Lost Stories of Las Vegas
Casino ambitions, unlikely encounters and unexpected turns. Explore the people and places behind Las Vegas history, one story at a time.
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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 —…
- 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 —…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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
The June 17, 1960 fire destroyed El Rancho Vegas’s main building. Read James Hogg’s account of the resort, the evacuation, and the aftermath.
- 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…
- 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…
- Lost Stories of Las Vegas
The Same Man Was at Both — But Playing Different Roles
The 1980 MGM Grand fire and 1981 Las Vegas Hilton fire: two hotel disasters, their different causes, and the man connected to both.
- 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,…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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 —…
- 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,…
- 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…