Posted on 10/16/2008 9:05:23 AM PDT by prolifefirst
Frank "Lefty'' Rosenthal was a Chicago bookie who was sent to Las Vegas by the mob and helped turned sports betting into a billion-dollar business. The manager of several well-known casinos, his life inspired the Martin Scorsese movie "Casino.''
Rosenthal, 79, died Monday after a heart attack at his Miami Beach condo.
Born in 1929 in Chicago, Rosenthal got involved in illegal bookmaking and eventually connected with mobsters. His nickname stemmed from a 1961 Senate hearing on gambling and organized crime at which he invoked the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination 38 times. Throughout his testimony, he kept his left hand raised, leading to the "Lefty" moniker.
He went to Las Vegas in 1968, ran several mob-owned casinos in the 1970s and 1980s and was involved in setting up the original sports books in Las Vegas, where the bets were legal, taking the business away from local bookies, said Jim Wagner, a former FBI agent and past president of the Chicago Crime Commission. "I don't think we will see anyone along the likes of Lefty again because of his ability to set the odds and run the sports book the way he did," said Wagner. "He was one of a kind.''
The mob sent Tony Spilotro to keep an eye on Rosenthal. That relationship turned sour when Spilotro had an affair with his wife and later, in 1982, planted a car bomb in Rosenthal's 1981 Cadillac Eldorado. Rosenthal was blown out of the car but survived.
Spilotro wasn't so lucky. At the Operation Family Secrets mob trial in federal court here last year, witnesses testified the affair was part of the reason Spilotro was killed and dumped in an Indiana cornfield -- and also because the attempted hit on Rosenthal hadn't been OKd by the Chicago Outfit.
Rosenthal left Las Vegas after he was banned from going to casinos in the late 1990s. But he returned yearly, in disguise, to visit old friends and employees, said Steve Fischer, author of When the Mob Ran Vegas: Stories of Murder, Mayhem and Money. "Many of the working people in Vegas really liked him,'' Fischer said.
The (late) mother of a friend of mine was something of a fixture on the Chicago social scene in the 1960s and 70s. Along with her husband, they would hang out at the swanky restaurants and clubs, rubbing elbows with politicians, journalists, artists and gangsters. One restaurant in particular, RIccardo's, was where all of these elements would come together. And for the most part, she said, the gangsters were lovely guys--in public. She had no illusions about what they got up to in private. Her favorite was the old Chicago Outfit consigliere Murray "The Camel" Humphreys. Anyway, she said that Tony Spilotro was the only one of those guys she ever met who really scared her.
MONKKK you are genius I knew it I knew it
See I told You I saw Harry Reid in that movie
Not my mom, my friend’s mom, although I worked for her for a while. The great Murray the Camel story she told was that she was walking down MIchigan Avenue one day and saw Murray walking her way. As he approached she said, “Murray!,” but he just walked right by her like he didn’t know her. She was like “wtf?” A few days later she and her husband were at a restaurant and Humphreys came up to their table. “Jane, I’m sorry about the other day, but the FBI guys were tailing me and I didn’t want them to get on you, too.”
Atleast he was honest with her.
OH TOMKOWWWWW
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