Tahoe’s mobster hits and casino killings
Mobster hits and casino killings were a lot more common back in the day than you might think! This was according to my Father who would have known a lot about the dirty dealings of Tahoe mobsters.
Mobsters, gambling, and North Shore Lake Tahoe
Were mobsters killing people and dumping the bodies in the lake? In the late 1940s and 1950s, my Father ran the switchboard for all of the phone communications on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe and he says there were.
Every call went through my Father, his wife, or one of the few switchboard operators and it’s known that mob-affiliated gambling in Tahoe ran through the North Shore Casinos.
That means that every time the police would plan a raid on one of the casinos, my Father would know first. The way my Father tells it, he was the number one VIP as he tipped off the casinos before the police could raid them. He provided an invaluable service to the casinos and got the royal treatment from their owners and managers.
Frank Sinatra
My Father even had a run-in with celebrity Frank Sinatra. At one of the Casinos, Frank was flirting with my father’s pretty wife and my Father punched Old Blue Eyes then security escorted Sinatra to his room. It sounds like an outrageous tale but, knowing my Father, it’s likely true. He was a champion boxer in the Navy.
Frank Sinatra later went on to buy the ill-fated Cal-Neva casino. Link to Cal-Neva article
Sinatra was a known associate of the Lake Tahoe-based mobsters. Sam Giancana, a known Mafia boss out of Chicago was a guest of Sinatra at the Cal-Neva. Rumor has it that the body of Fredo Corleone, the brother of Michael Corleone (from The Godfather) got dumped in the Lake after he was shot.
One of the rumors is that the Cal-Neva has secret underground tunnels and these were for mobsters and celebrity guests to make their way into and out of the casino and each other’s cabins.
Marylin Monroe used to use these tunnels. I didn’t believe in them until my sister started working there in the late 1980s. She lived in one of these little cabins and confirmed that the tunnels did exist. My Mother also worked at the Cal-Neva. She said there was talk of the underground tunnels by other staff and management.
Why is my family so connected to this particular casino? Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in Lake Tahoe there were few jobs. You could work on the roads, do construction, be one of the few doctors or dentists, and that was about it. Not a lot of industry. Most residents worked at a casino at one time or another.
President (John) Kennedy
Sinatra wasn’t able to hang onto the Cal-Neva as he had problem after problem. The story is that the Cal-Neva was built on a native burial ground.
New faces were introduced into the Nevada gaming commission. Things weren’t as smooth for Sinatra since the “friends” of the mob were no longer in charge.
Sinatra went as far as to threaten the Governor of Nevada, Grant Sawyer with trouble from his friend in the Kennedy administration. It was later learned that Sinatra provided both President Kennedy and Giancana with “access” to one of his girlfriends Judith Campbell.1https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/tahoes-good-fellas/.
She was seeing both the president and Giancana for several months before FBI director J, Edgar Hoover told the president to put a stop to it. Hoover had learned about Campbell’s connections to both Sinatra and Giancana. Kennedy put a stop to both his relations with Campbell and Sinatra shortly after.
In one of the scenes from The Godfather II, a beautiful Homewood estate was used for filming.
The mobster lore of Lake Tahoe is very popular. I’m lucky to be one of the few people who had the stories of my Father to confirm some of this lore.
This estate has since been demolished. People still visit the property even though it is now privately owned. There are a few remaining original structures on the property. The boathouse, a couple of caretaker cabins, and the yacht club. These are all that remain of the original estate which was built in 1939.
South Shore Mob Hits?
South Shore casinos had much less mobster involvement. There were still two murders of interest.
There was a 1949 murder of Harry Sherwood, he was killed by a “Russian” named Louie Strauss. The point of interest is that Sherwood was a partner in a casino, as was Strauss. The story is that Sherwood was skimming money off of the casino.
Strauss claimed the killing was self-defense and he was later absolved of the murder. Strauss then headed for Las Vegas where the rumor is he was killed by Mafia hitmen and by all accounts, he just disappeared.
The second murder of interest is the murder of Dick Shartran. In the 1960s Shartran was an owner of Barney’s Casino. He is said to have gone back on a loan.
He was murdered by a car bomb. The bomb was set off when he shifted his car into gear. Who uses car bombs to kill people? Mobsters. This murder was never solved.
Tahoe was too remote for mobster control
In the end, Lake Tahoe was out of reach for the mobsters. It was far from the home centers of Mob control. The climate wasn’t easy, it was a small area, and things were changing with the Nevada Gaming Commission. Once friendly to the Mobsters the commission was turning away from them.
There was a new breed of casino owners at the Lake. Guys who are on the “up and up” following the law and managing the casinos above board. Bill Harrah and Harvey Gross founded gambling in South Shore and their straight-arrow ways didn’t leave any room for the mobsters to get in on the action.
I asked my Father if there are bodies in the lake from the mobster hits and casino killings. He heavily implied that there were. He said that gambling is big money and you have to run it with a heavy hand.
Then he joked about some guys sleeping with the fishes. He claimed to know of a couple of guys who were brought into the casino late at night for scamming the casino and he never saw them again, no one did.
If you want to know what happens to bodies in Lake Tahoe check out this article. Link to the bodies in Lake Tahoe article.
My husband and I love to fish at Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake, and we can often be found taking visiting friends and family on boat trips around the lakes.
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