Gary Jenkins sits down with author Scott Weller to discuss his book Stripping for the Mob and the dark history of organized crime’s involvement in the Las Vegas strip-club business. As federal investigations and increased regulation began squeezing the Mafia out of traditional casino operations, adult entertainment offered something mobsters understood well: a cash-heavy business with fewer regulatory eyes watching the money.
Weller traces the story back to figures such as Tony Albanese, a Southern California mobster who moved into the Las Vegas adult-entertainment business. Albanese disappeared in 1981, and his severed head was later discovered in the Mojave Desert. His murder became part of the violent struggle surrounding control of Las Vegas adult businesses during the waning years of traditional mob power.
Gary and Scott discuss the notorious Crazy Horse Too, its owner Rick Rizzolo, and the FBI investigations that eventually targeted the club. They also examine the unsolved death of Rizzolo adversary “Buffalo Jim” Barrier, who had spent years providing information about activities surrounding the club.
The conversation moves into political corruption and Operation G-Sting, which exposed bribery involving strip-club interests and public officials. Weller explains how cash payments, political influence, intimidation, credit-card schemes, drugs, and violence could make mob-connected clubs extraordinarily profitable.
Scott also tells the remarkable story of a 17-year-old dancer who was reportedly told her braces were a problem when she applied at Crazy Horse Too. She removed them herself and returned to get the job. She later became internationally known as Jenna Jameson.
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Gary and Scott also explore the bizarre history of the Palomino Club, including murders connected to people around the business, and discuss how New York organized-crime interests remained involved in Las Vegas after the Chicago Outfit’s influence began to decline.
It is a look beyond the casino floor at another side of Las Vegas organized crime—where strip clubs, mobsters, politicians, federal agents, dancers, money and murder intersected. Get this book click here.
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Transcript
gary Jenkins: [00:00:00] hey, all you wiretappers out there. Good to be back here in the studio. This is Gary Jenkins, the retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, back here with another mob and mob-adjacent story.
We’re going out to Las Vegas. And before I get any further, don’t forget I have that brand-new podcast. Tell your wives and your sisters and your girlfriends about it. It’s about horror crimes, serial killers and kidnappers and any horrible crime ever. It’s called Murder Blueprint. So tell them about that.
Women like unorganized crime, men like organized crime, I have learned. So anyhow, we have Scott Weller today. He is, he’s living in Las Vegas. He’s from New York. He’s gonna tell us a story about his book about stripping for the mob, the strip clubs in Las Vegas. I was just telling Scott a little story.
Scott, I gotta tell this before we get going here. I was just in Vegas, and a guy was… A local was giving me a tour, going down the strip. I’ve been there before, but he wanted to show me kind of the newer strip. I hadn’t gone down the strip in [00:01:00] probably five, eight years or 10 years. And he – pointed out a club, and it was I think it was the Hippo Club.
And he said, “You know what that is?” I said, “No.” He said, “That’s a club for plus-size strippers.” There, there’s a strip club for everybody, dudes. Everybody out there. So welcome, Scott. Hey, thank- Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Scott Weller: Thanks for the welcome, Gary. When… W- with all your podcasts, it made me think of the the Don in Godfather II when he sees the puppet show and he goes, “Too much violence.
Just too much violence.” Too much violence.
gary Jenkins: Yeah. And we were just talking about it. Scott’s Irish, and we were talking about how with the Irish there’s so much violence. With Italians there’s drama and intrigue and plotting and planning.
Scott Weller: The… Yeah there’s food and romance, and we just don’t have that.
We’re just- Yeah … that’s not our thing.
gary Jenkins: And food. But- Yes. I had a guy come on the show once who just talked about his cookbook with all these great Italian recipes. I’ve got one around here somewhere. Scott Stripping for the Mob. Tell us a little bit about your [00:02:00] background.
I see you went to Fordham University- Sure … in New York. You grew up in New York. I got a feeling, so tell us a little bit about your background.
Scott Weller: Sure. Thank you. Yeah, I grew up in New York. Both my wife and I are New Yorkers. We moved to Texas about 30 years ago, and my career was in advertising and marketing.
And I retired and moved out to Las Vegas. Dragged my wife out to Las Vegas in my retirement just because it’s an exciting place. And have always been interested in mob stories and you used the word adjacent. I, it seems I’ve always been adjacent to mobsters. I worked with s- kids of mafia.
My wife went to high school with mafia princesses in New York. We’re always around them. And obviously movies entertained. So I didn’t have a law enforcement background, I didn’t have a criminal background but just a, a, a deep interest in their drama and things like that. So when I moved out to Las Vegas there’s just so much lo- lore out here and everybody talks about the old [00:03:00] days.
It’s just a, it’s a cottage industry. And ironically enough, we live in a building called the Regency Tower that faces the Strip. It was built in 1975. Yeah. One of the investors in it was Moe Dalitz, who the, the Cleveland mafia- Yeah … who became a pretty upstanding citizen here in Las Vegas.
But he built the building that I’m sitting in right now. I can, if I go out on my balcony, I can look up at his penthouse. And this is a building that was notorious because bele- besides celebrities and things that lived here, Tony Spilotro had a place in this building for a little while. Frank Rosenthal lived right around the corner from me on the Las Vegas Country Club here.
I’ve been always around it. And this story here, Stripping for the Mob, I don’t know if you can see my background, but here’s the book. Yeah. It started when a friend of mine Tim Zaharsan, was talking about his cousin. He to- he called him Petey Tony Albanese, who was a [00:04:00] mobster from Southern California who moved here in the ’60s late ’60s, and s- started strip clubs.
And poor Tony Albanese, they found his head in the Mojave Desert in 1981. He was, He had left his home, actually here on the Las Vegas Country Club, left his wife and said, “I got a meeting,” and they never found him. They found his car at McCarran Airport the next day, the way they always do. Yeah. And about a
gary Jenkins: month later- I, I have to say, same in Kansas City, same in Chicago.
How many mob hits has there been where they find the car at the airport long-term parking? That is, Yeah … I don’t know. It’s classic. So this was
Scott Weller: a-
gary Jenkins: And fi- and finding the guy’s head in the desert, I guess they didn’t dig the hole deep enough. They were talking about there’s a hole in the desert for you.
They didn’t dig that hole deep enough, did they?
Scott Weller: As Sheriff Connor San Bernardino sheriff said “My guess is they wanted it to be found. They wanted to send a message.” Yeah. It’s not unusual. But a couple [00:05:00] hikers found the head. They didn’t know who it was for a while, and a few of Tony’s associates were murdered around the same time in the spring of ’81.
And after finding their bodies, they f- they found Tony’s head, did the ID. Never found his body. But the story was Tony had opened a bunch of strip clubs in Southern California called… They were bikini bars, and he turned them into topless joints. They were called Lil’ Abners. And the authorities in LA were kinda hassling him, giving him trouble over his liquor license and things like that.
So he moved to Vegas like a lot of people do to, get some freedom and get some running room, and he started up that business here. And the belief was Tony was murdered as part of a, a battle over who would run the adult industry in Las Vegas, which was burgeoning. If a- as the arc of [00:06:00] the the mafia out here, in the ’70s was the kind of the peak of their power.
gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Scott Weller: And they were grabbing for everything they could, but when their power started to wane, the strip clubs were still a, a, a nice oyster for them because you had cash. You had shady characters.
You didn’t have the Gaming Commission looking over your shoulder. You had the Liquor Commission, but that was not like the Gaming Commission. So Tony Albanese Jerry Ferullo Carlos Fantino, these were the guys that were wiped out in those, in ’81 on a battle over these adult industries. And most of the speculation was that although they never arrested anyone in the Albanese case, that Spilotro and his gang were the ones that did those hits
gary Jenkins: Interesting.
It’s the same way in Kansas City. Later on in the ’80s after they exposed the skim from Las Vegas, they threw everything they could into taking over and muscling in on strip [00:07:00] clubs in the entire Metro area, and it was a huge business. And like you say, it was cash. There was- Yeah … a little bit of, liquor control, but local liquor control mob guys usually had pretty good connections in the local city liquor control, and-
Scott Weller: Right
gary Jenkins: it was… And then they’d start moving them out in the county too, moving- Yeah … out of the city.
Scott Weller: And a lot of these… One of the things I develop in the book is a lot of these clubs can be very profitable, but the ones that the mobsters were running were hyper profitable because they were using intimidation.
They were credit card scams. They were really pushing the envelope. They were selling drugs. So they were, the whole panoply of their their menu of crimes could take place in that environment. So their clubs were much more cash rich than a, another club that was run within the bounds of the law.
gary Jenkins: Yeah. That’s, that credit card scam, they could run a guy’s credit [00:08:00] card up and they wouldn’t… who they gonna complain to, they gotta hide it from their wife usually,
Scott Weller: yeah. Yeah I could go to court, but I can’t go to my wife.
gary Jenkins: Yeah. And lots of times they’ll have a company credit card, and it’ll ma- Sure
they have a company bus- a business name that they use, that a guy with a company credit card can run it up, and maybe even get some cash back, split a little cash back on it, embezzle from his company. But it’ll- … look like a l- not a strip club. They’ll have… Whatever the business- … is, it’ll not look like it was a strip club.
So there’s a bunch of different scams with those credit cards.
Scott Weller: Yeah. Yeah, there’s one story that I developed in the book about a FBI agent named John Legato. I don’t know if you know that name. I don’t. But he was a, a Philadelphia guy, got out of the Marines in Vietnam, went into the FBI, and because of who he grew up with, who he knew, what he looked like, they put him under deep cover, and he r- actually ran strip clubs in Memphis and Cleveland for a number of years for the FBI.
[00:09:00] And he got very close with a, a Gambino captain named Ray Marazza. His great photos. It’s almost like a Donnie Brasco story. Yeah. It very much- Sounds like it … is a Donnie Brasco story. But he was running strip clubs for them.
gary Jenkins: So did he move out there then?
Scott Weller: No, he didn’t he didn’t work in Las Vegas.
Okay. I just, I included the story because the FBI is very central in these cases, in the Las Vegas cases to taking down the Crazy Horse 2, the famous Crazy Horse 2 that- … Rick Rizzolo ran. That was called Operation Genuine Risk. The the, the cases I talked about in Memphis and Cleveland, those were FBI cases called Operation Catwalk, which is wh- a very famous large one.
And then the, the other one that was famous out here in Las Vegas was Operation G-Sting, which is the one that got Michael Galardi, who ran Cheetahs and Jaguars. His father was Jack Galardi, who ran strip clubs. But that’s the one where they ended up [00:10:00] convicting a couple of San Diego city councilmen- and a, a handful of Clark County commissioners- … on bribery. They basically were working for the strip clubs directly, taking large cash donations. In the one case the guy used Crown Royal velvet bags to deliver cash to these politicians and- Of course … they have it on camera.
gary Jenkins: Of course. That’s ever deal like that I ever saw, whether it was on TV or in real life, they use a Crown Royal, purple Crown Royal bag.
It’s
Scott Weller: a nice color.
gary Jenkins: Yeah, really. Interesting. Now, I know in Kansas City they, they started trying to put informants in. I had a couple of my guys go work one that was a mob r- related one and they, they just kept hanging out and spending money and trying to get in with the employees.
And, many times, they’d notice … They could get an unofficial count how much the cover charge was and, you know- … trying to help maybe with a case with the [00:11:00] IRS things like that. How did they work their cases out there in Las Vegas?
Scott Weller: Wiretaps mainly.
gary Jenkins: Wiretaps, okay.
Scott Weller: They had informants, but they weren’t undercover agents. But one of the things that was developed, I developed in this FBI chapter was what the FBI realized, and I guess you in law enforcement realizes, in a club environment, people are very loose. The m- between the music and the liquor and the just overall environment, people talk more than they- Yeah
might if it was a diner or something like that. So it was a gold mine because you have got these, these guys bragging, acting like they are, who they are, and it just, it was just an environment that was rich for spilling your guts.
gary Jenkins: Interesting. So tell us what’s kind of your favorite story out of your book?
Scott Weller: I it’s, there’s a lot of violence in it. I had a hard time with some of that. It’s interesting, I started the book thinking the angle would be more the dancer. That’s why [00:12:00] the title was Stripping for the Mob. I’m thinking about the dancers, and the dancers, The stories were sad and very often- Yeah
But they were pretty routine, hard luck girl using it for the money, and then she moves on if she’s lucky. But one of my favorite stories involving the, the dancers was at Crazy Horse II, a girl shows up, a local girl named Jenna Mazzoli, and she’s 17, which the Clark County Commission had made legal.
She could dance at 17. But the problem that a, a guy named Vinnie Feracci, who worked for Rick Rizzolo had, was, “Sweetheart you’re gorgeous and all, but your braces are a problem.”
gary Jenkins: Oh my God.
Scott Weller: We just don’t think it’s a good look.” So she goes home, she finds a pair of pliers, and she takes her own braces off and goes back-
gary Jenkins: Yeah
Scott Weller: and they hire her, and she becomes one of their top dancers. Her name, she changed her name eventually [00:13:00] to Jenna Jameson, and she became one of the biggest adult stars in the porn industry. But she started as a 17-year-old dancer at Crazy Horse II after taking her own braces off.
gary Jenkins: Wow. That was, that’s a hell of a story there. That girl knew, that girl had a path- Yeah … and nothing was gonna get out of her way.
Scott Weller: Yeah. She was she was good at what she did. Yeah. But probably the most famous story of violence there was a character you might have come across, because his daughters have kept this case alive a fellow named Buffalo Jim Barrier.
Does that name sound familiar to you at all?
gary Jenkins: Vaguely, but I don’t know. Okay. I get so much coming into my head and research
Scott Weller: and- So the, the Crazy Horse II, the most notorious club that Rizzolo ran, was on Industrial Road. And as it sounds, it’s a pretty downscale part of town. It’s all auto body businesses.
It’s a block off the strip. And he shared this [00:14:00] property with Crazy Horse II, and he had an automotive repair business. He had a long-term lease. And a lot of cases with the neighbors, they got into disputes about parking and trash. And in his case, he would s- he would open up his business and he would see bodies lying there that had been beat up by bouncers and things like that.
So he quickly got into a feud with the owner, Rick Rizzolo, and it went on for years. He’d be- he would give the metro police here tips. He would take photographs and tape things. He would go to the FBI and, It was a long-term battle, very public, and he was a very colorful character. He ran a wrestling television program and a school for wrestlers, so people knew who Buffalo Jim was.
He would get on TV. And in one of Rick Rizzolo’s convictions, tax convictions, the day he [00:15:00] got out of prison, poor Buffalo Jim had a date with a one of his da- one of Rick’s dancers. Met her at a motel out here on Boulder Highway and never came out alive. Had a- … what looked like a heart attack or a drug overdose in the hotel room.
It was a terribly mismanaged case. There was all kinds of evidence that was ignored, and that was gosh about 20 years ago. And his daughters to… It’s an unsolved crime, and to this day his daughters keep the case alive. They’re very active in the CrimeCon seminars that take place, giving seminars on the case.
It’s been, widely publicized. But that case of Buffalo Jim. Now, I’ve got some backgrounds, and I don’t even know how to do this on my Zoom camera if… I don’t know if you see my, my book, Stripping for the Mob- Oh, yeah. I can see it, yeah … but I’ve got some pictures. But I’m a- I’m afraid to t- try and manipulate the image-
because I might be lost [00:16:00] in the cyber space. But yeah, the case of Buffalo Jim is a, is one that I think people will e- enjoy the unfortunate story in my book, but it’s pretty well documented.
gary Jenkins: So this Rick Rizzolo the, the supposition is that he paid this girl to look the other way or to-
Scott Weller: That’s, that’s-
administer some kind of drug … that’s what the the theories are. But again he was never arrested on that crime. No one’s ever been arrested for that crime.
gary Jenkins: So what kind of connections did he have with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office? Did he make a lot of- He,
Campaign contributions? Was he, connected to commissioners- He,
Scott Weller: he- …
gary Jenkins: and those kinds of things?
Scott Weller: He was very open about his entertainment and gifts to Metro Police and especially politicians. Oscar Goodman was his attorney. He’s the one who was giving money to the commissioners that eventually were taken down in the Galardi case.
But in one… One of the funny stories about him [00:17:00] was there was a a city councilman who was on his payroll for $10,000 a month, and this new club owner, Michael Galardi, wanted to have the same kind of access, wanted to give himself the same type of protection- Yeah … that Rizzolo was getting, so he matched that, that monthly stipend to this politician, and the politician remained loyal to Rizzolo.
Galardi was paying him 10 grand. The other guy was paying him 10 grand, and he was still doing favors for Rizzolo the whole time while Galardi was paying him 10 grand a month. It was… and everybody in town knew it. That was- Yeah … kind of the old Vegas. You just accepted your politicians, had to supplement their income, this way.
But eventually those Clark County commissioners went to, all went to federal prison.
gary Jenkins: Oh, really? Wow. That’s, gaming Control Board they were changing during the late ’70s into the ’80s and it got a little more professional, [00:18:00] and they-
Scott Weller: Yes …
gary Jenkins: they weren’t such good old boys as they had been before, and they-
Scott Weller: Yeah
new people came in. And it’s interesting you put it that way because as they became tougher and more professional, they were squeezing the mafia out of the resorts and the casinos, so strip clubs became a place they almost had to run to. They had to do f- anything else because the, the skim wasn’t working anymore.
So that- Yeah … that’s kind of the arc of this story, is what was happening. And so as they became- Get generating more money from the strip clubs, the FBI became much more involved and spent a lot of time and money investigating the bigger clubs
gary Jenkins: Yeah, interesting, ’cause there was a lot of money.
Now Tony Spilotro, of course he gets killed, and the scam was being exposed, and Frank Cullotta’s, his stick out there in Las Vegas and he turns. So that, kinda that Chicago influence, the Outfit influence in Chica- in Las Vegas is waning [00:19:00] quite a little bit. Was there another family that moved in and started taking trying to get a piece of this action, this new strip club action?
Scott Weller: This, This is at the end for The Outfit Yeah … they were winning the co- Colada and but the New York families that were trying to keep their hand in it were Genovese and Bonanno through one of Rick’s best friends, a guy named Joey Cusimano. Okay, yeah … who I was just showing the book to a, an attorney here.
He’s like, “Oh, I used to play tennis with Joey Cusimano.” Yeah, that’s a hell of a- And I said he’s a, he was a nice guy.”
gary Jenkins: He’s a hell of a story. They called him The Rancher, I think, on the wiretaps, or The Car Dealer one. They had a couple d- and he was kinda New York’s man in the s- Stardust, kinda watching over what was going on and reporting- Yeah
back to them ’cause he was a New York guy. And I didn’t really know exactly what happened to him after, he… they booted him out of the Stardust after it changed hands. And so he went in- Yeah … he was in the strip club business and looking out for the Genovese interest out there. And then he got killed also in a few years [00:20:00] later, I believe, or several years later.
Yeah.
Scott Weller: Yeah. In fact, one of the characters, one of the politicians in this book that was making his money from the clubs actually lived rent-free in one of Joey Cusimano’s house on the- … canyon Gate Country Club. It was like… that’s how out- outrageous and naked the, the corruption was.
You’re living in- Oh, yeah … a mobster’s house while you’re on the city council. It was.
gary Jenkins: It was. There was another club called The Palomino Club. What was that?
Scott Weller: Yes.
gary Jenkins: There was a some kinda scandal around that. What was the deal with that?
Scott Weller: Oh, they, There are a couple g- really interesting stories out of that.
So The Palomino Club was run by a guy named Paul Perry, and he had grandfathered in quite a setup for himself, which was he was the only club that it was in North Las Vegas, could be fully nude and have a full bar.
The way it works is sometimes you might have full nudity, but you couldn’t sell liquor.
He had both. He had the best of both worlds. So he had a gold mine up in North Las [00:21:00] Vegas. And he raised a son named Jack who was a, a real goofball apparently. And when Paul named someone else as his general manager, not the son got jealous and killed that general manager. So that was the first murder that took place there.
The next… through all that, a, a, a very famous attorney named Dominic Gentile will handle a lot of these clubs and several mobsters. He was representing the interest of the club and he arranged for a Stanford University medical professor to buy the club. And the reason this guy… His name was Sanford Stritzer.
Let, let me see if I… I don’t wanna get his name wrong. S- Simon Sterzer had done, was doing research on angioplasty balloons, for your coronary. That was his- Yeah … his specialty. That was his field. Yeah. He bought two strip [00:22:00] clubs in order to fund his medical research. That was his business plan.
And he only held that club for about a year. It was profitable. He only held it a year. There was a lot of controversy about it, and he sold it to a guy named Louie Hidalgo. Now, Louie Hidalgo ended up in a case where there was a doorman working for The Palomino who they had to fire because he was taking bribes or whatever he was doing, and he started badmouthing the club.
So Hidalgo got so angry at it, he he hired four guys to draw this doorman out to a abandoned part of Lake Mead National Park. If you’ve ever been out there, it’s very remote. Yeah. It was supposed to be a drug deal, and when they met, they killed him- And these killers thought it would be a smart idea to throw flyers for the club around the
gary Jenkins: Body.
Oh,
Scott Weller: man. And they drove ba- So after they [00:23:00] killed him, they drove back to the Palomino. Hidalgo paid them their cash. They all went their separate ways, and, not surprisingly, they were arrested shortly a- after that.
gary Jenkins: Yeah. That’s
Scott Weller: a hell of
gary Jenkins: a story.
Scott Weller: So there were two murders involving the Palomino.
The Palomino’s still there. What’s interesting is the lawyer who was handling these different cases, Dominic ended up getting the club as settlement for his legal services, and he let his son Adam run the club to this day.
gary Jenkins: There’s there is money in it, and some people- Yeah … just say that’s, it’s just entertainment, and which I guess it is, but it’s,
Scott Weller: Yeah
gary Jenkins: but there is a lot of money. It’s interesting w- the way they handle that is we got in to s- looking into them and finding dancers who would talk to us. Find out that the dancers then, they’re they don’t get a salary. They work for their tips. Then they have to tip out the bartender and the doorman and all, and everybody else.
And the owner, they get, the door as [00:24:00] people pay a big fee to get in- Yeah … and the drinks is just huge. That’s a huge- Yeah … fee the way they charge for those drinks. It’s- Yeah … a really interesting business plan.
Scott Weller: Yeah. In fact, at Crazy Horse too, the most notorious of these, one of the first killings of a customer there was a, a, a truck driver named Scott Fow.
And his sin with the club was he was drinking, he was enjoying talking to the dancers, watching the dancers, but he wasn’t buying a dance or a private VIP session. And they took umbrage with that. It must’ve been a really slow night, and they went out, and they beat him to death.
As much as we romanticize these people- Yeah
That’s the level of humanity that they killed him because he wasn’t spending enough money.
gary Jenkins: Yeah. It doesn’t surprise me. It’s a hard world, I had a, a friend was a stripper at one time when she was young, and she said, “I’m gonna tell you something, Gary.” She said, “If you meet a girl- That has ever stripped or is stripping now, [00:25:00] she’s been sexually abused as a child.
Yeah. I promise you, she has been sexually abused as a child.
Scott Weller: Yeah. Yeah. That’s, … I think that’s true. I think that’s true. God bless them if they can use it to further- Yeah … get out of whatever problem they’re in, pay their bills. Yeah. Most of them don’t. Most of them handle money like,
gary Jenkins: Yeah
Scott Weller: Like any other criminal would, but …
gary Jenkins: Yeah. They they get some mooch boyfriends. They’re codependent as hell and they get some boyfriend that always needs drugs or always needs something.
Scott Weller: Yeah.
gary Jenkins: So they’re funding that. That story- Yeah … guys, I’m gonna tell you something, guys. That story from that stripper about how she’s saving up to go to college, that’s bullshit.
Scott Weller: Yeah. I think that’s
gary Jenkins: right. You’re not helping that girl go to college. Come on, get off of it, man.
It’s a hard, cruel world. All right, I just, I was looking down here at some of your reviews here. Here’s a review, guys. “Stripping for the Mob is an informative and [00:26:00] interesting history of the mob in Las Vegas. It also takes a serious look at the mob’s influence in the strip club industry in Vegas, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Waller’s newest book is a must read.” So that that helps y’all wanna buy that book, why that would help- Th-
Scott Weller: thank you. Whoever wrote that, thank you very much. I appreciate that. It was it was fun doing the research. I was blessed. There was a lot of newspaper stories, contemporary n- stories written at the time, so- Yeah
I relied a lot on that because this is, these are older stories. They’re go, they go back 40 years, 50 years. Yeah. In fact, I start the book with a little bit of history of the crime of Las Vegas, just to give context. So I talk about, some of the early notorious guys like Jim Ferguson and Guy McAfee, who was a- Guy McAfee, yeah
LA cop who came out here, and then Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky and Spilatro. So just a little bit of quick history. Anybody that knows Las Vegas crime history will breeze through it, but it’s, it was good context I think for others.
gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. [00:27:00] To, to set the scene. Las Vegas is it’s Las Vegas.
There’s nothing, we’ve never allowed anything in this Puritan world that we live in, that I grew up in, there’s never been anything like Las Vegas for the whole history of this country. And even today, I don’t think. It’s it’s a whole different place, isn’t it?
Scott Weller: Yeah. It’s, it’s- And, and- … it’s a fun place to live.
I hope you enjoy your trips out here.
gary Jenkins: All right. I really appreciate you coming on the show, Scott. Stripping for the
Scott Weller: Mob. Ga- Gary, it was great being on. I I enjoy your work and your podcast and certainly your social media work look forward to staying in touch with you.
gary Jenkins: All right. Thank you. Yeah, and I have to give credit to, there’s, I got about three guys that help me with that social media stuff, that Scott and Ken and Casey.
Man, they really help me out a lot with that ’cause it’s, They do a
Scott Weller: great job. It’s great …
gary Jenkins: it’s time-consuming. Post a lot of good stuff. All right.
Scott Weller: Thank you brother. I appreciate
gary Jenkins: you. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Later.
Scott Weller: Bye-bye

