Michigan, probably Indiana and Illinois, I'm not certain.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and winds up getting connected to kind of the illegal and legal casino industry across North America.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_04: And by across North America, I mean like down into Cuba, across the the country, like he's connected into these casinos.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so in 19, in the late 1940s, he gets the opportunity to invest in the Desert Inn with his friend Wilbur Clark, uh straight man who uh and by straight I mean criminal straight.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_04: Uh every once in a while.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_04: There's there's certain criminal.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Did you just assume what his sexuality was?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm pretty sure his wife Tony Clark also thinks that he was straight.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's hope so.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um so he's the straight man for for a lot of criminal enterprises uh here in Las Vegas and also in Cuba.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_04: And he gets Mo Dailitz to invest.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um and Moe Dailitz, unlike most of these other guys that we're talking about, um decides to move here to Las Vegas, raises his daughter, Suzanne, here, um, is super active in the community.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_04: It certainly helps that he is like the chairman of the uh Desert Inn Country Club where he's so active.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm sure that helps.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_04: But he is he's so embedded in the community.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and through that, yeah, he is a huge philanthropist.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_04: Not only uh financing vital things that the city needs, like Sunrise Hospital, um, supporting the development of UNLV, but also he gives to a number of health-related causes, a number of uh uh Jewish causes.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_04: He he was a practicing Jew his whole life.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, he is one of the people at the Mob Museum that I struggle with the most when it comes to like how how much do you need to do to redeem for the criminal activity that you did?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_04: Because he is truly a founding father of Las Vegas.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that he is someone who paved the way for a lot of the things that happened.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um and he did it by being here and choosing to make this his community, which a lot of other mobsters did not do.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, and so, you know, I think uh to your point, like he was a philanthropist, and I do think it kind of sets him apart.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um for me, it doesn't uh diminish the fact that he was stealing money from these casinos, which means that he was paying less taxes, and those things do matter because taxes do make it so that we have better schools and better roads.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but he certainly found ways to give back to the community, even if it wasn't through allowing the state government to take their uh correct share of taxes.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: So interesting.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was growing up, I was awful in history class.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of my worst subjects.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you were my teacher in history class, you would have changed the course of my life.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I probably would have become a historian.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I could again listen to you talk about just anything in the past all day long.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_04: You say that, but I would encourage you to find any of my world history students from like 2009, 2010 when I was still a classroom teacher, and just ask them if they would agree with that.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna get them on the show.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: They would not.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: What did they call you in class?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Ms.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: White.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, White's my it's always been my last name.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's always gonna be my last name.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: The black book, is that a real thing?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_04: It is.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_04: The black book is a real thing, yeah.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_04: Really.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_04: So the black book or the uh Nevada list of excluded persons is a list of people who are not allowed uh to own, invest, or even set foot in casinos anywhere in the state of Nevada.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and the Nevada Gaming Control Board, the Gaming Commission, has managed this list since 1960, and it still exists today.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, the original 11 people added on the list, all of them had some connection to organized crime.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_04: Today it's it's a lot wider of a net that they cast.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, the black book is real.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Is it public knowledge who's on it or no?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, you could go, you could um you could Google right now Nevada list of excluded persons or Nevada Black Book and go to their website and you can get their their mugshots and their date of birth and their weight and everything.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I actually just typed it up and Julie showed up on that.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was weird.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_04: I know.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: That was a little weird.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always at the Oleante.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: What about um who was like the most I wanna say most, but who's one of the scariest people or the most notorious person that that's on that uh list, whether today or back then?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna circle back to Ralph Lamb.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_04: In an interview that Sheriff Ralph Lamb did, I believe in the late 80s, early 90s, he says that the person he found scariest uh kind of across any mobster who he came in contact with was a man named uh Marshall Caifano.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_04: He was one of the first 11 people put in the black book.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_04: And uh what is so interesting to me, uh so I have to paint the whole picture.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I'm about five feet tall.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_04: I believe Marshall Caifano maybe had one whole inch on me.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um stocky, tough Italian guy.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_04: So he didn't need height because he had everything else going for him.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um and he came from Chicago.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_04: He was uh actually one of the earliest enforcers of the skim, uh, even, you know, even before uh Tony Spilaccio, another fairly short Italian guy, but not as short as Caifano.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um he, according to Sheriff Lamb, as well as anyone else who kind of came in contact with him, said that he just had this dead stare that he would give you that was so scary, and that you know, you knew he was someone who was there to enforce the skim by all methods imaginable.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_04: So I I think I'd pick him, not because of my personal experience with him, but uh I you know, if a six-foot plus sheriff was afraid of him, I think I think there's something there.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_04: There's something there.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: What about we we know what it takes, what do we know what it took to get in the book back then?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: What about today?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: What does it take to get in the book today?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_04: So today, uh having organized crime connections can still be a qualifying reason, but a lot of the people in the in the book now are uh notorious cheaters, so slot cheats or card cheats.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um that's kind of the direction it's going in.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_04: Although I I also don't necessarily think that's static.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it kind of changes.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um you know, one thing that I think is really interesting, uh, you know, going thinking back to last year and the year before with Resorts World kind of being in the news with some of the stuff going on there, you know, casinos remain one of the best ways to launder money in the world.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, you know, historically as a part of organized crime activities, a lot of the people that were in the black book did have some kind of connection to money laundering.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_04: Money laundering today looks very different, but I feel like that's uh something that over the next, you know, maybe next 10 or 20 years we might see a return to some of that more traditional money laundering uh coming back into the black book.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_04: But a lot of slot cheats, definitely some people with organized crime connections and everything.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we have um foreign nationals, there's a person on the black book who's been connected to organized crime in Hawaii for decades.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_04: There's people who are just straight up all they do is slot cheat.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_04: You got it's a it's a good mix.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a healthy balance.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read this on my iPad because I want to make sure I get this right.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: So Oscar Goodman called the black book unamerican when he was a defense attorney.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: What is your perspective on that?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: And do you feel like it violates civil rights?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_04: You know what's so crazy is before I worked at the mob museum, um it would have never crossed my mind.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_04: Like I I I said this a couple times.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_04: I grew up here, neither of my parents worked in casinos, but I worked in casinos as I, you know, once I got out of high school, I certainly knew people who did.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I knew the black book existed.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_04: And until I worked at the Ma Museum, I always thought, like, well, that's good.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_04: Like, that's good.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_04: There's there's criminals being kept out of our casinos.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_04: That's a great thing.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um Oscar Goodman certainly has a point.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, the I'm not a lawyer, so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_04: This is not legal advice.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but there is kind of that that aspect of the black book that uh, you know, Americans are are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_04: And the black book is saying you were guilty once for this slightly related thing, so you can now never go into a casino because of this somewhat related thing you did 10 years ago in a completely different jurisdiction.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_04: And uh I do feel like there's some merit to uh Goodman's uh position that it's un-American and uh unconstitutional.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I I don't I don't know how the Supreme Court right this moment would feel about that, but I definitely think it's something uh worth exploring further.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you explored that because I think more conversations need to be had just about more just topics in general, just uh in overall.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: We had uh chef James Trees on, and he is an incredible chef, and he admitted that he was very much of a wild card when it came to what he posted online, and he would, you know, spout off whatever his feelings were without second guessing it.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then he had a friend of his that, you know, him and those two had uh differencing opinions, and he actually had a conversation about it.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, you know, uh, why don't you come grab a coffee with me, let's sit down, let's talk about this.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Chef saw the other side of it and and he still believed what he believed, but he's he he was under the impression that he should have more conversations about these topics.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I I like the fact that you changed your viewpoint too on this, you know, the the black book being, you know, on America.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I I I I think it's great.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I you know, and I think that's exactly uh I think that's that's one of those things that does draw me to museums is you know, I think I not everyone likes history.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a history nerd, I've always been a history nerd, I I will always be a history nerd, but I don't expect everyone to be like that.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um I you know, I've got a family of people who are like, oh God, why is she talking about this thing that happened in 1940 again?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I understand that, I get it.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_04: I feel the same way when they drone on about the show or whatever it is, and I'm like, oh gosh, it won't stop.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_04: There we go.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um but museums are intended to introduce us to these things.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I we get people all the time, both locals and out-of-towners, who say to us, like, oh yeah, you know, things were better in Las Vegas when the mob was here.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and it is one thing when a local says that very confidently and very definitively.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_04: It's an like I've had tourists just look me dead in the eye and was like, Yep, things were way better here.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, Well, um, let's explore that because you didn't live here, so maybe maybe we should we should look at why you think that and and you're entitled to that opinion, but there's also a lot of people who don't feel that way.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: That is a very common statement that people think.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Very much, yeah.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, the mob museum, you know, I don't we don't have an official position, but certainly uh the way I would answer it, and I think the way most of our team would answer it, is that uh Las Vegas, when the mob ran things, did feel safer and did seem nicer, but that is really not because of the mob.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's a lot easier for a community to be safe when there's 50,000 or 250,000 people versus two million.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it's a lot easier for businesses to care more about their employees when there are only 13 casinos competing for business rather than you know.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, if you count every single tiny little casino, like every wildfire and every single Sierra Gold that has more than six slot machines, like that's hundreds and hundreds of businesses that are competing.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_04: So of course things felt a little nicer when there's only 13 businesses competing for employees, and and they're kind of forced to pay their employees a uh a living wage, and they're forced to participate in philanthropy within the community.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_04: But there there were definitely benefits to the mob, like uh shrimp cocktail, way cheaper, prime rib, way cheaper.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_04: I like those things.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the days.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Another conversation that I feel like people don't talk about a lot historically is women's involvement in it.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, what what roles were women actually playing?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because all we ever see is, you know, mob wife who makes sure kids go to school and puts up with her husband's BS.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_04: So there was a lot of that, you know, and I think for two reasons.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_04: First of all, uh when we're looking at most mob movies, they're taking place in the 50s and 60s, and that's a lot of like that's just what women's lives looked like in most uh in most places in in the United States.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um the other piece of why I think that that's very accurate is, you know, the the best way to make sure that your family is insulated from your criminal activity is to give them the most normal life you can otherwise and not bring any of that home if you can help it.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but there were women uh affiliated with organized crime, um, some of the best known.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_04: So a woman named Virginia Hill, who a lot of times people is know her as uh Bugsy Siegel's girlfriend, but she was a mob courier, so she smuggled money.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, she also uh participated in the Chicago Outfits uh heroine trade.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_04: So she was essentially a mob runner in her own right.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um and in fact, that was was uh if you were someone's wife or girlfriend or daughter and you wanted to get involved in organized crime, that was a really uh a really lucrative way to do it because women were much less likely to get stopped by the police.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um and all the way up until the 60s, a lot of jurisdictions wouldn't even uh like search a woman, like physically search.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_04: So if they couldn't see something with their naked eye, uh you're safe as long as you get on that train before the police stop you, you're you're good.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so we see a lot of that.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um you can't be a maidman in the Italian-American mafia as a woman.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_04: Like you just can't.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_04: You you can be a mob courier, you could do certain things.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but as organized crime gets more organized in the 40s and 50s and 60s, there's less opportunities for women.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but you know, we tell we tell stories about a number of women connected to organized crime over the last hundred years, going all the way back to a woman named Stephanie Sinclair in New York who ran um es centrally the lottery racket, so policy game in Harlem in New York.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then all the way up to, you know, as recently as the the the current times, like there are a lot of very high power powered uh female.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_04: I was gonna say narcos.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_04: Is it a narca?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_04: If you're a woman, I don't I don't get back to you on that.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'll narcos.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we also heard that Mob Museum has a new exhibit coming out about I'm gonna get it right.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: Foley's bergère.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, okay, well done, changing about.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea who that is.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Please tell me about her.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_04: So Folies Bergère was the name of the showgirl review that was very long running uh at the uh at the Tropicana.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_04: And at the Tropicana, the Foley's Bergère, in the 1970s, the executive producer was a man named Joe Augusto.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and if you're thinking to yourself, Joe Augusto doesn't sound like he'd executive produce a showgirl review.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_04: Well, that's because he was a mobster.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_04: Uh he was the Kansas City enforcer for the skim at the Trop.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_04: And he uh had such a lengthy criminal record that he could not get a gaming license, but they wanted him on site, very similar to the Frank Rosenthal story in Casino.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so he became executive producer of Foley's Be'er.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_04: And uh later this month in May of 2026, on the 21st, we are debuting a new showgirl costume that belonged to a woman named Marianne Hernandez, um, who was she was actually one of the uh like uh uh rehearsal captains, but she would do swing roles on the show.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_04: So swing is when you know multiple different performances and kind of like an understudy, but like a fancier understudy.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so during one of her, during one of her swing runs, she'd gone in for a uh a coworker who was on maternity leave, and she did such a great job kind of very last minute that Joe Augusto, this Kansas City tough guy, uh writes her this letter and like, you know, it's it's typed out.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_04: So I mean it's not handwritten, but like this typed out like, dear Marianne, you did a lovely job.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um and she'd given, she donated the letter to us a few years ago.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_04: We've had it on display for a little bit, but you know, a letter is not that I the let that this specific letter is exciting, but it's not that visually exciting.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so we've been very lucky that that uh we reconnected with Marianne earlier this year.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_04: She actually came on February 1st.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_04: 14th, which is one of our two free local days every year.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and she like walked up to the front desk and was like, I have something on display here at the museum, and I've never come, I've never seen it.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_04: Really?
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_04: Can someone show it to me?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I happen to be there, and uh I know I've gone off on a long, long tangent here, but we love the tangents.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: We love tangents here at the Hey Big Head Show.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: Thank goodness.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, this this is the best podcast I've ever been on because of the.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, we're all about I definitely wasn't paid to say that.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_04: Not yet.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_04: Not yet.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_04: Not yet.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but no, so uh one of one of our supervisors, knowing that I'm the one who's probably gonna know where something is, she's like, This lady says she used to be a show girl, and there's like a a picture and a letter on display, and I'm like, I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_04: And so we rush up, and and you know, she's she and I are talking and she's like, I'm so excited, I got to see this.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, I have some costumes from my time at Foley's, and we're like, Awesome, we will take it.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so we we encourage anyone, whether you've been to the museum or not, we would love to have you come out this summer and see our brand new showgirl costume.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_04: I do want to give the caveat: if you're thinking that a showgirl costume is um big and expansive, I want to remind you that Showgirls did not wear a whole lot of clothing.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_04: So it is a uh it's a very glittery, glittery, it's certainly not a minimalist, but it is minimalist in the the um size of the costume.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Minimal coverage, maximum glitter.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I I know it's it's coming at the late uh towards the end of the month, but mentally I'm already there.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: Great.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes, I'm there right front and center.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's what we like to hear.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anybody that you feel doesn't get talked about enough, whether good or bad?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_04: Oh gosh.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it's always such a hard question.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, here in Las Vegas, the piece of mob history that I I wish we do did talk a little bit more about is the Kansas City side of things.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um whether it's because of movies, whether it's because of the size of the city, like everyone I think knows that Chicago mobsters ran Las Vegas, but I don't think that they realized that Kansas City mobsters were literally right there alongside them.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, at the same time that the Chicago outfit was skimming from the stardust, Kansas City was skimming from the trop, these two criminal uh groups were actually working together on some of their skim operations.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_04: So there were Kansas City operatives running small rackets or um kind of pieces of the skim in Chicago-run casinos.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_04: There were Chicago guys in Kansas City run casinos, and specifically um Nick and Cork Savela.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_04: So they were two brothers, and they never lived here in the city, but you know, they were kind of the head of the Kansas City uh family when they were running these rackets.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_04: And I I just think it's you know, it's it's important.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_04: I I think it gives a lot more context when we realize just how many people were here.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's real easy to just say, like, oh, you know, it's these 20 high powerful guys from Chicago, and yeah, they've got their couple thousand people who are boots on the ground, but like it's really only this one place, but it's not, you know, it's it's it's coming from all over.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is it is impressive how they they had a system and they stuck to it, and so many people had to buy into it for it to work, and it did for decades.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's incredible.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, I think um the that's such a good point because you uh the city did need to buy into it, you know.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_04: I um I certainly do not mean to suggest that every public official knew what was going on, because I know they did not.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I know they didn't.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_04: But on the flip side, a large enough number of people knew what was happening, some of whom were getting paid off to look the other way.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you you you cannot have a city's primary industry overrun by organized crime without there being some uh people complicit.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and as someone who is not from here and has not been here for a long time, I I just moved here like a year ago, you know, asking people let me give context.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm from Texas.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: Texas has a very long Texas history.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: But when I moved here and was having conversations about what it was like growing up there versus growing up here, a lot of people shared with me, like, well, and this is how they phrase phrased it, Las Vegas doesn't have a Las Vegas history.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: We have mob history, which fills in that slot.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like that is is true?
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: That like the city's development really does kind of just revolve around that, or is there more that people are leaving out?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_04: I think there's definitely more, but I think it's nuanced.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, the city existed before the mob, and uh we started as a railroad town.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, like to your point of Texas history, so Las Vegas' history isn't all that different from any other city uh west of the Mississippi up until 1930.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's the same stuff.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's railroads, it's water, it's people trying to ranch and then realizing there's really not enough ways to do that, trying to start mines, realizing this isn't the right place for that.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh a lot of that.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um and then in 1931, we legalized gambling and we uh liberalized our divorce laws and we liberalize our marriage laws and we build the Hoover Dam, which means that we now have like the most electricity possible when we used to have very little electricity, um, and the most water possible in the West when we used to have a very small amount, and all of those things come together to create this economy that the mob wants to be a part of.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_04: And so, truly from the 1930s on up until really the early 1990s, the mob does dominate the the way that the city grows.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I think to your point, because so few people come from here, those are the things that your parents are gonna tell you if you move here as a kid.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_04: And those are the things that your friends are gonna tell you if you move here as an adult.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_04: Uh my family moved here when I was in middle school.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_04: We came from Hawaii.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, tons of people moved from Hawaii to Las Vegas.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_04: Ninth Island.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, correct.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I mean, like everyone in Hawaii, that is what they think.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_04: They think it's casinos and that they were run by the mob until very recently.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, when we moved here in the mid-90s, I think I'm s I shouldn't say I think like I know my my mom and dad still thought that the mob ran our casinos, you know?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_04: Like I think, I think it's it's hard to get away from that, but I also think um I think that's why it's important for me uh that the mob museum and other museums in town.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_04: The neon museum does a great job of kind of expanding beyond just the neon signs.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_04: The atomic museum does such a great job of kind of explaining what atomic culture is versus atomic testing.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think it's important for us to have these cultural entities.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_04: I I I the city, you know, the the city didn't value its history the way Texas has always valued its history for so many decades.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_04: And I think I think that that that does us a great disservice.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well said.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: As we get closer to the end of this episode, I want to talk about the end of at least the the end of the reign of the mob here in Vegas.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I I know it's probably so hard to pinpoint one specific moment that led to the downfall, but is there something in your mind that you feel like was part of the catalyst of getting to that point?
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_04: There are two things that to me are the turning point.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it would take another almost 10 years to get the mob out.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but there's really two things that are kind of the turning point.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_04: In 1978, uh there is a wiretapping operation that's happening in Kansas City.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and at the Villa Capri Pizzeria, uh, some FBI agents and some uh, you know, some Missouri law enforcement are able to uh clearly pick up that the Sevellas and other members of Kansas City organized crime are talking about what is clearly a skim operation in Las Vegas.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_04: And that uh kind of starts them down a path.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_04: They start grooming informants, they start arresting people, they start building cases that kind of take place over the next decade.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and that is kind of the beginning of the end.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_04: And then the other thing that I think is kind of a symbol of the end of the mob is the Spilatro brothers' uh remains being found in a cornfield in Indiana.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and that that to me and to others at the mob museum kind of is the symbolic end only because the the pressure at that point has gotten too big.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um organized crime across the Midwest and across the city of Las Vegas know that the feds are closing in on them and that is leading to tension, it's leading to people making mistakes.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the you know, the the made men of the Chicago outfit back in Chicago are looking at the Splato brothers and thinking, like, dude, we had this great thing going, and you just couldn't stay silent and keep it together.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_04: You gotta be burglarizing beloved local furniture stores, you've gotta be like roughing people up in the streets.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_04: This is it's not gonna work.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_04: And uh to me, those are kind of the two symbolic ends of of organized crime in Las Vegas.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like a double-edged sword where you need so many people for it to work, but on the same side, all it takes is one or two bad apples, and there are a handful of bad apples, but to do something wrong that you know showed the the the weaknesses of yeah.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then last question are there any ballpark?
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you former mob members do you think are or went into witness protection after everything went down?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_04: Oh gosh, that's that's hard to say.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know that I have a ballpark number.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I uh I d this is just a feeling.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_04: It is not backed by data.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think that mobsters are uh some of the most likely to leave witness protection early.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh a lot of uh criminal informants in kind of like a white-collar criminal, that's a good example.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_04: Like they'll usually just stick it out.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_04: Like their family just has to move to a different suburban community, like they'll make it work.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um I we have a video at the mob museum of Frank Collada, who's a member of the Hole in the Wall Gang with uh Tony Spilatro, and he's talking about when he was in witness protection, and I think they put him in Alabama, I can't recall, but they put him somewhere in the south, and he was like, I had never worn blue jeans, I didn't know what a feed store was, like they're listening to me.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_04: My handlers keep telling me to tone down my accent.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_04: I can't tone down my accent.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_04: Like, what is this?
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_04: And I he he was like, I it's not worth it to me.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_04: Like I'd I'd rather risk my life than be a part of this.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_04: And we do hear that quite a bit with organized crime figures that they're like, this is just it's too much.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_04: I'd rather just risk it out on the streets.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: They've lived they've lived uh a life their way for 30, 40, 50 years.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now to just 180 it, it it's gotta be tough.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this was awesome.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: This was fantastic.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: This was so much fun.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: One more time.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about that event coming up on the 21st.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what you're doing?
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_04: So May 21st, it's exciting.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_04: We have two things going on all related to uh the history of the Foley's Beager Showgirl review.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it is.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_04: So uh that day uh we debut the exhibit that I was talking about earlier.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_04: So just a little bit of a redo in our uh Las Vegas Open City exhibit to add in that costume and kind of update that space.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_04: And then that evening, we have a public program um all about uh kind of the history and experience of showgirls here in the city that'll be moderated by Las Vegas historian Sue Kim Chung, who is gonna be talking to three former showgirls kind of about their experience.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sure some of them will tell some mob-related stories, but then also just some, you know, stories about the life of a showgirl.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: As if I didn't as if I didn't need another reason to go to the mob museum, just knowing all this now and especially if you're gonna be there.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: 1,000%.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you can't.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only going if you're gonna be there.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the law.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's the reason.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta come.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: Claire White, thank you so much for coming.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: This was phenomenal.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: This was such a good time.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was a pleasure talking to both of you.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite history teacher that I never had.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's who you are.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna have next time you come on, we're gonna have some of your students on too.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get the full the full story about what Miss White is all about.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I like the way you say Hawaii too.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know I know it's the she says it correctly.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: Correct, but everything she says is the correct way to do it.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's definitely not true, but Hawaii I do feel strong about.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Claire, thank you so much for coming in.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody check out the Bob Museum.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody check out the upcoming events that they have going on.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna- again, I'm not gonna try to pronounce it, but you you know what's happening on the 21st this week.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: Claire, I want to see your shaka.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's do the shaka.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, new episodes each week on HeyBighead.com.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: That was fun.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: Was it the best episode we had?
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was definitely one of my favorites.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yay!