All Stories

The people, places, and unexpected turns that made Las Vegas.

Collection

Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Carl Cohen for Mayor

So picture this: September 1967, the Sands, and Frank Sinatra just found out his credit’s got a ceiling on it for the first time in his life. Howard Hughes…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
He Pulled a Gun on Frank Sinatra — and Caesars Fired Him for It

So picture this: Caesars Palace, three years almost to the week after Carl Cohen decked him at the Sands, and Frank Sinatra is back at a baccarat table…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Nevada Wouldn’t License Him. The FBI Just Called Him Achilles.

So picture this: an upstairs bedroom in a quiet house on the 15th fairway of the Las Vegas Country Club, and there’s no bed in it anymore — just a chair, a…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
He Didn’t Run With Bugsy Siegel’s Money. Vegas Comped Him for Life — and He Never Checked Out.

So picture this: a cramped room at the El Cortez, cigarette smoke sitting flat in the summer heat, the carpet in the hallway outside already worn thin from…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
He Built Caesars Palace and Circus Circus. He Died Owning Neither One.

So picture this: February 1963, and a heavyset Atlanta motel developer named Jay Sarno is on a junket to the Flamingo, playing like the degenerate gambler…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
He Ran the Mob Out of Las Vegas With a Necktie and a Barber’s Chair

So picture this: the Desert Inn, 1966, lunch hour, low gold light and cigarette smoke curling up past the chandeliers, and Johnny Rosselli — Handsome…

5 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
He Shot Up His Own Hotel Suite at the Hilton — and Somehow Never Hit Anybody

So picture this: the penthouse at the International Hotel, twenty-nine floors up, the whole Strip laid out in neon underneath the window, and Elvis Presley…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Frank Sinatra Could Walk Any Casino Floor in Town. The Beatles Never Made It Past the Elevator.

So picture this: four of the most famous men on the planet, camped out in Suite 2344 of the Sahara’s Alexandria Tower, and not one of them has laid eyes on…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
B.B. King Died at Home in Las Vegas at 89. His Own Daughters Said Someone Killed Him.

So picture this: a modest house in Las Vegas, May 2015, and B.B. King is dying the way hospice patients die — quietly, over weeks, surrounded by caretakers…

6 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Cirque du Soleil Spent $62 Million Reinventing the Vegas Show. Then It Closed the Fastest of Any of Them.

So picture this: the Luxor’s brand-new, purpose-built theater, opening night, November 2019, and a stunt performer launches off a twelve-foot ramp on an…

6 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The New Frontier’s Opening Night Headliner Never Set Foot on Stage. The Newspaper Review Called It the Best Show Vegas Had Ever Seen.

So picture this: April 4, 1955, the brand-new New Frontier on the Strip, a packed house waiting for the biggest crossover star in America to walk out and…

5 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
She Was Vegas’s First Magician in 1941. The Guy Who Played the Same Room a Year Later Got the Credit for Eighty Years.

So picture this: May 14, 1941, the Roundup Room at the El Rancho Vegas — the very first resort casino ever built on the Strip, so new it had only been open…

9 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Greatest Director Alive Did Card Tricks in a Room Where the Last Guy With His Job Had Just Been Blown Up

So picture this: February 22, 1956, the Riviera showroom, and Orson Welles — the man who made Citizen Kane at twenty-five, the man Hollywood still calls…

10 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
A Stardust Cashier Walked Out With $500,000 in 1992. Thirty Years Later, Nobody Can Agree if He’s Alive.

So picture this: the Stardust’s race and sports book, close to 1:30 in the morning on September 22, 1992, a Monday Night Football crowd thinning out for…

6 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Badge That Was Supposed to Protect the Casino Floor Is What Let Him Rob It Three Times

So picture this: the Rio’s sportsbook, late February 2022, and a man in a wig shoves a cashier in her sixties out of his way, threatens to use a gun, and…

6 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The State of Nevada Paid Him to Make Sure the Games Were Honest. He Used the Job to Rig Them Instead.

So picture this: January 14, 1995, Bally’s Park Place in Atlantic City, and a man named Reid Errol McNeal has just hit all eight numbers on a keno ticket —…

6 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Clark County Commission Was Supposed to Regulate Las Vegas’s Strip Clubs. A Strip Club Owner Ended Up Regulating the Commission Instead.

So picture this: Las Vegas, early 2000s, and a strip club owner named Michael Galardi has a business problem that money usually solves fast in this town —…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Five People Plotted to Hijack $500,000 in Casino Cash in 1955. One of Them Was Already Wearing a Badge.

So picture this: Tuesday night, May 17, 1955, and roughly half a million dollars in Las Vegas casino cash is moving under police guard from the post office…

5 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Clark Gable Waited Three Days in Las Vegas for News His Wife Was Dead. Eighty Years Later, Nobody Can Agree Where.

So picture this: a private bungalow at the El Rancho Vegas, January 1942, curtains drawn, and the biggest movie star in America is pacing a room he hasn’t…

6 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Marquee Called Her “The World’s Most Unique Personality.” The Casino Down the Street Had Already Tried to Ban Her.

So picture this: November 1955, the Strip lit up under that twelve-foot rotating neon slipper the Silver Slipper had bolted to its own roofline, and…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Two Secret Government Planes Went Down Around Las Vegas, Seven Years Apart. Today You Can Hike to One Wreck and Book a Dive to the Other.

So picture this: July 21, 1948, and a B-29 Superfortress is skimming low over Lake Mead, so low the water underneath it has gone completely still and…

8 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
He Promised to Enforce Prohibition to the Letter. The Mayor Was Running His Own Still.

So picture this: 1905, and a huge, broke, half-drunk man named Sam Gay rolls into a railroad watering stop in the Nevada desert with nothing left in his…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Elvis Presley’s First Las Vegas Show Was a Flop So Bad the Band Could Hear Themselves Play Out of Tune. He Left Town With a Stolen Song and Came Back to Sell Out 636 Shows Straight.

So picture this: April 23, 1956, the Venus Room at the New Frontier, and a twenty-one-year-old kid from Memphis is standing on a stage he has no business…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Sonny Liston Was the Most Feared Heavyweight Champion Who Ever Lived. Las Vegas Found Him Dead in His Own Home and Couldn’t Decide If Anyone Killed Him.

So picture this: January 5, 1971, a house on Ottawa Drive in the Paradise Palms neighborhood, and Geraldine Liston is walking back into her own home after…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
“Do You Think Paper Money Can Do Any Better?” The Night Vegas’s First Casino Burned to the Ground — With Betty Grable, Pearl Bailey, and Red Skelton Watching

So picture this: 4:50 a.m., June 17, 1960, and every fire truck in Clark County is screaming down the Strip at once — three engine companies, a ladder…

8 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
David Blaine Aimed a Rifle at His Own Head in Front of 20,000 People at the MGM Grand. For a Few Seconds, He Was Sure He’d Pulled It Off Perfectly — By Dying.

So picture this: the Grand Garden Arena at the MGM Grand, sometime in August 2015, a crowd packed into the seats for what they’ve been told is a magic…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
A Magician Built His Whole Career on a $5,000 Loan From His Mother. He Lost It All on the Same Stage That Nevada Itself Once Had to Shut Down.

So picture this: July 4, 2009, the Strip outside Planet Hollywood, and a crowd’s gathered for a stunt called “Death Drop” — a locked box hoisted somewhere…

6 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Same Man Was at Both — But Playing Different Roles

One Fire He Watched From Outside. The Other, He Lit Himself. Ninety Days and Eight Floors Apart, Las Vegas Burned Twice — and One Man Was Standing in the…

14 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Man Who Saved the Flamingo, Then Lost His Throat

So picture this: December 2, 1958, a quiet residential street in the Encanto neighborhood of Phoenix, across the road from a park. Bess Greenbaum, 64,…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Six Months That Changed Everything

So picture this: 2:30 in the morning, sometime in the summer of 1955, and the biggest names in American entertainment are still awake, still dressed, still…

9 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Not the Mr. Las Vegas You’re Thinking Of

Decades before Wayne Newton ever earned the nickname on a Vegas marquee, this town already had a “Mr. Las Vegas” — a Cleveland bootlegger nobody could ever…

10 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Man Who Beat the Odds Twice

So picture this: November 22, 1989, and the Mirage has been open for business for exactly nine hours. Steve Wynn’s fire-breathing volcano out front is…

7 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Two Suitcases, One Casino Owner, and a Million-Dollar Bet on the Cincinnati Bengals

So picture this: mid-morning, January 22, 1989, Super Bowl Sunday, and a man walks into the Little Caesars sportsbook on the Las Vegas Strip carrying two…

8 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Fire That Built Vegas World

So picture this: March 31, 1974, and a 31-year-old former coupon salesman named Bob Stupak opens a casino on a strip of Las Vegas Boulevard just north of…

4 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Board Game War With Trump

So picture this: sometime in the late 1980s, Donald Trump — then an Atlantic City casino magnate constantly generating national headlines for himself —…

4 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Running for Everything, Winning Nothing

So picture this: 1987, and a Las Vegas casino owner running for mayor of the city sends gift fruit baskets to potential voters — not campaign literature,…

4 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Tower That Nearly Killed Him

So picture this: a trip to Australia to visit his daughter, sometime in the early 1990s, and Bob Stupak sees the Sydney Tower — a slender observation spire…

6 min read
Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Before He Was Bob Stupak

So picture this: Pittsburgh, the early 1950s, and a young boy is watching his father run an illegal floating craps game called the Lotus Club — a racket…

4 min read