The Battle for Las Vegas: The Law vs. The Mob

by Dennis Griffin

  Sheriff McCarthy wasn’t the only one to think highly of Kent Clifford. Even a McCarthy critic, one of the 39 officers in the class-action lawsuit, described Clifford this way: “He was one hell of an undercover cop, with guts a mile deep.” The detectives who worked for Clifford in the reorganized unit quickly developed similar respect for their boss. He was aggressive, fearless, and loyal to his officers. Over the next four years, he needed each of those qualities, and more.

  Commander Clifford wasted no time in getting started, tackling the problems head-on in January 1979. He reorganized the Intelligence Bureau through a series of personnel moves and announced that the Bureau was “clean” to the best of his knowledge. In March, Metro was reinstated into the California Narcotics Intelligence Network, an organization from which it had been suspended due to information leaks regarding the Spilotro investigations. As satisfying as that start may have been, another matter needed to be addressed quickly: Tony Spilotro himself.

  Targeting Tony

  Although Commander Clifford was newly assigned to confront Spilotro, he was well-aware of the gangster’s reputation and presence. Clifford described his adversary this way: “Tony Spilotro was a cold-blooded killer. You could see it when you looked into his eyes. He was capable of being extremely vicious and violent.”

  The former Intelligence boss disagrees with newspaper accounts that killings involving the use of a .22 were the “signature” of the Spilotro gang. “Tony used a twenty-two, but that particular weapon wasn’t unique to him. A lot of hit men used a twenty-two.” According to Clifford, Spilotro, or men acting on his orders, also murdered with knives, ice picks, or any other weapon that struck their fancy.

  In spite of acknowledging Spilotro as a dangerous killer, Clifford wasn’t particularly impressed with the Ant, believing his status was overblown. “He was just a soldier, a punk. That’s all he ever was.”

  Still, Clifford had to develop a strategy on how to deal with Tony. The feds were hot on the trail of Rosenthal, Glick, and the casino skimming operations, as well as Spilotro, so Metro could focus on Spilotro and his street crimes, which fell directly under its jurisdiction. He decided to attack both overtly and covertly. Five officers were assigned full-time to the Spilotro investigation and could be supplemented by additional personnel as needed. They kept pressure on Tony and his associates by implementing round-the-clock surveillance, often making no effort at concealment. The targets knew they were there, watching their every move, even following them into restaurants and taking seats at adjoining tables.

  In addition, the tailing cops were told to aggressively enforce traffic laws. When a subject was pulled over for a motor-vehicle violation, he was arrested and had his car towed. This tactic disrupted their activities, costing them time and money, as well as causing annoyance. It also allowed the cops to get positive identifications on the players and possibly pick up some good information. “Some of those guys weren’t real bright. You never knew what they might say when they were in the back seat of your car on the way to jail,” Clifford said.

  Although this strategy invited allegations of police harassment, Clifford believed it was necessary and appropriate. “We were up against people who weren’t required to play by any rules; we were. Everything we did was legal, but sometimes we went right up to the edge. The goal was to put Tony in prison or drive him out of town. Also, there was a possibility that by keeping the media’s attention focused on him, along with his own huge ego, his bosses in Chicago might eventually get fed up with him.”

  An additional matter needed to be taken care of in relation to the war against Tony Spilotro. A bond of trust had to be established between Metro and the FBI. On an organizational level, that would take time, a luxury the cops didn’t have. Instead, Clifford and his officers developed relationships with their FBI counterparts on a personal basis, building friendships and confidence in one another’s abilities. As these efforts came to fruition, cooperation between the two agencies grew. It marked a new phase in the struggle against organized crime in Las Vegas.

  The FBI

  Metro wasn’t alone in making Tony a priority in the late 1970s. The FBI was also beefing up its forces in Vegas, bringing in additional personnel from other offices. Among the new arrivals were Emmett Michaels, Charlie Parsons, Dennis Arnoldy, Lynn Ferrin, Gary Magnesen, and Joseph Yablonsky. All six played key roles in the eventual downfall of the Spilotro gang in Las Vegas and other mobsters across the country in conjunction with the casino skimming investigations.

  Emmett Michaels was assigned to the Las Vegas field office in 1977. He was appointed as supervisor of the Surveillance Squad, a part of the Special Operations Group. He held this position until his retirement in 1985. His unit was responsible for conducting surveillance activities, including the installation and monitoring of authorized wiretaps and electronic eavesdropping equipment.

  Charlie Parsons got to Vegas in 1979. He was assigned as supervisor of the Organized Crime Squad, a job he kept until he was transferred to the Los Angeles field office in 1984. He later became the special agent in charge (SAC) of that office and retired from that post in 1996 after a 27-year career.

  Dennis Arnoldy was assigned to Las Vegas from Little Rock, Arkansas, in August 1980. Upon his arrival he was made co-case agent with special agent Joe Gersky on the Spilotro investigations. When agent Gersky became a polygraph examiner, Arnoldy became the case agent. As part of his duties, he handled the debriefing and interrogation of a Spilotro lieutenant who turned government witness.

  Lynn Ferrin was assigned to Las Vegas in September 1980. He became the case agent for the Strawman and Strawman-Trans Sterling investigations that broke the mob’s casino skimming operations. He was transferred to Reno in 1995 and retired in 2001 with nearly 29 years of service.

  Joseph Yablonsky was transferred to Las Vegas from Cincinnati in 1980 as the new SAC. He remained the FBI’s top man in the Vegas office until his retirement in December 1983, with 32 years of service. Yablonski had a proven track record of developing cases against organized-crime figures and was handpicked for the Sin City assignment by FBI Director William Webster. During his term, Yablonski oversaw an operation consisting of 140 employees, 82 of whom were special agents and five were supervisors, and a $5 million annual budget.

  Strike Force

  In addition, the Organized Crime Strike Force of the Department of Justice—a program established by Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960s for the sole purpose of fighting organized crime—provided resident Special Attorneys to coordinate investigative efforts between federal agencies, obtain necessary warrants, evaluate evidence, and prosecute cases in the courts. The unit had a maximum of three attorneys assigned to Las Vegas at any one time.

  Stanley Hunterton was one of those lawyers. Hunterton grew up in New York. After completing law school in 1975, he joined the Strike Force. He was initially assigned to the Detroit office; in 1978 he was sent to Las Vegas.

  Things hadn’t been going very well for the law in the time preceding Hunterton’s arrival. Metro was reeling from the Joe Blasko scandal, the FBI was recovering from allegations of agent misconduct, and Tony Spilotro was somehow beating back every attempt to put him out of business.

  “A lack of confidence in Metro kept us from having an institutional association with them at the time. But we [Department of Justice lawyers] and the FBI were later able to develop several relationships with Metro personnel on a personal level,” Hunterton recalls.

  As Emmett Michaels, Stanley Hunterton, Charlie Parsons, Dennis Arnoldy, Lynn Ferrin, Joe Yablonsky, and their colleagues arrived in Las Vegas, they became united in their mission: rid Las Vegas of the influence of organized crime, including hidden mob ownership of the casinos, and the related financial crimes. Like their local law-enforcement brethren, the federal forces launched a vigorous campaign against the gangsters controlling and looting Sin City.

  7

  1979

  As the 1970s neared an end, thi
ngs heated up in the law’s battle against Tony Spilotro. And Sheriff John McCarthy quickly learned that organized crime wasn’t his only problem—far from it. But his new administration brought about quick and positive results in the relationship between Metro and the FBI.

  FBI agent Emmett Michaels welcomed the improvement. In a 2004 interview, he recalled the night in 1978 that he and a team of agents bugged and wiretapped Spilotro’s Gold Rush. “At that time Metro had a reputation of being corrupt, so we didn’t tell them we were going to place bugs in Spilotro’s store and tap the phones. There were about ten agents involved altogether. I and three other guys were up on the telephone poles when the alarm system activated. A Metro car showed up and the officer got out to investigate. The four of us dangled from those poles, holding our breath and hoping the cop didn’t look up. He didn’t. He left a few minutes later without detecting us.” Had they been caught in the act, the incident would have been embarrassing at the least and word may have gotten back to Spilotro at the worst.

  With attention from the McCarthy administration, the situation got better and information sharing resumed. For Sheriff McCarthy and Metro, this was an important step. Other problems needed to be confronted that year, however. Some were inherited and others were new.

  Jail Woes

  The problems in the Clark County Detention Facility first came to light in 1973 when a convicted murderer who was being temporarily housed in the facility filed allegations that conditions inside the jail constituted cruel and unusual punishment. A grand jury was convened to investigate the inmate’s complaints.

  In 1975, the grand jury found the charges were well-founded. They determined the lockup was overcrowded, understaffed, unsanitary, provided inadequate medical treatment, and was generally unsafe and dangerous to the health and lives of the inmates. Their report concluded that these conditions constituted an emergency situation and a new facility needed to be built. It sounded good, but nothing was actually done and the problems worsened.

  In August 1977, inmates filed an amended complaint, stating that conditions were oppressive, barbaric, and degrading. They further alleged violations of their human and civil rights. The U.S. Justice Department joined the lawsuit on the side of the prisoners in February 1978. In July, the county entered into a Jail Consent Decree, establishing a committee to study all alternatives that would bring the detention system into compliance as soon as possible. Written recommendations had to be submitted by March 9, 1979, less than three months after McCarthy took office.

  Gary Lang remembers the detention facility as being a hell-hole in 1979. “There were continual water leaks from decaying lines and valves. Inmates frequently added to the problem by stopping up their sinks and toilets. The water would eventually seep through the floor and into the courtrooms located below.”

  Lang believes the jail issue was the result of many years of neglect by the politicians. “They had spent very little money on keeping the police up to speed with advancing technology or increasing personnel in a rapidly growing community. The philosophy was to provide the cops with just enough funding to keep the lid on. It was more beneficial to a politician’s future to vote to spend money on a new park than a jail.”

  As part of his reform campaign, John McCarthy was determined to change the old way of doing business. Rather than play along with those controlling the purse strings, he challenged them. Attorney Lang described the relationship between his boss and the politicos as “combative.”

  Whatever the reasons leading to the jail crisis, the matter had to be resolved. At Lang’s advice, McCarthy formed a task force to deal with and implement the Consent Decree requirements. Experts in jail administration were located and hired. New highly qualified architects were retained to replace the less experienced ones who had previously been employed through the political process. Progress lurched forward.

  Gary Lang recalls one particular problem that he participated in resolving during the planning stage: the best way to move inmates from the site of the new jail to the courthouse, 480 feet away. Some decision-makers were pushing for a skyway running from the top floor of the lockup. Learning of the plan, Lang intervened. “I said that would be great—until the first time one of the prisoners pissed on a car or someone’s head down below. The skyway was scrapped in favor of a tunnel system.”

  John McCarthy described addressing the Consent Decree as, “The most complex and demanding problem in the history of southern Nevada. If I’d had no other responsibility other than dealing with that one issue, my plate would have been overflowing.”

  He and his staff studied the Decree and identified 248 separate issues requiring correction. They included overcrowding, poor-quality food, meals served only twice per day, inadequate and dirty bedding, inadequate medical care, security, and recreational facilities, and lack of a law library. A chart was developed listing all 248 items and a target date for each to be corrected. That document was presented to a federal judge to show that Metro had a plan in place to bring the facility into compliance. It also placed some of the responsibility on other county officials.

  Through repairs, renovations, and innovative release programs for certain felons and first-time offenders, McCarthy was able to keep the situation under control while a new jail was being built.

  The corrections center was definitely a time-consuming headache for the new administration. But there was a second facility used to house inmates—the jail annex, located in the City Hall complex, and for two days that August, it took the administration’s mind off the Consent Decree.

  Takeover

  The specifics of this incident are covered in detail in Policing Las Vegas and won’t be repeated here. However, as a major event in Sheriff McCarthy’s term, it deserves some mention.

  On the morning of August 25, 1979, three inmates took control of the Jail Annex, located on the second floor of the Las Vegas City Hall complex on Stewart Avenue. A Hollywood screenwriter could have written the script for the incident. It had all the ingredients of an action movie: hardcore cons facing long sentences with little to lose; security equipment not working; procedures not followed; and escape within the grasp of the inmates, though they didn’t know it. But it was not a staged event. It was very real, and before it was over people were dead.

  The three convicts involved were Patrick McKenna, Felix Lorenzo, and Eugene Shaw. All were awaiting transfer to a state prison facility. McKenna and Lorenzo had recently been transferred to the Annex after having been implicated in a plot to start a riot at the Clark County Detention Center.

  McKenna was a 33-year-old white male with a long history of problems with the law. An escape artist and convicted rapist, he was serving three life sentences plus 75 years for sexually assaulting two women in Las Vegas in 1978. He was also facing a murder charge for killing his cellmate while housed in the Clark County Detention Center.

  Lorenzo, a Latino, was 30 years old at the time. He’d been sentenced to 160 years in prison for numerous armed robberies. He’d taken hostages during his capers, and on one occasion held an off-duty Metro officer captive for a short period of time. He was no stranger to prison strife, having been incarcerated at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York State during the infamous riot in 1971.

  Shaw, a 41-year-old black male, was another convicted armed robber, doing a 60-year sentence.

  In the aborted escape attempt, three correction officers were taken hostage. The ensuing standoff lasted nearly 48 hours. At its conclusion, Lorenzo and Shaw were dead as the result of a gun battle in which the three inmates engaged, and one correction officer was wounded in his hand by a stray bullet.

  During talks between the convicts and police to end the standoff, Sheriff McCarthy decided to remain in his office and out of the way just yards from the Annex. “I had no special training in negotiating. Our negotiators were doing a great job and didn’t need any interference from me. I made major decisions as necessary, but kept out of the direct negotiations,” he explained
.

  Just as it seemed progress was being made toward a peaceful resolution, shooting broke out inside the jail. Confusion reigned. Sheriff McCarthy described his feelings this way: “To say it was the most dramatic incident of my law-enforcement career would probably be an understatement. My heart was in my throat when the shooting started. At the outset we didn’t know for sure who was firing and why. Were the officers being held hostage the targets? Nobody knew. We didn’t learn until later that it was an inmate-on-inmate situation and our tactical unit wasn’t involved. There were some very tense minutes until things got sorted out.”

  The jail incident was the most dramatic event of the year for John McCarthy and the media coverage was mostly positive. The Sheriff, however, received his share of negative ink during that 12-month period.

  Deconsolidation, Allegations, and Divorce

  The Las Vegas City Council wasted little time in putting Sheriff McCarthy to the test. Legislators drafted a bill to deconsolidate Metro and create separate city and county police departments. The councilors claimed the move would provide the city with better protection at less cost. Metro and Clark County were vehemently opposed to the idea. This was an issue that popped up repeatedly during McCarthy’s term and had to be beaten back each time. Even when the deconsolidation efforts were out of public view, they continued to simmer under the surface.

  Then, ironically, the new Sheriff was forced to defend himself from reports in local newspapers claiming that organized crime was attempting to gain influence over him. One story alleged that Spilotro money had actually paid for McCarthy’s post-election victory party. This was a real slap in the face to the man who had campaigned on the promise of ridding Las Vegas of the Ant and his ilk. McCarthy vehemently denied the allegations and they were never proved, but they were an omen of things to come.