Canadian Organized Crime and Florida Land Development

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS- APRIL 14, 1952

EDMONTON, April 14 (CP) —Hon. N. E. Tanner, mines minister, has announced the first entry of Quebec mining interests into the Alberta oil picture. Quebec mining interests are financing Marigold Oils limited, which has an interest in 10,612 acres of oil rights in the Barrhead area, about 60 miles northwest of Edmonton. The group financing Marigold includes:

• East Sullivan Mines limited,

• Louvicourt Goldfields corporation,

• Bibis Yukon Mines limited,

Eric Cradock and Bryan W. Newkirk.

So, who were those guys?

NOVEMBER 29, 1961 Ontario Legislature

Mr. Wintermeyer: —Mr. McNamara was a defence witness, so to speak, at closed hearings on February 11, 1960, and on February 17, 1960, before the Deputy Provincial Secretary to show cause why the Centre Road club's provincial charter should not be cancelled on the ground that it was being used for illegal gambling.

Perhaps the hon. Provincial Secretary will remember the fantastic story Mr. McNamara told at those hearings about how the president of the army, navy and air force veterans association had conducted an investigation into allegations against the club and had given it a clear bill of health and how he took his position in the club to keep an eye on things because it had been more or less forced on him as the decent thing to do. And perhaps the hon. Provincial Secretary can explain why no cancellation was ordered for months and that, in fact, the charter was not dissolved until June 14, 1960, after Robert Wright was arrested and everybody knew the jig was up.

Perhaps Mr. McNamara can explain how the vice-presidency of the gamblers' mining company was forced on him in February of 1961, several months after it was known that everything had not been so decent at the Centre Road club after all.

Mr. Speaker, one of the characteristics of organized crime demonstrated by the New York crime commission was the use of violence. The commission said that beatings and even murder were the consequences of the presence of organized crime in a community. There has been evidence in Ontario that physical violence and murder are associated with the activities of gamblers. I will cite several cases:

On March 21, 1961, Max Bluestein, a convicted gambler, was savagely beaten by a number of men in the Town Tavern in downtown Toronto. He was beaten with brass knuckles, iron bars and fists. He was knocked down and kicked and a broken bottle was ground into his mouth and face. According to reports, Mr. Bluestein was beaten by a group of men acting for rivals who wanted to share the enormous profits of Bluestein's illegal gambling enterprises in Toronto.

Mr. Speaker, let me outline a little of Mr. Bluestein's background. In December of 1960 he was convicted along with Sam Binder of operating a common gaming house in the Lakeview club on Bathurst Street near Eglinton Avenue. Magistrate Addison in passing sentence of a fine of $15,000, or four months in jail estimated Mr. Bluestein's Lakeview club did an annual volume of gambling in excess of $13 million with a profit to Mr. Bluestein of more than $1 million. Mr. Bluestein obviously could pay the fine but it was reported in the press that he chose to go to the Ontario Reformatory at Mimico because paying the fine would cause him an income tax problem. While at Mimico a trusted lieutenant told him that rivals wished to take over four large floating crap games which Mr. Bluestein controlled in Toronto hotels. At this point Mr. Bluestein decided to pay his fine in order to gain his freedom and the opportunity to meet the challenge to his gambling empire. It was curious that when Mr. Bluestein came to pay his fine, it was discovered that a clerical error in the court record made him liable only for a fine of $4,000 and not $5,000.

It was reported in the press at the time of Mr. Bluestein's beating at the Town Tavern that almost half of the hundred people present had been invited to witness what subsequently took place. This was a public demonstration to the gambling fraternity of Toronto that violence would be used to capture and control illegal betting here. Despite the fact that a hundred persons were in the tavern no one came forward to give evidence to the police. The tavern's hat check girl and doorman, as well as the customers were thoroughly intimidated.

One month later, after the police held in camera hearings with 12 witnesses, warrants were issued for men— for four men— on a charge of assault causing bodily harm. These men were Jack Weaver, Frank Marchildon, Fred Gabourie and John Papalia. The first three, arrested April 23, 1961, have already been identified as convicted gamblers and members of various social clubs convicted or suspected of being gaming houses. The fourth man, Johnny Papalia of Hamilton, gave himself up to police on May 12, 1961, 48 days after the Bluestein beating and at a time when the New York State police had a warrant for his arrest in connection with the largest narcotic ring ever uncovered in the United States.

Mr. Papalia was a member of the veterans club, he was convicted of beating Max Bluestein and is now serving a sentence of 13 months in an Ontario reformatory.

Mr. Speaker, the New York crime commission pointed out that the three principal fonts of revenue for organized crime were illegal gambling, trafficking in narcotics and labour racketeering. In Johnny Papalia we have a direct link between the gamblers and the dope pedlars. The New York District Attorney charged 20 men, four of them Canadians, as being part of the conspiracy which smuggled drugs worth $150 million on the black market into the United States in the course of the past several years.

Of the 20 charged several left the United States forfeiting bail of $20,000 to $50,000 each. One man was murdered in Brooklyn, New York, last summer, another tried to commit suicide, a third was declared insane, and unfit for trial. A fourth was Alberto Agueci of Toronto, whose beaten, strangled and burned body was found last week near Rochester, New York. Some of the men charged in New York have been identified by federal narcotics authorities in the United States as members of the Mafia.

Another characteristic of organized crime as revealed by the New York State commission was that of extortion. Do we have examples of extortion in Ontario, Mr. Speaker? Last April, Toronto Daily Star columnist Pierre Berton published stories about gangland beatings of Toronto stockbrokers who refused to pay protection money. Beatings have been reported in Hamilton. Gwyn Thomas in the Toronto Daily Star on April 10, 1961, reported that beatings and shakedowns had been going on in Toronto for the preceding two years. Attempts to corrupt law enforcement authorities is another characteristic of organized crime.

I have already related the extent to which gamblers corrupted the Ontario Provincial Police anti-gambling squad. Gamblers have also attempted to corrupt magistrates in the Toronto area. It has been widely reported, Mr. Speaker, that Magistrate Fred Thompson was threatened some few years ago on the day before he was to hear a case against a well-known gambler. Magistrate Thompson reported this to the hon. Attorney-General. It would be interesting to know what the hon. Attorney-General did about it.

It has been reported that an attempt to bribe Magistrate Addison with $50,000 was made prior to the trial of another well-known gambler. It would be interesting, Mr. Speaker, to know what steps, if any, the hon. Attorney-General took in this matter.

I have cited the murder of Earl Atwood in connection with the Roseland club, and no doubt the hon. Attorney-General is familiar with that case. I wonder if he is familiar with the case of Peter "Scrit" Mitchell, one of the gang in the old Ramsey club. According to evidence in court Mitchell held his position in the organization by reason of his alleged ability to provide the club with political protection. According to evidence his position became somewhat tenuous and he is said to have talked too much. It is no secret, Mr. Speaker, that Scrit Mitchell disappeared suddenly and has not been seen for a long time. I wonder if the hon. Attorney-General would know where Mitchell is.

Mr. Speaker, physical violence, extortion, intimidation, bribery and attempted bribery, drug trafficking, and even murder, have all accompanied the growth of illegal gambling in Ontario. They are the inevitable corollary of organized crime. In recent years, however, a new and equally frightening aspect has appeared to this relationship between professional gambling and other illegal activity. It is the use of illegal gambling revenues to promote fraudulent stock deals. I will not weary the House with the complicated details of any particular case. Instead I would simply cite some cases of record in which evidence of syndicate money has been found.

There was the case some two years ago of Shoreland Mines Limited, a dormant Toronto firm. There was the case of Manor Securities Limited in the Maritimes. There was the investigation and report of the acting administrator of The Securities Fraud Prevention Act in New Brunswick last year into the activities of Canam Investments Limited, and of a number of related companies and individuals. This investigation found links with racketeers in Toronto and New York.

If time permitted I could show the House an association between some of these racketeers and some of the professional gamblers I have named earlier in my remarks. I have cited the shakedown and attempted shakedown of certain stockbrokers. It is no great secret, Mr. Speaker, that the culprit here, certainly one of the culprits, was Johnny Papalia. It is no great secret that the stockbrokers concerned were really so-called stockateers, the high pressure brokers and dealers who live on the fringes of securities law. At least two of the men coerced by Papalia were frequent visitors at the Centre Road veterans club.

I had occasion to mention Eric Cradock and J. B. Ryan [Joseph Bernard Ryan], the operators of the James Bay goose club. They are associated in Cradock Holdings Limited, Toronto, and both have poor records, to say the least, with the Ontario securities commission. Cradock offices were once used by Jack Weaver and Fred Gabourie for a big backend booking operation.

I can cite the case of Jaylac Mines Limited, a stock promotion which resulted this month in the cancellation by the Ontario securities commission of the registration of two Toronto stock dealers. The commission identified one Ivan Gordon as a representative of Jaylac interests who disappeared in 1960 following the removal and probable disappearance of all Jaylac's liquidated assets. Here again a detailed examination would reveal an association with ventures in which professional gamblers were and may still be involved.

If for no other reason, Mr. Speaker, a Royal commission is necessary to discover and expose the use of illegal gambling revenues in the participation of professional gamblers and their associates in fraudulent stock promotions.

I now come, Mr. Speaker, to the fifth and final question. The New York crime commission found that one of the characteristics of organized crime is its penetration into legitimate business. What evidence is there that this has happened in Ontario? I could give the House a number of references but I will detail only one because it is a classic example of what has happened and what can happen.

Rent-a-Plane Service 

On June 27, this year the chief of police of Metropolitan Toronto told a meeting of law enforcement officers in Buffalo that a questionable group of men were operating an airline service from Toronto to the United States and the Caribbean area. Mr. Mackey said that although no criminal activity had been discovered the airline would be watched closely because of the ease with which private aircraft can cross international borders and evade customs inspections and regulations.

Mr. Speaker, the name of that airline is Airgo Limited and it was run for a considerable period of time by Vincent Feeley and Joseph McDermott. Airgo Limited was incorporated by federal charter on August 11, 1958. The original owners were a Toronto lawyer and his brother-in-law who allegedly were interested in operating a rent-a-plane service at Toronto Island airport.

On July 3, 1959, the Air Transport Board issued a licence authorizing Airgo Limited to operate a flying training school and a commercial passenger and freight service in Canada. This licence became effective when the federal Department of Transport issued an operating certificate on August 21, 1959. On September 15, 1959, the Air Transport Board issued another licence to Airgo Limited authorizing it to make flights to and from the United States. This became effective when the federal transport department issued an operating certificate on October 13, 1959. Mr. Speaker, on October 19, 1959, six days after Airgo Limited was in business to make flights to the United States, the owners sold the airline to two Toronto lawyers who said they were acting for undisclosed principals. Those lawyers were David Humphrey and Hugh Locke of the firm of Humphrey and Locke. The deal was consummated in the lobby of a downtown Toronto bank when Mr. Locke handed over a large sum of cash money to one of the original owners.

Mr. Speaker, in the course of their investigation of Feeley and McDermott on other matters the police executed a search warrant for the law offices of Humphrey and Locke, and it is no great secret that among the other documents seized was a record of meetings in those offices concerning Airgo business. This record shows that those present at the meeting were Hugh Locke and his accountant, Charles Philips, the operations manager of the airline and Vincent Feeley. The Aviation Directory of Canada, a private publication which compiled its listings on the basis of information supplied by the airlines themselves, also listed David Humphrey as vice-president and Hugh Locke as secretary of Airgo Limited for 1960 and 1961.

Nor is it any great secret, Mr. Speaker, that police seized a document in the law offices of Humphrey & Locke drawn up in May of 1960. This document is a conditional sales document whereby David Humphrey, Hugh Locke, Joseph McDermott and Peter Fielding agreed to sell Airgo Limited to Robert S. Wong, subject to the approval of the Air Transport Board and other conditions. Peter Fielding is an alias used by Vincent Feeley and Robert S. Wong is a manager at Toronto Island airport. The deal apparently fell through but the document is at least indicative of the substantial financial interest in Airgo Limited by Vincent Feeley and Joseph McDermott.

I can also tell the House that Feeley and McDermott were frequently seen about Airgo's offices at Toronto Island airport, and that they identified themselves to the employees as the owners and operators of Airgo Limited. Further I can say that George Reid, the trusted lieutenant of Feeley and McDermott in gambling club operations, was placed on the Airgo payroll after the Centre Road veterans club closed down.

Joseph McDermott took a chattel mortgage for $20,000 on certain aircraft when Airgo Limited was sold to the present owners some time last winter. Yet despite all this evidence of participation by Feeley and McDermott in the ownership and control of Airgo Limited for a period of over one year there is no record with either the Air Transport Board or the federal Department of Transport of the sale of the airline from the original owners in October of 1959.

In August of 1960, and I point out, Mr. Speaker, that this would be shortly after Robert Wright was arrested and the gamblers had discovered the police had had an undercover agent in their midst, the Air Transport Board did receive a vague letter from Humphrey and Locke indicating there had been a transfer of ownership, not to Feeley and McDermott, but to the current owners.

Clearly, Mr. Speaker, a serious evasion of law occurred in this case. Federal regulations provide that the air transport board must be informed of any sale or transfer of stock exceeding five per cent of the total stock, and must approve such sale or transfer. Failure to do so can mean cancellation of the airline's licence and legal prosecution. Clearly, the regulations were violated in this case and there can be little doubt the law was evaded in order to conceal Feeley and McDermott's participation in Airgo Limited.

I shall say nothing, Mr. Speaker, about why they wanted to run an airline, nor shall I say anything about the present ownership of Airgo Limited. Chief Mackey's statement can speak for itself. But I do suggest most strongly, Mr. Speaker, that here again is the type of illegal activity requiring investigation by a Royal commission.

Mr. Speaker, this speech has been long and full of detail. The material is complex and technical. For those reasons it presents a special difficulty for the hon. members of the House to grasp all its meaning readily and easily. I am also aware that much of the material is sensitive in nature. However, I want to emphasize, Mr. Speaker, that I have made no charges of culpable wrongdoing against any person. I have not made and I do not now make any judgment about the legal or moral guilt of any man. What I have done is to present in this House a number of facts which I am convinced demonstrates that organized crime exists in Ontario and requires investigation.

I believe that the only satisfactory investigation can be that of a Royal commission.

The characteristics of organized crime which were demonstrated by the New York State crime commission are all manifest in Ontario. I think it is obvious that an investigation of organized crime by the department of the hon. Attorney-General would be in the nature of an internal house cleaning.

That is needed, but it is not sufficient. I think it is obvious that a Royal commission, independent of government, is the only adequate device for investigating organized crime.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that this Royal commission should be headed by a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario. He should be aided by a counsel who will be empowered and directed to investigate all aspects of the problem of organized crime. The commission's terms of reference should require investigation into the extent of organized crime in Ontario; the link between professional gamblers and their counterparts and associates in the United States; the records of the department of the hon. Provincial Secretary in its handling of social club charters; the failure of the department of the hon. Attorney-General to carry out government policy and to enforce the laws relating to gambling; the link between illegal gambling and other criminal activity; especially links with trafficking in narcotics; the penetration of legitimate business by professional gamblers; the contamination of our processes of law enforcement by attempts to influence courts and their operation; and finally the use of legal fronts for illegal activities.

The commissioner and chief counsel should be assisted by adequate staff of trained investigators. The commissioner should have the power to subpoena witnesses and to hear their testimony under oath and if necessary at times in camera. The commission should also be empowered to hold public hearings if deemed advisable as a means of bringing home to the general public the nature and scope of the menace which organized crime presents. The commission should be required to prepare a report of its findings for presentation to this House.

Mr. Speaker, I and my party will not be satisfied with anything less than the type of commission and inquiry which I have outlined. I appeal directly to the hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Robarts), to appoint such a commission and to give it terms of reference that encompass the matters I have enumerated. I wish to assure him and all the hon. members of the House that if the present government does not undertake to appoint such a commission and to direct it to undertake such an inquiry, the next Liberal government will do so at the earliest opportunity.

Applause. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lethbridge Herald - 12-1-1961

Challenges Political Leader

TORONTO (CP) — Joseph Ryan, general manager of the Edmonton Eskimos football club,
Thursday challenged Ontario Liberal Leader John Wintermeyer to come outside the legislature and repeat remarks he made about Mr. Ryan and stockbroker Eric Cradock.
Mr. Wintermeyer in a speech on gambling to the legislature Wednesday said Joseph McDermott of Port Credit, whom he identified as a notorious gambler, was host to a group of Detroit men at a Moosonee-area hunting club owned by Mr. Cradock and Mr. Ryan.

Mr. Wintermeyer also said that Mr. Ryan and Mr. Cradock were associated in the firm of Cradock Holdings Limited, Toronto, "and both have poor records, to say the least, with the Ontario Securities Commission."

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Winnipeg Free Press - June 10, 1961

Ont. Men Face U.S. Drug Trial

TORONTO (CP)— Three Toronto men Friday were ordered extradited to the United States
to face trial on charges that they were involved in a ring that smuggled millions of dollars
worth of heroin into the country from Italy.

Judge Robert Forsyth directed that Alberto Agueci, 59, his brother, Vito, 41, and Rocco
Scopolletti, 26, be sent to jail for at least 15 days pending possible application before the
Supreme Court of Ontario to decide the merits of the case. A lawyer representing the
U.S. justice department told the court the drug smuggling operation, which involved 110 pounds of heroin valued at between $14,000,000 and 822,000,000, began in 1958.

Part of FBI Report

An Italian baker from Brooklyn, N.Y., in a sworn statement read in court, told how heroin
was sewn into quilted blankets and brought from Italy on boats which he met in New York.
Some of the drugs were hidden in false trunk bottoms. The baker was described as the man
who named the Agueci brothers and Scopoletti as being part of the operation.

Ed Reid wrote about these cases in The Green Felt Jungle and in this issue of the weekend supplement:

 

 

 Click on the image you would like to enlarge.

Is There a Houston Nexus to Newt's Sugar Daddy?

Does anyone besides me remember the rise and fall of Michael Milken--that epitome of Wall Street greed during the 1980s, the King of Junk Bonds? You can learn at Wikipedia, if so inclined, that 

"Milken was largely involved with kick-starting investments in Nevada, which for many years was the fastest-growing state in the United States. Milken funded the gaming industry, newspapers and homebuilders, and among the companies he financed were MGM Mirage, Mandalay Resorts, Harrah's Entertainment and Park Place."

Milken was busy cheating death by overcoming advanced prostate cancer at about the same time his friend and bond client, Sheldon Adelson, was creating the old Sands Exposition Center -- a venue in Las Vegas for Bill Gates to promote the idea of personal computers. More about that later. First we need to understand how money works in this type of business deal.

Kuffernan and Freedman

The Sands hotel was a rather small casino started by Jakie Freedman of Houston, Texas; his partner was Mack Kufferman. According to Marguerite Johnston, when he lived in Houston, Jakie Freedman--a professional gambler who had a huge casino on South Main near where the Astrodome would be built--was the largest depositor at Houston's City National Bank, founded by James E. Elkins, an attorney who was one of the named partners in Vinson and Elkins. Freedman was known to accompany Elkins and his friends, members of the Suite 8-F Crowd, to the Kentucky Derby every year.  Governor James Allred once said:  "Judge Elkins doesn't practice law, he practices 
influence." As proof of that, the Elkins firm would take influence peddler John Connally as a partner of the firm upon his exit from the Governor's mansion in Austin in 1969. Elkins died in 1972.

Quoting from Chapter 69 of Marguerite Johnston, Houston: The Unknown City, 1836-1946:

“By the 1930s, Judge James A. Elkins was a quiet power in Houston.  One of his admirers once said, ‘Judge doesn’t practice law, he practices influence.’…LBJ sometimes lamented the fact that he was often called a ‘tool of the oil industry’ outside of Texas and ‘a wild-eyed liberal’ when he sought campaign funds in some quarters of his own state.  The 8-F endorsement would help him, both in votes and in contributions.

“Johnson ran for the Senate with full 8-F backing. ‘One of his best fund-raising sessions was held on the top floor of the Kentucky Hotel in Louisville, as the group gathered for their traditional weekend at the Kentucky Derby,’ Dr. [Patrick James] Nicholson wrote.

“Judge Elkins was famous for putting a bet on every starter. He had just come out ahead after severe losses in the traditional crap game. When Jet Pilot won, Judge Elkins was so pleased that he gave all his winnings to Herman Brown for the LBJ war chest and promised a substantial contribution as well. Everyone else followed suit. Congressman Johnson became Senator Johnson in the famous eighty-seven-vote win over Coke Stevenson.

“ ‘Every year 8-F went to the Kentucky Derby,’ Posh Oltorf said, ‘Jim Abercrombie, Judge Elkins, Jesse Jones, Gus Wortham, Jakie Freedman, George and Herman Brown, Milo Abercrombie, Naurice Cummings, William Smith.  They would stay two or three days, and LBJ and Senator Russell and maybe one or two other senators would fly over and join them.’ "

When George and Herman Brown decided to buy the Big-Inch and Little-Inch pipelines from the government after the war, the plan was hatched in Suite 8-F, and all the members were in on it. The legal work was handled by Charles I. Francis of the Vinson and Elkins firm. 

Augie in later years

Financing was arranged by August Belmont IV of Dillon Read—no doubt working through contacts with N.M. Rothschild of London to sell the securities. It could have been at the same time that Rothschild's Five Arrows Group acquired an interest in Elkins’ bank, according to the 1976 Report issued by the House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Currency, which was investigating connection in of United States chartered banks to International Banking networks.

Now the connection between some of the owners of the Sands Hotel with bankers in Houston, Texas is fascinating, to say the least, especially given the fact that in the mid-1960s, Howard Hughes purchased the hotel and added a 500-room circular tower (pictured below) in 1967.

The Sands, as modified by Howard Hughes

K.J. EVANS in a Las Vegas Review-Journal article, using the CIA-connected Robert Maheu as his primary source, writes:



In 1966, the Desert Inn rented Hughes its entire top floor of high-roller suites, and the floor below it, for 10 days only. Check-out time came and went, and Hughes didn't move. Moe Dalitz and Ruby Kolod, co-owners of the Desert Inn, were furious. New Year's, one of Las Vegas' busiest holidays, was looming, and the suites had been promised to high rollers. The squeeze was on Maheu. 
      "Get the hell out of here or we'll throw your butt out," growled Kolod. 
      "It's your problem," Hughes told Maheu. "You work it out." 
      Maheu called in a favor from Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa, who phoned the DI boys and asked them to leave "my friends" alone. The reprieve lasted into the new year of 1967, when Maheu told the boss he had played out his options with the DI guys. 
      "If you want a place to sleep, you'd damned well better buy the hotel," Maheu told Hughes. 
      To most investors, negotiating a purchase is the means to an end. To Howard Hughes, it was recreation. After months of arduous log-rolling, Hughes and Dalitz agreed on a price of $13.25 million....
      The next purchase was the Sands, then a Strip showplace. Dalitz was consulted, and allowed that it "would be a good acquisition." Hughes paid $14.6 million for the Sands, which included 183 acres of prime real estate that would become the Howard Hughes Center. That was followed by two smaller places, the Castaways and the Silver Slipper, then the Frontier. All three had one thing in common, they came with enormous parcels of empty land. He made a deal to buy the Stardust for $30.5 million, but was prevented from closing by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which was worried about Hughes holding a monopoly on Las Vegas lodging....
      "Once he was in both (the gaming and hotel business) he didn't want anyone bigger than he," said Maheu. "That's why he tried to stop Kirk (Kerkorian) from building the big place. But he was not willing to do it at the expense of himself continuing to build, or expanding the ground that he had. It doesn't make sense, but it happens to be the truth. He wanted to be the biggest; he didn't want Del Webb to ever be as big. When he bought a piece of land, he wanted all the land around it. He wanted to control. He would have been very happy to be the biggest if no one got bigger than that." 
      Kerkorian's International Hotel (now the Las Vegas Hilton) began to rise in early 1968. So did Hughes' anxiety. He announced plans for a $100 million "Super Sands," hoping Kerkorian would flee into the desert at the news. He didn't. 
      Hughes saw the solution to "the Kerkorian problem" in the Landmark. The tower, a fat concrete cylinder topped with an oversized saucer, rose in the early 1960s, but sat dark most of the decade. Its problem was its design. It had too few rooms, too little casino space. But at 31 stories, it was slightly taller than the International. For that reason, Hughes wanted it. 
      "A lot of people have given me credit for paying 100 cents on the dollar ($17.3 million) for it." said Maheu. "It wasn't my idea, it was his. He was on a public relations kick at the time." Hughes said he would personally direct planning for the grand opening. 
      "I knew from that point on that I was in trouble," said Maheu. "He was completely incapable of making decisions." 
      Kerkorian's camp had announced that the International would open July 2, 1969....
      But no one could quell his fear of disease and germs, perhaps his mother's most profound phobia. If Howard sniffled or coughed, he was rushed to a doctor, lavished with attention and sympathy. Allene Gano Hughes saw every playmate as a disease carrier, and discouraged her only son from socializing....
      During all his years as a recluse, there were only a handful of people who saw him personally each day. This was the so-called "Mormon Mafia," which took orders from Bill Gay, chief of Hughes' Los Angeles office. Its mission consisted of feeding Hughes occasionally and drugging him regularly. 
      On Nov. 5, 1970, Hughes was carried from the Desert Inn and put on a jet for the Bahamas. It was, according to Maheu, a coup. 
      "The reason I know, is that that they tried to get me to join on two occasions," said Maheu. 
      In April 1976, Hughes died at age 70 aboard a plane en route to Houston, ostensibly of kidney failure. However, his dehydration, malnutrition and the shards of broken hypodermic needles buried in his thin arms suggested other factors. 
      "If sheer neglect qualifies as a weapon," said Maheu, "they killed him." 
      Because no Hughes' will was ruled legitimate, his empire was divided among his many cousins. The company, now renamed Summa Corp., finally began to show a profit.

Mrs. Howard Hughes, Sr. before her marriage was Allene Gano, and her closest relative was a  sister, Annette, who married Dr. Fred Lummis. Dr. Lummis' mother had been born Minnie Rice, daughter of Frederick A. Rice, from an old established family in Houston closedly related to William S. Farish, one of the most important founders of Humble Oil Company, which eventually became Exxon. Howard Hughes, Jr.'s "cousins" mentioned above--who inherited his properties and control of his foundation when he was officially declared dead in 1976--were these Texans related to the Rice family, and primarily consisted of Annette's son, William Rice Lummis, an attorney and partner at Andrews, Kurth, the law firm which controlled the Hughes Tool drill bit patent. Lummis became chairman of Summa Corporation and moved to Las Vegas where he supervised the operation of the Hughes companies, including the medical research foundation he had set up for his cousin before his death.

***

All this brings us back to Newt Gingrich and Sheldon Adelson.


Thanks to Michael Milken's junk bonds, Kirk Kerkorian (MGM) had the funds to buy the Sands in 1988, transferring these funds to the beneficiaries of Hughes' estate. Then, only seven months later in 1989 the old hotel was purchased from Kerkorian by Sheldon Adelson's holding company, the Interface Group. According to Jeff Burbank in License to Steal: Nevada's Gaming Control System in the Megaresort Age, Adelson had a 58.8% interest in the holding company, and five other men involved in his businesses each had less than 15%.

The Milken Connection to Sheldon Adelson and The Sands

A FRESH STACK OF CHIPS 

Adelson bet on conventions just as that market exploded in Vegas. If the same happens in Macau, there's a pile to be made away from the tables there as well.

GAMBLING BIG ON MACAU 

By Rik Kirkland

Fortune, 10/17/2005, Vol. 152, Issue 8

Sheldon Adelson, the shrewdest investor in Las Vegas, has a new bet: turning Macau into the biggest, glitziest gambling mecca the world has ever seen.

Sheldon Adelson has made billions of dollars by seeing things others do not. But even he was stumped three years ago [2002] when he first laid eyes on the real estate that Chinese officials were offering him to build a new casino in Macau. "It's very nice, very picturesque," he thought. "But it's underwater! They've relegated me to the boonies!"

Like every other bigtime casino developer, he was well aware of Macau's potential: The former Portuguese colony south of Hong Kong is the only place in the Chinese-speaking world where betting is legal. It's located a short drive or plane ride away from a billion-plus Chinese--who, by the way, are the world's most ferocious gamblers. But out here? On a future landfill project several miles from the crowded downtown peninsula where the action had always been?

Still, the more Adelson thought about it, the more he became convinced that he had spotted something glittering beneath the blue water of the South China Sea. More than glittering: a gold mine. A bustling gambling boomtown. "What I saw was as plain as the nose on my face," he says.

And so he dove in. To grab a beachhead, learn the ropes, and--not the least of it--make some money, Adelson first cut a deal with the Chinese government to erect his "temporary casino." The $265 million Sands, a gleaming Vegas-style palace, opened downtown near the ferry terminal in May 2004. The traffic is so high--40% of the 16 million people who visited Macau in 2004 passed through here, according to the research firm CLSA--and the action so intense that Adelson recouped his initial investment in 12 months.

In the year ahead the gambling operation at the Sands is on track to generate north of $320 million in pretax cash flow. That's more than Adelson made last year from the 4,000 hotel rooms and the restaurants, showrooms, shops, gaming tables, and slots at his highly profitable Las Vegas flagship, the Venetian.

But the real money spinner, Adelson believes, will be on that lonely expanse of freshly poured landfill. It's the only spot in Macau--the most densely populated place on earth--with enough room for what Adelson has in mind: a brand-new Chinese Vegas, complete with a long boulevard of casinos, hotels, shops, deluxe theaters, the works. The first big development on the Cotai Strip (the name was concocted from Coloane and Taipa, the two former islands that border it) is Adelson's $2 billion Venetian Macau, now under construction. It will boast the world's biggest casino (some 600,000 square feet of gambling space, about five times the size of your state-of-the-art Vegas gaming floor), 3,000 hotel rooms, acres of pools, 850,000 square feet of shopping, a 15,000-seat showroom, and a 1.2-million-square-foot convention center. Beyond that, Adelson intends to invest another $2 billion or so to put up hotel-mall-casino complexes that will open alongside the Venetian around the end of 2007 and be run by leading hotel operators, such as Four Seasons and Shangri-La. (He will retain control of their showrooms and casinos.) And although it took at least 30 years for Vegas to become Vegas, he figures it'll take about five for Cotai to become Asia's--and thus the world's--biggest gambling and entertainment mecca.

ODDS ARE you've never heard of Sheldon Adelson, 72, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp. (You may not even be too sure about Macau--except maybe as one of the locales in the James Bond movie The Man With the Golden Gun.) In the creation myth of modern Las Vegas, mobsters Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel get credit for building it. Then comes Steve Wynn, 63, the dashing dream merchant who reinvented Vegas as an adult Disneyland by developing the casino-as-destination--places like the Mirage, Treasure Island, and the Bellagio. A low-profile newcomer, Adelson didn't even own a casino until 1989. But within the industry, he's known as the man who, more than anyone, made Vegas boom as a destination for conventioneers and business travelers--a less sexy but even more lucrative market. He's right up there in the pantheon alongside Wynn. But unlike Wynn, the pugnacious Adelson isn't trying out for the role of industry statesman.

"I was never part of the old-boy network," he says. "I wasn't swaddled in green felt cloth."

And there are a few other things Sheldon Adelson would like you to know. First, this whole recreating-the-Vegas-Strip-in-Macau thing is going to be far bigger than anything he's ever done before. "I've never been involved in something like this," he says. "I don't know of any entrepreneur who has."

It was his idea: "It was my dream. My vision. When I laid it out for [Macau's chief executive] Edmund Ho, he said, 'If you do this, you will put us ahead 20 years.' "

And it cannot fail: "This is the best bet I've ever made in my life--the best. It's a no-risk, no-brainer bet."

COMMAND CENTRAL of Adelson's empire is a sunlit, spacious, but sparely furnished office on the third floor of the Venetian hotel, right on the Vegas Strip. Part of one long wall holds blow-up pictures of his family: his second wife, Miriam, an Israeli internist whom he married in 1991 (her specialty is treating drug addicts), and their two young sons.

Closer to his oval-shaped working table hangs his gallery of fame--some 25 magazine covers, mostly from the likes of Computer Reseller News, Casino Journal, Travel Agent, Meeting & Conventions, Expo, and other trade publications. They capture the decidedly non-glitzy career that propelled him into the celebrity- and power-laden world he now occupies, a world reflected in the photos on the wall across the room: Sheldon (and Miriam) with George Bushes 41 and 43, with Ariel and Bibi, with Rudy and Arnold, and with other notables.

We're lunching at his table, and I'm wrestling with first impressions. Pale, balding, a barrel-chested 5-foot-7, Adelson has been plagued for the past four years by plexitis, a rare nerve inflammation that has temporarily left him unable to walk. (He gets around in a motorized chair and uses a walker for short distances.) Taking two unaided steps, he observes, "That's the most I've done in a long time," but then insists that through daily physical therapy he's going to lick this thing. He dotes on Miriam and her two grown daughters by a first marriage; they wander in and out of our meetings. He tells some touching stories about his father and a fascinating tale about going bust in his late 30s and getting depressed. Contemplating people jumping out of buildings, he looked out the window of his Boston estate, imagined himself "lying scratched in the shrubbery," laughed at his self-pity, and got back to work. The force of his personality has long since dispelled any notion of frailty.

As lunch wraps up, Adelson is getting increasingly frustrated. He wants to show me what he's doing in Cotai, and no one can find the right map. Aides rush in and out. Are we about to witness an explosion? No. An assistant walks in with a cup of forbidden ice cream. (Miriam has been getting him to improve his diet.) He smiles, says thanks, and lifting his spoon, looks over at me with a smile: "Like the little boy said, 'I can resist anything except temptation.' "

I've heard too many stories about Adelson the over-the-top battler to doubt that reality. But the truth, as usual, is more complicated. Is he a tough, demanding boss with a healthy ego? Yes, but he's not driven by Trump-like self-absorption so much as by a desire to get things done yesterday. "My objective," he says, "is singular: Win." He has had a loyal team around him for years. He can be funny and charming. (Accused of being a micromanager, he replies, "My job now is producing strategy. They lock me in a room at nine in the morning, give me a Ouija board and a crystal ball, feed me lunch through the mail slot--I insist on a hot lunch!--and at five o'clock they unlock the door and say, 'Okay, where's your vision for the day?'")

Most of all, what I'm struck by is the truth of something real estate investor Tom Barrack of Colony Capital told me before I flew out to Vegas: "This company runs above all else on the stupendous size of one man's gut."

LIKE MANY golden guts, this one started out hungry. Adelson grew up in a poor Jewish neighborhood near Boston, where his Lithuanian immigrant father drove a cab and his mother (her parents were from Ukraine) ran a knitting shop in the living room. He got beaten up as a kid by the Irish from South Boston; sold newspapers and ran his own business, the Vend-a-Bar candy company, while still in high school; skipped college to learn a trade (court reporting) before serving in the Army; moved rapidly through a series of jobs as an executive assistant, ad salesman, investment advisor; and finally emerged in his late 30s as a low-tech venture capitalist with a $5 million net worth. Still, there was little to suggest that Adelson would ever become anything more than another successful, small-time multimillionaire.

But five decades of hard-knock entrepreneurship taught him a couple of key lessons. Unlike a certain type of company founder who feels he is born to launch only a biotech or a publishing or a software firm, Adelson early on figured out that for him the bottom line on building a company was, well, the bottom line. On a road show in the mid-1990s to raise money to build his first hotel, an analyst asked what the theme of his new place would be. "How about 'making money'?" Adelson replied. "Where does it say in the Bible 'Thou shalt have a theme' when you build a Vegas hotel?" (Later, at Miriam's suggestion, he settled on Venice, where they had gone on their honeymoon.) "I've started more than 50 businesses," Adelson says. "For me, businesses are like buses. You stand on a corner and you don't like where the first bus is going? Wait ten minutes and take another. Don't like that one? They'll just keep coming. There's no end to buses or businesses."

By the late 1970s Adelson had developed a clear vision of what all successful businesses have in common--and more important, a growing belief in his own knack for spotting such opportunities. Call them Adelson's Rules: "It isn't enough to have a good product. The most important thing is to understand the direction of the industry." And "Study any industry, and you inevitably hear two things: 'I've always done it this way,' or 'Everybody does it this way.' When you hear that, know there's an opportunity to do something different and add value."

Adelson's first big score came as he approached 50. He had gotten a whiff in the late 1970s of an industry changing direction: 

Computers were starting to go personal, and sales were shifting from direct salesforces to new third-party channels. "It was a very, very strong fragrance," he says. "It smelled to me like the early auto industry, where no company had the scale to set up national distribution, so they invented a distribution system called dealers." 

His idea for breaking the industry pattern: Start an independent trade show to bring together buyers and sellers at a time when only industry trade associations ran such things. He launched Comdex (for Computer Dealers Exposition) in Vegas in December 1979. Comdex exploded from 157 exhibitors and 4,000 attendees that year to 2,200 exhibitors and 225,000 attendees by the mid-1990s.

Bringing Comdex to Las Vegas generated another big contrarian insight: The town's establishment, by focusing mainly on drawing high rollers and Middle Americans out for a few nights on the wild side, was missing a huge opportunity. Why not lure even more conventions and corporate meetings to Fun City? The suits would fill the hotels and casinos from Sunday to Thursday, while leisure travelers would pile in on weekends.

In 1989, Adelson paid $128 million for the old Sands hotel, the only place in town with enough room to build what he was really after--America's largest private exhibition center. This approach is now conventional wisdom in Vegas, which welcomed fewer than 300 conventions in 1970 and today hosts more than 4,000 a year. But when he first built his 1.2-million-square-foot Sands Exposition Center, it was revolutionary. "What Sheldon did by seeing what the convention center could do for the hotel was unique in my 30 years of doing business in Vegas," says Michael Milken, who raised junk bonds to finance the deal.

A few years later Adelson concluded that he could use his rising tide of business travelers to fill a far larger, all-suites resort. So once again he rolled the dice.

He blew up the Sands, sold Comdex in 1995 to Japan's Masayoshi Son for $862 million, borrowed up to his eyeballs, and at age 66 opened his first luxury hotel, the $1.5 billion Venetian, across the Strip from Steve Wynn's Bellagio.

"People didn't just think I was nuts--they knew I was nuts!" Adelson recalls. Today the Venetian is consistently the first- or second-most-profitable hotel in Vegas, with the first- or second-highest occupancy rate--alongside the Bellagio.

Even as he built his fortune, Adelson's combativeness--especially when he feels wronged--maintained his outsider status. The man can hold a grudge the way Dean Martin held liquor, and he's got tenacity to match. He engaged in a bitter fight with the Culinary Workers to win the right to open the Venetian in 1999 as a non-union shop, which didn't go down well in this strong union town. Later he battled the construction company Bovis for half a decade over costs at the Venetian. Most of all, he has fought with Steve Wynn--his next-door rival in Vegas and the other foreigner with casino rights in Macau.

In those verbal duels, Wynn deploys a rapier; it's sharp but so smooth you barely feel it going in. "I took the long-term view and decided not to compromise the brand by confusing people," says Wynn, whose $1.1 billion copper-sheathed twin of his new $2.7 billion Wynn Las Vegas won't open in downtown Macau until mid-2006. "It was costly in the sense that you could've done something like the Sands and made $300 million or $400 million more. But I'm not there for that kind of money. By having the discipline to wait and make sure we expand, enrich, and deepen the market by delivering a higher-quality building, a higher quality of service, we'll be rewarded with a better reputation."

That kind of talk exasperates Adelson, who wields the rhetorical equivalent of a lead pipe. "Wynn is very good at creating mystique," he says. "He's in it for fun and design gratification. My creativity extends to matching my tie to my suit. But I'm very good at making money, and that's what an economic enterprise is all about. I'm simply a much better businessman."

On this, the points on the scoreboard back up Adelson. Based on his 86% ownership of the Las Vegas Sands, which he finally took public last December in one of the year's hottest IPOs, Adelson today has a net worth of more than $10 billion, which makes him much richer than Wynn (whose estimated fortune is just under $2 billion). His company also plays in a different league. With only two casino properties and one expo center, some 11,000 employees, and projected annual revenues of roughly $2 billion next year, Las Vegas Sands enjoys an $11 billion market capitalization, which is more than twice as big as Wynn's and just behind that of the two much larger, merger-fattened industry giants: Harrah's and MGM Mirage.
Which brings us back to Macau, where, if Adelson is right, the biggest bus of his career is about to barrel into his stop.

IT'S A SAFE BET THAT Broken Tooth Koi isn't reading Austrian economists these days. Koi, a notorious Macau mobster, helped lead a 1930s-style gangland war during the run-up to Macau's handover by Portugal in 1999. More than 30 people were killed in the fighting among the triads, criminal secret societies with deep roots in China. (One of the great moments in PR: A police official reassured wary tourists by noting that the city had "professional killers who don't miss their targets.") The arrest of Koi, a notorious triad kingpin who was sent to prison for 15 years, signaled that Beijing was in charge and that Macau's Dodge City phase was over.

But if Koi wants to grasp why Macau will look so radically different when he gets sprung a decade from now, then Joseph Schumpeter's famous concept of "creative destruction" provides the answer. That's the process the Communist Party has repeatedly unleashed in recent years by inviting foreign capitalists to spur innovation--and inspire local champions--in industries ranging from semiconductors to autos to big-box retailing.

Now it's gambling's turn.

Until the Americans appeared, the standard in Macau had been set by Stanley Ho Hung-sun, an 83-year-old homegrown multibillionaire who for 40 years held the local monopoly on gambling--and who also owns the ferry, the largest department store, a bank, luxury hotels, acres of real estate, and stakes in the local airline, airport, racetrack, and TV station. That empire, which generates two-thirds of Macau's tax revenue, explains why no one was shocked that the old lion landed one of the government's three new gaming concessions.

At Ho's flagship Lisboa, low-ceilinged VIP rooms that cater exclusively to "whales" (high rollers) are sprinkled along winding hallways that vibrate with enough glass, jade, colored tiles, pink and black marble, and twinkling lights to make St. Vitus jitterbug. The place hasn't changed in years. In many of these rooms and others like them, triads still extend--and collect--credit, an important function, since the legal limit for bringing in currency from the mainland, $5,000, is about the minimum bet in such spots.

But to meet the new competition, even Ho has been forced to play a new game. Across the Avenida da Amizade, near where Wynn's place is rising, MGM Mirage has begun building a 600-room, $1 billion resort-casino in a joint venture with Ho's daughter Pansy. Behind the Lisboa is a hole in the ground where Ho is erecting a more lavish whale catcher, the Lisboa Grand. Down by the Sands, construction is well along on his new Fisherman's Wharf joint venture--a mass- market attraction that will feature replicas of the Forbidden City, a Portuguese fort, a Colosseum, a giant volcano ride, and of course lots of gaming tables and slots.
How big can the market get? This year Macau will surpass the Vegas Strip and generate more than $6 billion in gambling revenue. That's with 1,400 gaming tables and just under 10,000 hotel rooms (vs. 2,600 tables and 135,000 hotel rooms in all of Las Vegas). Aaron Fischer, an analyst at CLSA, projects Macau's gambling revenue could top $12 billion by 2010, as the number of tables rises to 4,000 and hotel rooms roughly triple. By then Macau could be attracting 37 million visitors a year (up from ten million in 2003)--about the traffic Vegas draws today. If all goes as planned, this mostly Chinese crowd will also be sticking around longer (the average overnight stay in Macau today is barely one night, vs. nearly four in Vegas) and spending a lot more on shopping, eating, and shows. To grease this red-hot engine, the government is spending billions on infrastructure, including a second ferry terminal and a new light-rail system. Later this fall should come the biggest announcement yet: a $4 billion, 18-mile bridge that will link Macau, the mainland, and Hong Kong's Lantau Island, where the new Disneyland just opened to overflow crowds.

The bedrock of this market's bright future, everyone agrees, is the Chinese passion for gambling. Last year, with just 4% of the slot machines in Vegas and 40% of the gaming tables, Macau generated roughly the same gambling revenue. (That also reflects the difference in risk-taking propensity between a market currently reliant on high-rolling whales and one dominated by blue-haired ladies pulling slots.) What explains this intensity? You hear the same answers again and again--luck is a central concept in Chinese culture; look at all the ways they try to shape and discern fate through lucky numbers, feng shui, I Ching, and the like. (Navigating a street near the Lisboa, I'd nearly tripped over a woman who had arranged a roast pig, a raw chicken, flowers, and an urn of burning incense outside a new jewelry store--offerings for a truly grand opening?) But until you walk into a place like the Sands, you can't fully grasp what one Asia hand told me: "The difference between Westerners and the Chinese is that for Westerners gambling is about entertainment and calculating probabilities. For the Chinese it's a battle with destiny."

THE SANDS BUZZES with a good vibe on a Saturday night. Its cavernous main floor is stuffed with baccarat tables, the game the Chinese favor. Here the typical minimum is just $40. The goal in baccarat is to see who gets closest to nine (face cards and tens count as zero) with a maximum of three cards. At the first table, I watch what I assume is one player's unique style. While the dealer waits, he's slowly peeling back the corner of one card until…ahhh, the eight of clubs. He then repeats this ritual with his second card. Hardly anyone drinks anything stronger than the tea served up in highball glasses from carts pushed by ladies in brown and gold Mao jackets. But you could cut the cigarette smoke with a bent Jack of diamonds. I watch for a few minutes. Suddenly I look up and realize the exact same battle with destiny, including the card-bending routine, is going on at every table. There's nothing like this in Vegas.

The only real debate about Macau's future is over how quickly the market evolves. Skeptics think the new boys are getting way ahead of themselves. "This is not Las Vegas; Asians want to gamble, not go shopping or see Celine Dion shows," insists Anthony Carter, a Brit who's spent 35 years in the region and is CEO of Hong Kong's Galaxy casino group, itself a recent arrival in Macau. "That will come in due course. But right now I just don't see that the demand for these new facilities the Americans are building will meet the cost."

To which both Adelson and Wynn--and here we finally discover a point they can agree on--reply, Nonsense. "To look at the high level of shopping and consumer taste in Shanghai and Hong Kong and still suggest that the Chinese won't care about luxury is a ridiculous denial of reality," says Wynn. "The transformation of Macau in the next 60 months will be the most remarkable metamorphosis in modern history." Told that Galaxy's Carter believes the correct "Asian price point" for a hotel room is under $100, Adelson snorts, "I'm going to have five price points in Cotai! I want the mass market and the high-roller market. My target is to maximize every opportunity." That includes MICE--as in meetings, incentives, conventions, exhibitions (a.k.a., the group-travel business). "My guy just came back from ten days on the mainland checking out the MICE market," Adelson continues. "The words he kept using were 'mind-blowing' and 'blown away.' It's like a firecracker. They've lit the fuse, and it's ready to explode."

What's also certain to explode is the Cotai Strip, whose virtues Adelson has championed louder and longer than anyone. Among the prominent recent converts: Stanley Ho. Ho's youngest son, Lawrence, heads a new family joint venture with Australia's richest man, Kerry Packer. Ho and Packer's project in Cotai, the $1 billion City of Dreams, will be designed very much with Adelson in mind. Rather than go "head to head" with the neighboring Venetian, Lawrence has dropped a convention center and large retail complex from his original master plan to focus on building "a special casino" that will sit beneath a giant aquarium.

"In conventions, Sheldon Adelson is the master," Lawrence Ho says.
"Why would we want to compete with him?" Wynn told me he too will soon be announcing plans to add to his Macau stake with some major new projects in Cotai.

Might there be something a bit bubbleicious about this stampede--which is driving property prices into the stratosphere and causing labor shortages and infrastructure bottlenecks? Maybe. There's also the "anchovy theory" espoused by a top American financier with China experience. "In a Caesar salad," he warned me right before I flew out to Macau, "the anchovy is the first thing to get chopped up. That's what we foreigners are in China: the anchovy." The major blow would come if gambling, which was everywhere in China until the Communists took over in 1949 and promptly banned it (along with prostitution, private property, and other capitalist vices), were suddenly made legal on the mainland. But that strikes most analysts as a bridge too far for the current leadership, who seem happy for now with a dynamic, growing, cleaned-up Macau. The more pressing problem is the kind of regulatory confusion that has swirled up in a recent dispute between Adelson and one erstwhile partner, Hong Kong's Regal Hotels group. Regal is now petitioning the government to develop a site that Adelson claims as his own. He says he's "completely certain" he will prevail.

At our final dinner Adelson waves a hand to dismiss once and for all the "naysayers" I keep bringing up who question his vision. He then mentions he'd just that day seen a June 1955 Life magazine cover. Over a photo of showgirls ran this headline: "Las Vegas: Is the Boom Overextended?" Point taken. We're not talking, after all, about the late, great Internet boom, where a Pets.com or Webvan spent billions to meet needs no one had. We're talking about investing multiples of that to soak up travel dollars and leisure spending in the middle of the richest region in the fastest-growing part of the world. Barring catastrophe--war in the Taiwan Straits, some horrific new plague--how can it not work?

IN THE YEARS AHEAD, Adelson expects to put a lot of miles on his personal Boeing 767. (He upgraded earlier this year from a 737, and now that he's public, only charges the Las Vegas Sands for the cost of a first-class ticket.) Beyond Macau, gambling seems set to go global--just as it exploded out of Nevada and across the U.S. Singapore, Thailand, Britain, and Korea are among the countries that once banned casinos and are now either taking bids on new concessions or considering doing so. Like his rivals, Adelson is chasing hard after every opening.

What drives a guy entering his eighth decade to place the biggest bet of his career? Adelson's old friend Mike Milken answers by putting him in context with other aging megamoguls he's known. "I didn't even meet Dr. Armand Hammer until he was 80," says Milken, "and we raised more capital for him after that than we did for anyone in the world. John Kluge was 70 when we did the biggest financing ever up until then so he could take his firm private. Kirk Kerkorian just did the biggest deal of his life at 87." That's the kind of eternally energetic, entrepreneurial company Adelson has bulled his way into.

One last thing: Despite his congenital focus on the bottom-line, Adelson is playing for more than just the bucks. What he's really burning for is a little credit. Does he feel he doesn't get enough acknowledgment, certainly compared to Wynn, for his role in reinventing the business model in Vegas? "Absolutely." Does he worry the same thing could happen again in Macau? Damn right. "Nobody had ever thought of recreating Las Vegas in Cotai," he says. "Nobody. They all decried it. Ho and Wynn dismissed it. Now they're all coming out of the woodwork to be part of it." So take a note, you future historians: Mr. Sheldon Adelson respectfully requests that you put this caption next to his photo: The Man Who Built the Las Vegas Strip--in China. If he delivers on all or even most of what he's promised, he deserves it.

Moody and Shearn Families

In 1890 William Lewis Moody, Jr. of Galveston was married to Libbie Rice Shearn, "daughter of the late John Shearn, one of Houston's old and well known citizens." John Shearn was, of course, the uncle of Col. Edward M. House, who was still to become the so-called "trusted adviser" of President Woodrow Wilson. There was an intricate web of relationships that connected the two families and also the investments they held in businesses in both Houston and Galveston. Both Judge Shearn, son John, and daughter Mary had been born in England, coming to Texas before the battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto. Mary would grow up to marry another Englishman transplanted in Texas, Thomas W. House who arrived in Texas via New York and New Orleans after those famous battles but while Texas as still an independent republic before annexation to the U.S. John married a girl named Kate McAshan while he was a student in Fayette County and later moved most of her family to Houston, where her brother became the manager of the T.W. House Bank. Both John Shearn and his brother-in-law, T.W. House, were officers in the Ship Channel Company organized in 1869.

John and Kate Shearn's daughter, born in 1869, who may have been named for Elizabeth--the second wife of William Marsh Rice, a co-investor with T.W. House in numerous business endeavors--was thus Colonel House's first cousin, although more than ten years younger than he. According to Henry Wiencek's recent book, The Moodys of Galveston and Their Mansion, Col. House recommended Libbie's husband for a position within Wilson's treasury department in 1912, but Moody was too busy at the time to accept the appointment.

Time Magazine - September 06, 1954

A grey-haired woman walked into an office in Galveston, Texas' American national Insurance Co. building one day last week, sat down at a desk and began signing her name to a stack of documents. Mrs. Mary Moody Northen, 62, was formally taking over as head of the $400 million empire left by her father, W. L. Moody Jr., who died at 89 as one of the ten richest men in the U.S. (TIME, Aug. 2).

Under his will his daughter was named president or board chairman of some 50 corporations that he controlled. Ownership of the corporations was left to the Moody Foundation, a charitable trust that he set up to save his empire from being broken up to pay inheritance taxes. Mrs. Northen, as foundation chairman, and four other trustees-will vote the stock, thereby control the Moody companies. Among them: a chain of 30 hotels, three banks, eleven ranches, two daily newspapers, a commercial printing plant, a cotton company, and the American National Insurance Co., whose assets of $364 million make it the biggest ($3 billion of policies in force) west of the Mississippi River.

Growth of an Empire. The Moody empire was welded together by a soft-talking, hard-dealing man who was regarded by his business associates as a genius, and by his poorly paid employees as a miserly tyrant. For nearly half a century he controlled Galveston. Although he neither smoked, drank nor played cards for money, he did not object if others did. In fact, he allowed Galveston Island to become the gambling mecca of Texas, and Galveston to become the state's only city with open saloons. Although he owned no gambling hall, he welcomed the tourists that gambling brought to his hotels and made loans to the notorious Maceo syndicate that ran the gambling.

His sharp bargaining led to many disagreements, but the old man never argued with anyone. After a falling out in 1950 with his only living son, William L. Moody III, who had been his executive director for ten years, the old man stopped speaking at all in his son's presence, later cut him off in his will with $1. Yet he named William Ill's son a foundation trustee. But Mary Moody was clearly her father's daughter. As a child, she had no formal schooling. Says one who knows the family well: "She didn't want to go to school so she just didn't go." Now and then private tutors taught her until she was 16. But most of the time she just stayed around the house reading newspapers, particularly the want ads and property transactions. She belonged to no social organization, had few, if any, friends.

In young womanhood she spent much time riding horses on her father's ranches. It was her habit to arise at 2 p.m., have breakfast and stay up until dawn of the next day. When she became interested in a young hotel clerk, Edwin Clyde Northen, her father advised him to get into the insurance business and, after they were married, helped him. They had no children, and in recent years Mrs. Northen spent most of the time with her father. Her husband died in May.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

MOODY, WILLIAM LEWIS, JR. (1865–1954). 

William Lewis Moody, Jr., financial magnate and entrepreneur, was born in Fairfield, Texas, on January 25, 1865, the son of Pherabe Elizabeth (Bradley) and William Lewis Moody. He was a sickly child, one of only three of the six Moody children who lived to adulthood. At the age of nine he was sent to Roanoke, Virginia, to attend Hollins Institute. After a time at two other boarding schools in Virginia, he went to Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. In 1884–85 he and his brother Frank went to Germany to further their education. After returning home Moody briefly studied law at the University of Texas before joining his father's firm on his twenty-first birthday in 1886. Moody married Libbie Rice Shearn of Houston at Hull, Massachusetts, on August 26, 1890. After a brief stay in New York as the representative of W. L. Moody and Company, he closed the New York office, and the Moodys returned to Galveston. They had four children, Mary Elizabeth (Mrs. E. C. Northen), William Lewis III, Shearn, and Libbie (who married Clark W. Thompson III). Shearn died of pneumonia in 1936, but the other three outlived their father. Mary Moody Northen became the head of the family enterprises on her father's death.

Moody persuaded his father to open a bank in 1889. Later, the family acquired the National Bank of Texas, which became the W. L. Moody Bank. In 1907 Moody opened the City National Bank, which later became Moody National Bank. Upon his father's death in 1920, he became president of W. L. Moody and Company, Bankers, and the W. L. Moody Cotton Company. Moody had entered the insurance business in 1905 by helping to organize the American National Insurance Company. In 1908 he bought out his partners and was able to take advantage of new state laws designed to encourage insurance firms in Texas and expand the company. In 1920 he established the American Printing Company of Galveston. In 1927 he formed the National Hotel Corporation, which built such hotels as the Buccaneer and the Jean Lafitte in Galveston and acquired a number of other hotels including the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, the Galvez in Galveston, Mountain Lake in Virginia, and the Hotel Washington in Washington, D.C. Moody purchased the Galveston News, the oldest continuously operating newspaper in Texas, from Alfred H. Belo in 1923; three years later he acquired the Galveston Tribune. He also owned as many as eleven ranches in Texas and Oklahoma. Although not a true cattleman, he enjoyed the ranches and used them for duck hunting and fishing, his primary forms of relaxation, as well as for cattle, sheep, and goat raising.

While not as active as his father in Democratic politics, he was involved in Pat M. Neff's bid for the presidential nomination in 1924 and was a member of the Texas delegation to the 1924 convention. He remained close to William Jennings Bryan until Bryan's death in 1925. Moody served one term, 1921–23, as treasurer of the city of Galveston. He also was a colonel on Charles A. Culberson's staff in the Texas National Guard. Moody's legacy to the people of Texas was the Moody Foundation of Galveston, established by Moody and his wife in 1942. The foundation focused on a small number of projects, including the Moody State School for Cerebral Palsied Children, before Moody's death. When the estate was transferred to the foundation on December 29, 1959, the foundation became one of the largest in the United States. It continues to be a major force in health, historical preservation, and education. Moody was active until two days before his death, on July 21, 1954.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The census takers, strangely enough, misspelled Libbie's name in both the 1870 and 1880 census years, the first time calling her "Blancher," and ten years later "Sabbie."