Being Oscar: From Mob Lawyer to Mayor of Las Vegas

by Oscar Goodman

  Teddy, like his father, was a good friend of Harry Claiborne’s, and he thought Harry was getting a raw deal. A couple of years later, Teddy was found dead in the den of his home. It was a sensational case; his girlfriend and a male accomplice were charged with murder. The prosecution theorized that his death was made to look like a heroin overdose.

  Teddy’s girlfriend and her lover were tried and convicted of murder, but on appeal, that conviction was overturned. At the retrial they were acquitted.

  I didn’t think Harry would go for Teddy’s “I was drunk” defense on the tax issues, so I didn’t bring it up. But we still nearly beat all the charges. The jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in our favor on each count. We ended up with a mistrial, a hung jury.

  Conforte was totally discredited. He looked like the scumbag that he was. I think even the feds realized it. Conforte got time served for the withholding tax evasion charge—what little time he had served in jail after they brought him back from Brazil. The reduction of his sentence was illegal. The government attorneys got a judge in Washington, D.C., to reduce the sentence years after it was imposed, when the time for reduction of sentences had to be within 120 days of the conviction. On top of that, his tax liability was reduced. That was his payoff from the government for ruining Harry Claiborne’s life. The feds gave him the candy store and he gave them nothing from the witness stand.

  After the trial, Conforte headed back to Brazil. I don’t think he ever paid the taxes he owed. Occasionally I saw pictures of him with a big Cuban Cohiba in his mouth and what appeared to be several teenage girls with their arms around his fat, hairy stomach.

  When the government moved to retry the case, they dropped the bribery charge. They weren’t going to put Conforte on the stand again. So at Harry’s new trial, there was the income tax issue and some minor ethics offenses. The prosecutor offered us a deal. If Harry would resign as judge, they’d drop the charges. But Harry wouldn’t go for it.

  “I’m right,” he said.

  I wanted to use the defense that Teddy Binion had suggested. The tax returns were ridiculously prepared, and an argument that Harry was impaired would have great jury appeal.

  The government theory was that Harry lived high and that after he became a federal judge, he couldn’t maintain that lifestyle on a salary of $78,000. But I knew him. He was frugal; he didn’t have a fancy car, he drove a truck. He wore the same clothes all the time, and I never saw him in a new suit. He just lived the way he always had.

  There was a check, a refund from an earlier tax return. It was more than $100,000, and Harry still hadn’t cashed it. It was sitting in a drawer. This was somebody who didn’t care about money, and who obviously wasn’t paying attention to his tax preparer—who wasn’t that good, by the way. Harry would provide his accountant with all his information, sometimes written in pencil and scrawled across sheets of paper. The accountant would fill out the forms based on that information and then Harry, who may have been drunk at the time (according to Teddy’s theory), would sign his tax returns.

  As someone who drinks a lot, I know how that can be. There are times where you might appear lucid and act in a manner that people around you would believe you were not inebriated, but the next day, you have no recollection of what you were doing.

  But Harry was a proud man, and I wasn’t sure he would allow us to use drunkenness as a defense. First he would have to admit that he had a problem. And I think if I had suggested that defense, he would have lost all confidence in me. It was very tough, because I had such great admiration and respect for him as a man and as a lawyer.

  In the end, I decided not to broach the drunken defense. Harry was convicted of the tax offenses and sentenced to two years in prison. He never flinched and never complained. He believed he was right, but he accepted the verdict. In a lot of ways, he was like Spilotro and some of my other clients who didn’t whine or complain.

  Harry stayed out on bail while we appealed. We went in front of the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. The group included Harry and me, Harry’s law clerk and secretary, and Tom O’Donnell, the judge from the Crockett case. He was a good friend of Harry’s and mine. We had dinner the night before at one of Harry’s favorite restaurants and we talked about the appeal, the arguments I would make the next day, and how things looked. One of the things we discovered was that Harry had gotten mail that was intended for O’Donnell, and O’Donnell had gotten mail that was intended for Harry. The only thing we could figure is that the feds were monitoring their mail, opening their correspondences. Obviously one of the idiots had put the mail back in the wrong envelopes. So my take on that was that both judges had been targeted by the federal government, and Harry was the one they got.

  We also spent time that night talking about old times, trying to keep things light.

  We were going to meet for breakfast the next morning and then head over to court. I was drinking a cup of coffee when Harry walked into the restaurant and said that Tom O’Donnell wasn’t feeling well. Harry planned to go with me to court, but now said he would meet me there after he checked on Tom.

  When it was time to make our argument, Harry still hadn’t shown up, so I asked the judges if they would take another case before ours. They graciously agreed, but eventually I had to make my arguments without Harry there. After the hearing I walked out in the hallway and there was Harry Claiborne, tears in his eyes. Tom O’Donnell had had a massive heart attack while he was taking a shower that morning.

  Harry didn’t want to tell me because he didn’t want to upset me before the hearing. Now he was standing there in that hallway, his future on the line, but all he could do was cry over the death of his good friend.

  Harry Claiborne and Tom O’Donnell were good judges and even better men.

  We lost the appeal, and Harry ended up doing his time at the Maxwell Air Force base. That’s where he was when the impeachment proceedings began. They brought him back East and kept him in the brig at Quantico, the Marine Base.

  The first day he was brought into the Capitol for the Senate impeachment hearings, he was in shackles, shuffling in full-body chains and manacles. It was totally demeaning. I was able to get Senator Warren Rudman from New Hampshire to correct that. He told the marshals that this was not going to be tolerated.

  But that was one of the few breaks we got from the Senate. We never really got a full hearing. The full Senate was supposed to read and review the transcript of proceedings, which were held before a committee of twelve senators. I’d wager that most of the senators hadn’t read any of it. It was a rush to judgment. If the constitution wasn’t broken that day, it surely was bent.

  The senators just couldn’t understand why Harry didn’t resign. Several came to me, pleading with me to convince him to step down. If he had, I think the impeachment proceedings would have ended. But he was steadfast, so we had to go through it.

  I wanted a full-blown trial in front of the entire Senate, to which we were constitutionally entitled. This was, after all, the first impeachment proceeding in fifty years. I had a witness list of nearly sixty people. But the Senate opted for a streamlined proceeding before the twelve-member committee. They permitted us to call a dozen witnesses. The hearing lasted seven days, and then the committee issued transcripts of the proceedings that the rest of the Senate was supposed to read before voting.

  During the committee hearings, they would bring him from the brig to a safe house on Sundays to prepare. When he arrived, I’d ask him what he would like to eat. I told him I’d get him whatever he wanted. You’d think he’d ask for a steak or some other type of fancy meal. But no, he just wanted a hot dog with chili from the 7-Eleven, and he wanted to watch the football games on television.

  I argued as best I could in front of the full Senate, but it was like arguing in front of a juror who was asleep. Most of the senators had already made up their minds. Al Gore was convinced that Claiborne was a bad person. I looked at the copy of the report on Barry Goldwater’s desk. It looked like it h
adn’t been opened. I don’t think there was anything I could have said that would have saved Harry.

  The senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of three articles of impeachment. Harry Claiborne was found guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” He was stripped of his judgeship and sent back to finish his prison term.

  Harry just sat there as the “guilty” votes were tabulated, one senator after another. We both knew what was happening. I looked out over that crowd of senators and saw that most hadn’t even cracked the spine of the report they were supposed to read before voting.

  As the vote was being taken, Harry wrote a note in red ink that he wanted me to give to Hank Greenspun of the Las Vegas Sun. After the hearing, I read the note to other reporters who came up to me. This was only the fifth time in all of our history that the Senate had voted articles of impeachment, and there was obviously a lot of media attention.

  Here’s what Harry wrote:

  “A part of me died here today, not because of defeat, but because everything I believe in was assaulted beyond repair.”

  I look at it now, and I’m still shaken by the whole process. The investigation, the indictment, the trials, the impeachment. Harry Claiborne was a marvelous judge and an even better human being. But he was targeted by a venal group of individuals. The whole cast of characters—the FBI, the IRS, the Strike Force Attorneys, the trial judge, and most of the U.S. Senate—was not interested in justice.

  Harry came back to Las Vegas after he finished his sentence, and the Nevada Supreme Court restored his law license. I think that says a lot about how they felt about what had happened. He was a lawyer again, but he was never the same. The impeachment had broken him. I think he was so disappointed in the system that he lost some of his love for the law.

  In 2004, in the middle of a battle with cancer, Harry Claiborne killed himself. But as he said, a part of him had died long before that.

  On the gridiron at Haverford College. (Courtesy of Oscar Goodman)

  Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal sits as Oscar goes over a chart at one of his many casino licensing hearings. (Courtesy of Las Vegas Review-Journal, reprinted with permission, photo by Jeff Scheid)

  Oscar (third from left) and the rest of the defense team after a victory in one of the Philadelphia mob trials. (Courtesy of Oscar Goodman)

  Tony Spilotro and his defense counsel. (Courtesy Las Vegas Sun)

  Tony and Oscar arriving at a hearing. (Courtesy Las Vegas Sun)

  Oscar celebrates daughter Cara’s 13th birthday with friends Tony Spilotro, Chris Petti, and Joey Cusamano. (Photo by Cara Lee Goodman)

  The infamous law enforcement chart that mocked Oscar and others outside the grand jury room. (Courtesy of Jonathan Ullman, CEO Mob Museum, photo by John Gurzinski)

  Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman in his office. (Courtesy of the LVCVA News Bureau, photo by Bob Brye)

  Oscar and his good friend, Judge Harry Claiborne, in happier times. (Courtesy Las Vegas Sun)

  Mayor Oscar Goodman throws out the first pitch during MLB Big League Weekend game at Cashman Center. Cubs VS White Sox. (Courtesy of the LVCVA News Bureau, photo by Brian Jones)

  Muhammad Ali takes a shot from the mayor. (Courtesy of Oscar Goodman)

  Our trip to London. (Courtesy of the LVCVA News Bureau, photo by Simon Wright)

  Obama and Oscar. (Courtesy of AP Images)

  Wax likeness and the Mayor himself at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. (Courtesy of the LVCVA News Bureau, photo by Bob Brye)

  Oscar swears in Mayor-elect Carolyn G. Goodman at City Hall, July 2011. (Courtesy of the LVCVA News Bureau, photo by Darrin Bush)

  Carolyn grabs Oscar’s nose during a ceremony at the Oscar B. Goodman Tribute Plaza in Symphony Park. (Photo by Mona Shield Payne)

  Oscar and friends at the opening of the Mob Museum. (Courtesy of the Mob Museum, photo by John Gurzinski)

  Carolyn and Oscar recite “The Night Before Christmas” with the Las Vegas Philharmonic at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts. (Courtesy of the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, LVCVA News Bureau, photo by Brian Jones)

  Goodman Dynasty: Oscar and Carolyn surrounded by their children, their children’s spouses, and their grandchildren. (Photo by Carol Cali of The Meadows School)

  CHAPTER 10

  IBM, NOT FBI

  They say you can’t go home again, but in the mid-1980s I got a chance to spend quite a bit of time in Philadelphia. The FBI had a major investigation into the crime family there, targeting mob boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo and most of his top associates.

  Bobby Simone, Scarfo’s lawyer, had recommended me to Leland Beloff, a city councilman who had gotten caught up in one of the many cases the feds had pending against the Scarfo organization. Beloff called me and I flew out to meet him. Once again, informants were the key. The mob rat I had mentioned earlier, Nicholas “Nicky the Crow” Caramandi, was the chief witness.

  It was interesting to return to the city where I grew up and where my Dad had built his reputation as a lawyer. Some people still remembered him, and those who did always had nice things to say about him.

  What they were saying about my client was another matter. Philadelphia had long had a reputation for political corruption. “Corrupt and contented” was a phrase coined back in 1904 by one of the muckraking journalists of the day, a man named Lincoln Steffens. He wrote an article for McClure’s Magazine in which he said Philadelphia was one of the most corrupt, if not the most corrupt, city in the country.

  Many were saying that still applied, although Steffens was writing about a Republican political machine. As a city councilman Beloff was part of the Democratic machine that controlled the city in the 1980s, and still does today.

  Beloff was a millionaire. He had inherited a nursing home business that his father, a former Philadelphia judge, had founded. He was a handsome, well-spoken councilman whose district included part of South Philadelphia, which was the mob’s nesting place, and an area along the Delaware River that had been targeted for redevelopment. For years the city had talked about Penns Landing, a location along the river that supposedly was the place where William Penn had landed when he came to Philadelphia.

  Urban planners saw the riverfront as a natural location for a commercial, residential, and community development, something like the Inner Harbor in Baltimore or the South Street Seaport in New York. The city had finally gotten its act together and had tapped Willard Rouse, a nationally known developer, to spearhead the project.

  According to a federal indictment, the mob jumped into the middle of the project through Beloff. A couple of city ordinances needed to be passed before the Penns Landing project could qualify for some federal aid programs. Several million dollars were at stake in terms of the federal funding, and many more millions when you considered the entire development plan. Beloff, as the councilman in whose district the project was located, could either hold up those ordinances or shepherd them through.

  The feds said he cut a deal with the mob. Caramandi, a con artist, degenerate gambler, and overall low-life gangster, became the point man. He went to the Rouse people and told them he could hold up the ordinances or have them passed. What he wanted in exchange was $1 million.

  It was a not-so-subtle mob shakedown. What Caramandi and his mob associates didn’t figure on was Rouse. They were apparently used to dealing with corrupt politicians and corrupt businessmen. But Rouse, who wasn’t from Philadelphia, went to the FBI. The feds got an undercover agent into the negotiations, posing as a Rouse project manager. He met with Caramandi, who repeated the demand, claiming that he had Beloff in his back pocket.

  Scarfo, Caramandi, Beloff, and Bobby Rego, one of his council aides, were indicted. A short time later, Caramandi flipped and began cooperating, claiming he was convinced that Scarfo was going to have him killed for screwing up the shakedown. At around the same time, another member of the Scarfo organization, Thomas “Tommy Del” DelGiorno, cut a deal with the New Jersey State Police. Eventually DelGi
orno was turned over to the feds.

  These guys were murderers and had been targets of federal and state investigations, but now they were welcomed into the federal fold with open arms. Both were treated with kid gloves by their law enforcement handlers and by the judges who eventually sentenced them. They didn’t spend time in prison, but rather in safe houses.

  At one point, Caramandi was spotted by the mother of one of the defendants in the mob case. He was living in a condo in Ocean City, Maryland, a comfortable summer resort town, surrounded by a detail of FBI agents who rotated “duty shifts” at the seashore.

  DelGiorno had an even better deal. Traditionally, the government rents a house in a safe location before relocating a witness and his family to that spot. DelGiorno got the okay to purchase a house in Virginia, where he and his family were moved while he was cooperating. The government then agreed to “rent” the house from him. He became both the proprietor who was renting to Uncle Sam, and the witness who was living in a safe house. All his family’s needs were taken care of on taxpayer dollars, plus he was collecting rent from Uncle Sam.

  In exchange, Caramandi and DelGiorno were “confessing” to all sorts of crimes—murders, assaults, and extortions—that stretched back for years in Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and Southern New Jersey.

  That was the legal minefield I walked into when I was hired to represent Beloff. He was somewhat volatile, but was treated with a great deal of respect in the city. His constituents loved him. His aide, Bobby Rego, was a charming guy who lived in South Philadelphia and had grown up with some of the mobsters. And Lee’s wife, Diane, was very nice. She was the better part of that duo.