In Mob Museum, Las Vegas Embraces Its Bad Guys of Old

Lefty, Lucky, the Ant, Bugsy, the Snake, the Chin, Scarface, the Brain. The monikers of mobsters are like the nicknames of odd superheroes. They are two syllables of rat-tat firing, evoking creepy animals, physical protrusions or uncanny powers. And now, here in a city where such figures were once as comfortably in their element as Zeus and his family on Olympus, they are finally getting something close to the museum they deserve: the Mob Museum, a $42 million survey of the American gangster, unfolding in 17,000 square feet of exhibition space, on three floors of a 41,000-square-foot landmark building on Stewart Avenue.

With artifacts, clever interactive displays, atmospheric exhibits, photographs and videos, we learn how Las Vegas developed out of the early 20th century desert, and how workers on the nearby Hoover Dam gave the town its first population explosion. We see how the mob maneuvered into businesses of pleasure, not releasing its hold until late in the 20th century when corporate casinos trumped their almost quaint predecessors.

We learn, too, of these Jewish and Italian immigrants who treated the “land of opportunity,” as “the opportunity to grab what they could,” and by trafficking in blood and booze built up national empires, until they were brought down with wiretaps, informants and more blood.

Like many things in mob-related American culture (even those nicknames), the museum mixes attraction and repulsion, sentimentality and hard-edged realism, relish and disgust. Like a gangster movie, it seduces us with these figures with one hand, and reminds us, with the other, of the demands of justice. Its alluring colloquial title, Mob Museum, is countered with a stern subtitle on the facade of this 1933 neo-Classical former post office and courthouse: the “National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.”

And while the museum seeks a kind of romantic appeal by opening on Valentine’s Day – the 83rd anniversary, it points out, of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, when members of George “Bugs” Moran’s gang were murdered by Al Capone’s rival thugs posing as police officers – it also makes sure to deflate gangster romance by reminding us that this cold-blooded episode was so horrific, it led to a turning point, spurring expanded federal investigation. We even see a portion of the original brick wall where the massacre took place, pockmarked by circled bullet holes; it serves as an eerie screen on which one of the museum’s many short films, “Bootleg Wars,” is projected.

The tension between allure and disgust recurs throughout. We may be shocked by the description of Bruno Facciola’s murder in New York City in 1990 (shot in both eyes, stabbed and a dead canary jammed in his mouth), but we also see photographs of 1950s celebrities in mob-run casinos and of glamorous film stars playing criminals. The mob is portrayed as weaving a web of evil (the museum believes John F. Kennedy’s assassination was the result of mob involvement in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro) but also as an object of fascination.

The exhibition designers, Gallagher & Associates, and the “content developers” Barrie Projects and the curator, Kathleen Coakley Barrie, begin their double-edge treatment soon after you enter the lobby where the original post boxes are still in place behind video screens and text panels.

You are lured in with an overused museological conceit: You are treated as a mobster “under suspicion.” The elevator to the third floor where the exhibitions begin includes a video of a policeman sternly reading you your Miranda rights, and the first “gallery” is a police “lineup” where photos are taken (eventually to be sold at the museum shop).

That conceit, though, is soon left behind. The emphasis is ultimately placed not on the mysterious appeal of the mob, but on the fight against it. The museum’s heart is a splendidly restored courtroom, where the Senate’s Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce held its seventh hearing in 1950, led by Sen. Estes Kefauver. The Kefauver hearings were held in cities across the country, televised live and seen by 30 million people – the first media sensation. Here, that courtroom becomes the backdrop to a film about the hearings.

Emphasis on enforcement grows as the exhibitions proceed, with accounts of bugged homes and telephone booths, informants marked for death, and undercover agents trying to prevent killings. The museum never leaves behind hints of mob romance – one gallery includes heart-warming family photos of mob figures – but such fascination is never allowed to go unanswered: The next gallery is a chronicle of thuggery and blood.

There can be no surprise in the ultimate emphasis. The president of the nonprofit governing board of the museum, Ellen B. Knowlton, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and had been in charge of the agency’s Las Vegas division. Another board member, and one of the forces behind the museum, is Oscar B. Goodman, who served as Las Vegas mayor until term limits forced his retirement; he was then able to swear in his wife, Carolyn G. Goodman, the current mayor, in his place.

Even Goodman has two perspectives, one as former mayor, and the other as a former defense lawyer for many of the city’s mobsters, including Meyer Lansky and Anthony Spilotro. Las Vegas, to no surprise, doesn’t come off badly in this account of its mob-marred past. This museum is meant to be an anchor to revive the downtown area. The bulk of the funding has come from the city, with additional assistance from the state and federal governments including almost $9 million in grants for the restoration and preservation of the landmark building by the architects, Westlake Reed Leskosky.

Does Las Vegas get off too easy? Maybe it always did. One comment cited here is credited to Tony Accardo, a Chicago mob boss: “We don’t want no blood there,” he said. “It’s bad for tourist business.”

And in a gallery devoted to what is wryly called the mob’s “greatest hits,” the murders are mainly in cities other than Las Vegas. Besides, look around, outside of downtown: the economic veneer has chipped in recent years, but the legacy of mob-run spectacle and sensation is still astonishing.

But the gangster romance is far more dominant in another mob exhibition in town. Called “Las Vegas Mob Experience” when it opened last year at the Tropicana, it turned visitors into mob aspirants on a journey through various stage sets representing mob history, met along the way by moving images of James Caan, Mickey Rourke and other cinematic mob personas addressing them.

The show went melodramatically bankrupt but will soon be revived under new ownership as “Mob Attraction Las Vegas.” Visitors will move through stage sets of mob history; at the center is a series of galleries of artifacts provided by local gangster families. In a gallery labeled “To Meyer Lansky,” there are his home movies, outfits and favorite poems; in another is living-room furniture of Sam Giancana, Capone’s “efficient and ruthless triggerman.” We are indeed meant to be attracted by these figures; and a tour I took of the show’s planned script suggests that it will turn the mob into an amusing entertainment, refusing to take itself too seriously.

The Mob Museum has entirely different interests, but the tension with mob romance remains. And to a certain extent, that may be unavoidable, partly because of where we are standing: “Las Vegas was an ‘open city,”’ the exhibition tells us, “meaning that no one syndicate dominated the town. That made it an exciting destination for mobsters nationwide who were eager to start fresh and launch new ventures.”

The mob-run hotels even shaped Las Vegas culture as we know it. Sure, they were bad guys, but the appeal here was to the potential bad guy in everyone, while guaranteeing a degree of immunity: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” In displays here, the hotels of the 1950s and '60s have an avant-gardish freewheeling style. We see a photo of Elvis Presley and Liberace clowning around in the 1950s, or of Marlene Dietrich performing with Louis Armstrong at the Riviera in 1962. One picture here from the Sands shows a floating crap game that puts Nathan Detroit to shame: It is being played on a pool raft.

Moreover, in their embrace of lawlessness and in their assertion of power over life and death, mobsters could seem masters of the very forces of chance to which gamblers here are in thrall. Their gestures and decisions were as swift and sure as the click of a ball falling into a slot on the roulette wheel; their killings as mechanically ruthless as the spinning fruit on one-arm bandits. They are still the gods of Vegas. And here, with great verve, they have become objects of both homage and retribution.

Thanks to LVS

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Mark Hay Gets Six Years in Prison

A burglar who was a key government informant against reputed Chicago mobsters has been sentenced to six years in prison for his crimes.

Prosecutors sought leniency for 56-year-old Mark Hay, noting that he'll likely be in the witness protection program for the rest of his life.

Hay was in a criminal group overseen by Michael "The Large Guy" Sarno, a mob boss recently sentenced to 25 years in prison for racketeering and other charges.

Hay wore a wire during meetings with group members and helped the government get others to become witnesses.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu says the so-called Chicago Outfit "does not look kindly on individuals who cooperate against it."

Hay allegedly continued to commit burglaries after promising the government he wouldn't commit crimes while cooperating.

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Whitey Bulger's Defense Team Objects to Trial Date

James “Whitey” Bulger, the reputed Boston mobster and former FBI informant who was captured last year after 16 years on the run, will face trial Nov. 5, a federal judge said.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler in Boston set the trial date today over the objection of Bulger’s court-appointed attorney, J.W. Carney Jr. Prosecutors have inundated him with 580,000 pages of documents and 921 tapes of secret wiretaps related to the 48-count racketeering indictment, Carney said.

“We can’t possibly be ready,” he told the judge. His client didn’t attend today’s hearing.

Bulger, 82, and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, were arrested in June after the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working on a tip, lured the fugitive out of an apartment building in Santa Monica, California. Bulger was wanted in connection with at least 19 murders committed from 1973 to 1985 and crimes including extortion, bookmaking and drug trafficking.

“I think it’s best I give you a strict timeline,” Bowler told Carney and federal prosecutors. “I urge you to work in a cooperative fashion. This is a monumental task.” She said Carney could request funding to hire more lawyers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Kelly told the judge that Bulger is trying to delay trial by raising issues prosecutors have already litigated.

“Mr. Bulger is trying to run out the clock,” Kelly said. He said Bulger’s attorney has suggested in court papers that he may argue his client had immunity to commit crimes while working as an informant under corrupt FBI agents.

The federal courts threw out an attempt by Bulger’s partner, Stephen Flemmi, to claim immunity as an informant.

“FBI agents don’t have the authority to grant immunity,” Kelly said.

Bulger’s and Flemmi’s former FBI handler, John J. Connolly Jr., served a 10-year federal sentence for racketeering and is now serving 40 years in state prison in Florida for his role in the murder of a former Bulger associate in Miami.

The case is U.S. v. Bulger, 99-10371, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).

Thanks to Janelle Lawrence

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Appellate Judge Raises Concerns Over Family Secrets Mob Trial Judge

A federal appellate judge has expressed misgivings about a lower court judge's contact with jurors during Chicago's highest profile mob trial in decades — one credited with helping to weaken organized crime.

The judge commented Monday as attorneys for convicted reputed mobsters argued for a do-over of the 2007 Family Secrets trial before the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Jurors five years ago convicted reputed mob boss James Marcello and others of racketeering conspiracy that included 18 murders.

Appellate Judge Diane Wood told Monday's hearing she's concerned by accounts that trial Judge James Zagel seemed to have "private chats" with jurors that didn't become part of the official trial record.

Defense attorney Francis Lipuma singled out how Zagel dismissed one juror without consulting the trial lawyers.

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Little Jimmy Marcello Returns to Chicago After Unauthorized Trip To West Coast

After a whirlwind swing to the West Coast and back, courtesy of the American taxpayers and a monumental goof up by federal authorities, Outfit boss Jimmy Marcello is back home.

On Sunday, Marcello was once again listed on the register of the friendly confines of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, after a federal judge angrily ordered his return last Friday.

The 68-year-old Outfit boss, serving a life term for murders and mayhem following conviction in the Operation Family Secrets trial, had been abruptly moved from the MCC two weeks ago to a prison in California. The transfer had apparently not been ordered or authorized.

When Marcello's attorney filed a motion suggesting the transfer was a result of government foul play, government attorneys last Friday said there had been a "miscommunication."

An irked U.S. District Judge James Zagel told prosecutors that, "this is something that should not have been done. I don't know how you are going to get him back here, but you're going to get him back here."

The message must have resonated with prosecutors and officials at the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service that operates the nation's prisoner transport network.

Although authorities on Friday declined to report exactly how Marcello would be transferred back to Chicago, it was accomplished with extraordinary speed and efficiency. The presumption is that Marcello was put on an aircraft operated by the Marshals Service, in it's division known as "JPATS," the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transport System.

Marcello made it from the Atwater penitentiary more than 150 miles east of San Francisco where he was still housed on Friday to the Chicago MCC on Sunday. The JPATS system shuttles 1,400 prisoners a day throughout the U.S. on a fleet of government and charter aircraft, buses, vans and cars.

Authorities told the I-Team on Friday that there was only one JPATS flight in and out of Chicago each week but it is not clear whether Marcello was on that flight or if authorities made separate arrangements.

The prisoner transport program, made famous by Hollywood in the movie Con Air, costs more than $150 million a year for the U.S. government to operate.

Marcello's mistaken, unnecessary trip to California and back cost taxpayers about $4,000. He will remain in Chicago as his appeal is heard, so that he can assist in case preparation according to Judge Zagel.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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