Book about Benny Benion being made into TV film

[Douglas Caddy]

https://deadline.com/2019/05/benny-binion-blood-aces-ley-line-tv-1202620438/

So pleased to learn of news about this book by my friend Douglas Swanson. Binion is an important fringe figure in the JFK assassination.

 

https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Benny_Binion/

Edited May 22, 2019 by Douglas Caddy

[Douglas Caddy]

https://www.reviewjournal.com/uncategorized/figures-in-kennedy-assassination-had-many-links-to-las-vegas/

[Douglas Caddy]

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32329887.pdf

[Ron Bulman]

On 5/22/2019 at 3:14 PM, Douglas Caddy said:

https://deadline.com/2019/05/benny-binion-blood-aces-ley-line-tv-1202620438/

So pleased to learn of news about this book by my friend Douglas Swanson. Binion is an important fringe figure in the JFK assassination.

 

https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Benny_Binion/

I'd considered buying Blood Aces a year or two ago then forgot about it.  Sounds interesting in general, review's mention well researched and documented given a dramatic subject but the parts about Dallas in the 20's-40's interest me in particular.  Sounds like Binon performed some of the same services in Dallas before he left town that Ruby later did.  Like setting up high stakes poker games, betting on football and other sports among other activities.  Binion left for Vegas in 1946 and Ruby came to Dallas in 1948?  I never knew of the history of R D Matthews and Lewis McWillie with Binon.  I think it might be worth the price to read it.

[Ron Bulman]

This book is fascinating.  Binon's best friend in the Dallas County Sherriff's Department was Decker, who ran it before he was Sherriff.  He warned Binon it was time to get out of town.  Ultimately to make room for the Chicago mob, including Ruby.

[Ron Bulman]

I never dreamed this book goes were it does.  Becoming DA in 1950, in 1952 Henry Wade dropped Binon's file on the desk of assistant DA Bill Alexander, said "get him" and walked away.  Binon had been gone to Vegas for five years.  It didn't work out.  Alexander said nobody would go on the record against him.  He was still respected and feared.  Wade and Alexander went on to greater notoriety.

Then it goes here, McGranery, appointed AG by Truman with 9 months left in his administration, refers to Congressman Nixon as being a hypocrite and routinely did favors for campaign contributors.  AG talked of hiring Roy Cohn, he had many admirable qualities.  "Nothing could enrage the nations chief law enforcement official faster, it seemed, than a subordinate's reluctance to pursue Binon."

When Binion left Dallas in December 1946 for Vegas with a million bucks (close to 14 mil today) in the trunk of his caddy, he bought 2 machine guns for two trusted assistants to come along as guards.  One of them was R D Matthews.  A "passing acquaintance" of Jack Ruby.

 

Edited June 10, 2019 by Ron Bulman

[Stephanie Goldberg]

Sounds like a good book.  

[David Andrews]

This calls for Alec Baldwin!

[Ron Bulman]

6 hours ago, David Andrews said:

This calls for Alec Baldwin!

Here, Here!  I second this notion!  Perfect for the part from Vegas on.  A young Benny would be needed for Dallas though  And an even younger one for the horse tradin days.

[Ron Bulman]

The book never really deal's with Binion's politics or the Kennedy's.  They are mentioned on three pages.  Mainly RFK.  Considering Las Vegas as the mob's bank for laundering money, and, he authorized wiretaps in 1963 on a "handful of casinos in 1963 including the Stardust, Sands, Freemont and Desert Inn".  But not Binion's Horseshoe.  Hoover authorized surveillance on him in 1951.  Because Truman's newly appointed lame duck Attorney General was crusading and ordered it.  It didn't go well for the FBI.  They were photographed watching his house by local press.  The pictures, and story went national.  Hoover was pissed.   Binon went to Leavenworth over tax evasion for three years because the Supreme Court reused to hear his case, not because of the FBI, but the story about them loosing him then chasing him to Dallas to report for his trial is funny too.

For an illiterate (second grade) horse trader raised mostly in a wagon away from home, he left his mark on the world.  Murderous against his rivals when it came to what he considered his territory he mainly tried to bribe the cops an politicians.  But he didn't operate at the level Ruby would.  No poker games, betting on racing, prostitution or drugs.  He stuck to policy games and dice until he went to Vegas.  Then it was craps, 21 and one armed bandits.  Until he watched a poker game in Reno and had an idea.

https://www.pokernews.com/video/news-from-2019-world-series-of-poker-june-13-11984.htm

[David Andrews]

On 6/10/2019 at 10:20 PM, Ron Bulman said:

Here, Here!  I second this notion!  Perfect for the part from Vegas on.  A young Benny would be needed for Dallas though  And an even younger one for the horse tradin days.

Odds are we'll get...Dennis Quaid instead.

Edited June 15, 2019 by David Andrews

[Ron Bulman]

Just an aside here I learned from the book.  After reading a book on Al Capone in Junior College I asked my dad if he remembered any mob killings in the news in the Dallas/Fort Worth area like I'd read about in Chicago.  Born outside of Grapevine, North West of Dallas in 1927 I thought he might remember something from the news over the years.  He said, back in the early 50's some guy got blown up at his mailbox over on the other side of the lake.  It kind of perplexed me at the time because even in the 1970's that area was still rural.

That would have been Herbert Noble.  He had a 150 acre ranchette there but (had) lived in Dallas.  He'd been crowding in on Binion's policy games business for years, which Binion still received great income from long after he left Dallas.  It was the 10th attempt on his life since 1945.  August 1951 the "Cat's" luck ran out.  Two or three years before his wife was blown up at their house in Dallas.  He took her nicer car that morning to impress bankers in Fort Worth regarding a real estate purchase.  When she started his car to go to the store, Boom.  All attempts and both deaths blamed on Binion.  But nobody ever talked.  That was a theme throughout the book and his life.  To paraphrase R D Mathew's "nobody messed with Benny".

In August 1951 they dug a hole in the dirt road in front of Noble's mail box and put dynamite and nitroglycerin in it.  Ran a wire to a car battery in the weeds and a wire from it  to the fence line in the woods near by.  When he pulled up to check the mail they grounded the wire on the barb wire fence.

Picture of the car in the book.  Flipped and destroyed.  Nothing left from the shoulders down.  What was left was unidentifiable.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Ron Bulman

[Ron Bulman]

I'm not a gambler.  Never been to Vegas or a casino elsewhere.  I played quarter and dollar limit poker and black jack with friends in my 20's.  But I'd never heard of policy or policy wheel games until I read this book.  Much like today's lotteries before they were legal.  A penny, nickel or dime could win ten to two hundred dollars, the odds sucked but the bettors didn't realize how much.  It gave hope to the poor of a big reward. Targeted at the black community.  Binon got rich off of it then got richer when he moved up to also controlling dice games all over town from the Southland hotel.

In 1941 Paul Rowland Jones came to town from Chicago to observe the possibilities for gambling interests.  Jailed for selling counterfeit sugar rationing coupons in WWII he soon left.  He came back in the summer of 1946 with friends.  All arrested for vagrancy, Deputy Sheriff Decker, who ran the department for lax Sheriff Schmid hauled them to the county line, let them go and told them don't come back.

In November Schmid lost to Guthrie, tight with Noble.  New DA Will Wilson (turns up fired during Watergate, Sharpstown Scandal).  New police chief.  Binion had the old sheriff, DA, and police chief in his pocket.  He was under indictment for tax evasion.  Jones came back to town with Marcus Lipsky who vowed to kill Binion, Ivy Miller, and Buddy Malone and leve their bodies in a car in front of the Dallas Police headquarters.  Binion bought machine guns for R D Matthews and another guy, put a million bucks in the trunk and headed for Vegas.

They had policy games in Chicago too.

 http://www.christinefletcherbooks.com/dance_chicago.php

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-per-flash-policy-kings-0303-20130310-story.html

From Seth Kantor's The Ruby Cover-Up: 

pg. 208.  "Guthrie talked to the FBI (1964) and said that Ruby had specifically named by Jones as the outsider who would be brought in to front for the syndicate in the spring of 1947."

pg. 217.  "FBI was told by a prisoner in Mobile Alabama, Jack Hardee Jr. that in 1962 Ruby was supposed to have been in control of the policy gambling wheel in Dallas County."

[Evan Marshall]

Went to the SHOT SHOW in Vegas to do some market research for a guy. The SHOT SHOW is the shooting, hunting and outdoor trade show and is the largest one in the world.

He got us comped at the Horseshoe and Bennie jr invited us to dinner. When he found out I was retired Detroit Homicide he apparently incorrectly assumed I was dirty and spoke rather freely. I, of course, was not but mostly listened to him talk about his dad and Vegas at the time. He informed me that virtually every Clark County Sheriff's vehicle had a shovel in the trunk and they were often assigned to deal with problem people who needed to be buried in the desert.

I, of course, was familiar with the mafia heads in Detroit and the Hoffa Affair. I did not ask about JFK as I had been up for 24 hours straight due to a delayed flight and excused myself and went to bed.

Edited June 18, 2019 by Evan Marshall