1941 The man who played roulette in the Palace Club nearly every day for six months was noticeable for his suave appearance. Henry Helmut, age 47, had a bit of gray hair and sported a tasteful, waxed moustache, Pince Nez glasses with ribbon and sharp, tailored attire. “He looked like a college professor out on…
1958 Reverend Maurice D. Tulloch, 50, a Kansas man, gave up his Baptist ministry for shilling in a Nevada casino. Feeling as though his life was suffocating him, a month earlier he’d walked out of a church seminar and had gone to a bus station where he’d heard a woman purchase a ticket to Las…
1940s A spate of “roadside zoos” opened along various Nevada highways, typically in rural areas, during the late 1940s. The owners were hustlers who lured unsuspecting tourists onto their grounds with the promise of seeing exotic birds, reptiles and/or wild animals then swindled them out of money via games of chance. The ruse often involved…