by Doug Swanson
To show his respect for a man he considered one of the great figures of Vegas, Gaughan had the statue cleaned and placed at the entry to his 4,600-seat equestrian center. Benny’s bronze likeness now anchors a broad, carpeted hallway inside the resort, a few paces from the casino coffee shop, and a plaque fittingly identifies him as “one of the city’s founding fathers.” He’s out of the weather and away from the birds, with good sight lines to the gambling floor. The look on his face says he might be enjoying it.
These were, after all, two of Binion’s favorite places: on horseback, yet with a clear and commanding view of the action. Always, the action.
Acknowledgments
Over the past three years, I have asked many friends, and even more strangers, for favors. The list of those who extended to me their time, knowledge, and forbearance is a long one.
Scott Parks, Gregg Jones, and Brent Williams were gracious enough to read parts of the manuscript and offer good, helpful advice. Mike Cochran arrived at the very beginning as a guiding force. Gary Sleeper, whose book I’ll Do My Own Damn Killin’ is a wonderful treatment of Binion’s early years, provided valuable tips on tracking down records. Sam Gwynne was a source of counsel, encouragement, and inspiration throughout.
A number of kind people in distant places assisted in the pursuit of facts and photos. Kevin Ingram at the Nevada Department of Corrections and Chuck Williams at the Notre Dame law school helped me mine some important but deeply buried material. Researchers at the Las Vegas–Clark County Library were immensely helpful. Bridget Pappas of the FBI’s Las Vegas Division was a textbook example of a diligent, responsive, and courteous public affairs officer. The staff at the Nevada State Archives found documents I had not even known to ask for. The Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is a priceless asset for researchers. I’m especially indebted to UNLV’s Delores Brownlee for her courtesy and professionalism.
Closer to home, John Slate, archivist for the city of Dallas, was of great help. Brian Collins and his associates at the Dallas Public Library’s Texas/Dallas history collection responded to my requests with amiable alacrity. Vickie Bryant spent an afternoon giving me a lively tour of what remains of Top O’Hill Terrace. Willetta Stellmacher, a delightful woman, was generous with her time and memories. She died in 2013.
Fred Merrill Jr., a man of elegance and refinement, furnished remembrances, photos, and good cheer. I now count him as a friend. R. D. Matthews, who died in 2013 at the age of ninety-two, was the purest of gentlemen as he recollected the old days for me. Thanks also to Mickey Bickers, Bob Compton, Jim Ewell, Carlton Stowers, Jim Dolan, Billy Bob Barnett, Bill Alexander, Jerry Blevins, Eddie LaRue, Bob Hinkle, Oscar Goodman, Joe Yablonsky, Doyle Brunson, Dan Bowman, John Redlein, Barry Finn, and Vernon McGuyer for their insights and assistance. Robert Wilonsky and Jerome Sims of the Dallas Morning News were there when I needed them.
To my disappointment, two of Binion’s three surviving children chose not to talk to me for this book. But Brenda Binion Michael, Benny’s middle daughter, spent many hours with me. She was unfailingly cheerful and helpful, and gave me insight into her father—whom she loved deeply—that I could have gained nowhere else. Brenda opened up her Amarillo home to me, and took no end of follow-up phone calls. When I needed to know the name of Benny Binion’s favorite song, I phoned Brenda. I’m deeply grateful for her cooperation and lovely spirit.
Agent David Patterson was a crucially important adviser and advocate, and editor Melanie Tortoroli rode to the rescue with enthusiasm, intelligence, and a keen eye. David and Melanie are a couple of consummate pros who represent the best of the book business.
My wife, Susan, endured summertime trips to Nevada with patience and love, and never complained about my MIA status as husband and parent. My late father-in-law, Bob Rogers, introduced me to Las Vegas as only he could. Miss you, Bob.
Finally, I owe a great debt to George Getschow. This book was born at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, the annual North Texas gathering of which George is director, guiding force, and tribal chief. He and his editing pencil stayed with this project from beginning to end, and it’s no exaggeration to say it never would have happened without him. George has changed the lives of many writers much for the better. I’m one of them.
Notes
There are no “Benny Binion Papers” at any university library. Binion did not write many letters and did not, as far as is known, keep a journal. Nor did he pen—or dictate—his life story. “No books, no nuthin’,” he once told Las Vegas publicist and author Dick Odessky, who urged him to commit his adventures to print. “What I know, I know, and it’s goin’ to the graveyard with me.” Many journalists and authors, and a few historians, interviewed Binion over the decades, but most of them came away with little of true substance. Binion engaged his questioners with well-worn anecdotes, practiced set pieces, and twangy observations. He might throw in a couple of tall tales as well. Sometimes his children would admonish him with, “You know that’s not the way it happened.” And Binion would respond, “But that’s the way I like to tell it.” To outsiders who sought to understand him, Binion was often accessible but seldom truly revealing.
Three exceptions stand out. Historian Mary Ellen Glass conducted two days of taped interviews with Binion in 1973 for the Oral History Program at the University of Nevada, Reno. While the meandering ninety-page transcript is a masterful collection of deceptions, circumlocutions, and evasions by Binion, it is nonetheless his only autobiography, and provides many insights and recollections of value. Second, Las Vegas writer A. D. Hopkins succeeded in coaxing from Binion ruminations on his poor prospects for a happy afterlife that I’ve not seen matched elsewhere. Last, and far from least, Steven R. Reed of the Houston Chronicle engineered a remarkable series of interviews with Binion for a lengthy profile in 1989, less than a year before Binion’s death. Reed got more out of Binion on a variety of uncomfortable topics than any other journalist, and provided a critical addition to the historical record.
Much of this book relies on law enforcement files, principally those of the Dallas Police Department, the FBI, and the federal Bureau of Prisons. This carries certain obvious hazards, because such documents are often self-serving, biased, and full of errors. Great portions of them may be redacted by government censors, and they are, by their nature, one-sided. Still, the men who filed these reports functioned as on-the-scene recorders whose job it was to investigate Binion and his cronies, and who wrote down what they saw or learned, frequently at great length. They produced, as they watched and chased Binion and his cohort, tens of thousands of typewritten pages. In particular, Lieutenant George Butler of the Dallas police spent years on the trail of Binion and his associates, and was a prodigious, and often colorful, memo writer. Many of his investigative reports have been collected at the Texas Ranger Museum in Waco, Texas.
I have attempted wherever possible to corroborate facts in these law enforcement papers, or at the very least to cross-reference them with other sources, and have endeavored to weed out the patently false and misleading portions, or to point them out as such.
No conversations have been imaginatively re-created. Every spoken quotation comes from a written source, from the memory of a participant, or from my interview with an individual.
Abbreviations
DMN: Dallas Morning News
DPD: Dallas Police Department
DTH: Daily Times Herald, later changed to the Dallas Times Herald
HC: Houston Chronicle
LAT: Los Angeles Times
LVRJ: Las Vegas Review-Journal
LVS: Las Vegas Sun
NSJ: Nevada State Journal
OH: Oral History Program, University of Nevada, Reno
OHUC: Oral History, University of California, Berkeley
REG: Reno Evening Gazette
SAE: San Antonio Express
VT:
Valley Times
WSJ: Wall Street Journal
PROLOGUE: THE HAPPY RACKETEER
“Do your enemies before they do you”: Multiple sources, including www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lasvegas/peopleevents/p_binion.html.
A weak sliver of moon hung low: U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department.
one of the hidden men gripped the insulated copper wire: DTH, Aug. 8, 1951.
“A big, beefy, jovial sort”: DMN, Feb. 13, 1951.
“You couldn’t keep from liking him”: Interview, R. D. Matthews.
“No one in his right mind”: Brunson, The Godfather of Poker, 132.
“There’s been a lot of them”: OH, Glass, Lester Ben “Benny” Binion, 30.
Part One: The Roll of the Dice
1. SNIDES AND DINKS: AN EDUCATION
“We was all grifters”: Vinson, Las Vegas, 123.
family took in boarders: U.S. Federal Census, 1910.
lightning bolt struck Sloan’s: DMN, May 7, 1909.
“That’s the best farmer I know”: OH, Glass, 3. Unless otherwise noted, “OH, Glass” refers to the oral historian’s interview with Binion.
“Kind of a wild man”: OH, Glass, 2.
“There’s more than one kind of education”: Sheehan, The Players, 51.
“I was real good at it”: OH, Glass, 4.
“They had heaves”: OH, Glass, 5.
Wads of cotton: Welsch, Mister, You Got Yourself a Horse, 111.
“The Horse Trader’s Song”: Ibid., 12.
“Get a horse up on a kind of a high place”: OH, Glass, 5.
“He was an adult his whole life”: Interview, Brenda Binion Michael.
“I kind of got in”: OH, Glass, 4.
“The brains of Texas Rangers”: United News, April 9, 1922.
“Descending upon the rum-runners in speeding automobiles”: DMN, July 24, 1929.
“He had a gravel wagon”: Sheehan, The Players, 52.
“My dad was a happy, jolly man”: Interview, Brenda Binion Michael.
“I didn’t need a bodyguard”: HC, March 12, 1989.
2. THE BUMPER BEATER
“I try to keep anybody”: HC, March 12, 1989.
“one of the best towns that I ever seen”: OH, Glass, 13.
Dallas had impaneled its first grand jury: Greene, Dallas: The Deciding Years, 10.
“a city of skyscrapers”: Payne, Big D, 3.
One successful brothel: Dallas Historical Society, Legacies, Spring 2006.
founded the Berachah Rescue Home: DMN, March 14, 1912.
“Some hundreds of girls”: Payne, 50.
“What about the men”: DMN, March 13, 1911.
Chief among the brothel property owners: Payne, 52.
“Regardless of its registered attitude”: Ibid., 262.
“a long blue blaze”: DMN, July 14, 1929.
A 1925 study: Payne, 112.
“I never did make no money”: OH, Glass, 9.
“They had more money”: Interview with Vernon McGuyer, a relative of the Youngs.
“But the Oklahoma whiskey didn’t seem to be as good”: OH, Glass, 10.
“Binion began to muscle”: DPD, Butler.
“Me and a guy”: OH, Glass, 9.
“I got 60 days one time”: OH, Glass, 10.
“Me and him was sitting”: HC, March 12, 1989. Some contemporaneous newspaper accounts refer to Binion’s victim as Frank Bolden.
“The guy hadn’t pulled the knife yet”: Sheehan, 53.
“Bill McCraw was the district attorney”: HC, March 12, 1989. McCraw did indeed run for governor some years later. He lost to W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel. Among the votes McCraw failed to receive, according to historian Rose-Mary Rumbley, was that of his own mother. “I have been an O’Daniel fan for years,” she explained to him. “He’s a good man.”
3. PANCHO AND THE KLAN
“Tough times make tough people”: Brunson, The Godfather of Poker, 126, and multiple other sources.
“I opened up what they call a ‘policy’”: OH, Glass, 6.
“I started with fifty-six dollars”: Ibid.
“‘Cullud folks jus’ gotta gamble’”: DTH, Sept. 15, 1936.
“somebody had to hang”: Greene, Dallas: The Deciding Years, 17.
Fully one-fourth . . . were “unfit for human habitation”: Payne, Big D, 83.
Klan’s fifty-member drum corps: Prince, A History of Dallas, 73.
“As I understand the case”: Payne, 85.
Firemen blasted the rioters: DMN, May 21, 1925.
“I don’t believe . . . in hanging”: Sleeper, I’ll Do My Own Damn Killin’, 16.
“Down on ‘Deep Ellum’”: Holmes, WPA Dallas Guide, 294.
“Under the veneer of civilization and custom”: Ibid.
“It’s not his way”: DMN, Oct. 2, 1929.
“Urban was . . . generally regarded”: FBI, Feb. 28, 1958.
putting a pencil through the man’s eye: Texas Monthly, “Benny and the Boys,” Oct. 1991.
“I remember the pride”: DTH, Jan. 29, 1990.
“Warren Diamond was as fine a man”: OH, Glass, 8.
“I admired him very much”: Ibid.
“I don’t miss nothing”: OH, Glass, 84.
“his little brother could whip him”: Interview, Brenda Binion Michael.
he and a like-minded criminal stormed an East Dallas house: DMN, July 22, 1932.
“Dad never spoke to her again”: Interview, Brenda Binion Michael.
pulled his handgun: Interview, Bob Hinkle.
“All them oil men had money”: OH, Glass 16.
Binion loved the movie: Interview, Brenda Binion Michael.
4. GOOD FRIENDS AND A DEAD RIVAL
“I had a lot of . . . friends”: OH, Glass, 30.
On a gentle North Texas afternoon: Interview, Willetta Stellmacher. Most of the details about Top O’Hill come from Miss Stellmacher, who performed regularly at the club, and from Vickie Bryant, who has done exceptional work as the historian of the casino. Mrs. Bryant is the wife of the former president of Arlington Baptist College, the latest incarnation of Top O’Hill. Most newspaper accounts don’t place Binion at the club until the 1940s. But Miss Stellmacher, one of the few living witnesses to Top O’Hill’s glory days, said she saw Binion there a number of times in the early 1930s.
“They need the money”: Interview, Stellmacher.
During the service: Texas Monthly, “The Whole Shootin’ Match,” Feb. 2001.
“You’d have to know somebody”: OH, Glass, 14.
His previous dealings with criminals: Sleeper, I’ll Do My Own Damn Killing, 81.
“Because he’s a big fellow”: DMN, July 26, 1942.
“Every living human in Dallas”: HC, March 12, 1989.
Then one of them spotted Ben Freiden’s car: The description of the shooting of Freiden is drawn from extensive contemporary accounts by the Dallas Morning News and the Daily Times Herald. In some stories, the victim’s name is spelled Frieden.
“Well, I don’t know”: HC, March 12, 1989.
5. THE THUG CLUB
“I ain’t never killed a man who didn’t deserve it”: Interview, R. D. Matthews.
His partner, Bennie Bickers: Interview, Michael G. “Mickey” Bickers, son of Bennie.
“Whitaker foresaw the violence”: FBI, Nov. 25, 1953.
Decker trusted . . . Merrill: Interview, Fred Merrill Jr., son of Fred Merrill.
“a world’s exposition Texanic”: DMN, March 16, 1936.
“We’ve got to open up”: Payne, Big D, 194.
“brought in quite a substantial sum”: FBI, July 9, 1957.
“They just
let the town”: HC, March 12, 1989.
One of Binion’s men: The description of the Southland dice room and its operations is drawn from my interviews with R. D. Matthews. He died in 2013.
“We’d just have a big suite”: OH, Glass, 16.
Marshall took up a criminal career: DMN, Feb. 11, 1932.
An ex-con, Dorough: DMN, Nov. 20, 1936.
The East Side functioned: Sleeper, I’ll Do My Own Damn Killin’, 51.
“There will be . . . no solution”: DPD, Butler.
“He wasn’t a high player”: HC, March 12, 1989.
“He shot the craps”: Ibid.
“Benny didn’t want truck drivers”: Interview, R. D. Matthews.
“There was a group”: OH, Glass, 13.
Millions of his dollars: DPD, Butler.
“It is believed”: FBI, Crime Survey, Dallas Division, April 1947.
“Business was real good”: OH, Glass, 16.
“We all got along”: Ibid.
“played an important part”: DPD, Butler.
calls to mobster Carlos Marcello’s brother: Ibid.
“They proudly boasted”: DMN, Dec. 25, 1949.
“I’ll show you how tough”: FBI, Dec. 9, 1946.
“Shoot the s.o.b. in the guts”: DPD, Butler.
“Green and Grisaffi were . . . loaned”: Ibid.
6. SHOOT-OUTS AND PAYOFFS
“You had to have political help”: OH, Glass, 14.
“a colorful and near-legendary figure”: DTH, June 18, 1940.
“had a part in maintaining”: Ibid.
“Don’t move or I’ll shoot”: Ibid.
“Sam threatened me”: Ibid.
“had differences regarding livestock”: Ibid.
“in broad daylight”: DMN, July 5, 1940.
“I had a crap game”: OH, Glass, 15.
“The problem would be simple”: DMN, Dec. 28, 1946.
One of the brass . . . held a press conference: DMN, Aug. 11, 1937.