prohibition violence comes to vegas

a boom in the depression

Las Vegas in 1931 was still a small town of 5,000 people, but that was rapidly changing due to one of the largest construction projects in U.S. history taking place thirty miles south of the city – the building of the Boulder Dam, later known as the Hoover Dam.

But the influx of thousands of newcomers to work on the dam alone would have increased the likelihood of crime.Plus the population boom occurred while Prohibition was still in effect, creating incentives to seek illegal financial gain on the black market.

bootlegging in the last years of prohibition

One recent arrival to Las Vegas was John Hall, a fifty-two year old formerly successful building contractor from North Carolina, who arrived to town in 1930 with his wife and children.  Hall came to Vegas looking to make money however he could, honestly or illegally, it didn’t matter.  While living at a rented cottage located on a desert ranch about seven miles south of Las Vegas, Hall met another newcomer to the area – John C. O’Brien, who had come to town with his wife and teenage stepdaughter. 

O’Brien and Hall had both been involved in the bootlegging business in a small-time capacity before coming to Vegas.Sometime in mid-1931 O’Brien came to Hall with an illicit business proposal – O’Brien knew a man willing to sell him moonshine for $2 per gallon.If Hall would front the money for the wholesale purchase of the moonshine, O’Brien would repay Hall with fifty cents on the dollar.Hall was game and the two men shook on the deal.

a double-cross

On a night in early June of 1931, Hall and O’Brien loaded into a car and drove off to meet O’Brien’s contact.  O’Brien drove as the desert dust kicked up behind them.  Hall clutched a coffee can in his lap containing $680 (equivalent to about $10,000 today) as they drove over unpaved dirt roads.  After a few hours, O’Brien turned to Hall and told him it looked like the meeting was off.  The contact must have gotten cold feet.  The two men returned to the Fox ranch and settled into their cottage.

When John Hall awoke the next morning, he was missing the $680 from his coffee can.  He immediately woke up O’Brien and accused him of stealing the money.  “I know this looks bad, but I didn’t take the money,” O’Brien swore to his new friend and business associate. 

Hall remained suspicious but felt he lacked any proof O’Brien had pocketed the money.  He pointed at O’Brien and said, “I'm going to tell you one thing now. I don't want to kill you but if I catch you or any of your family with my money and I can't get it back any other way, I will kill you or get it back.”  O'Brien replied, “John, don't say that, it hurts my feelings."

On June 13, 1931 Hall noticed a few extra dollars on Lillian O’Brien and overheard her husband tell her, “You had better quit spending this money around here, John is going to catch on.”

settling the score and fleeing the jurisdiction

Two days later on June 15th Hall accompanied O’Brien on a trip into Las Vegas to visit a local establishment where O’Brien sold his bootleg liquor.  The men then went back to the Fox ranch and picked up their wives and O’Brien’s stepdaughter, returning to town to catch a movie at a downtown theater.  Hall and O’Brien indulged in .heavy drinking throughout the evening.  Despite continuing with such activities as a group, Hall harbored a burning rage toward O’Brien.  In fact, only a few days before he had nearly killed O’Brien until his wife talked him out of it.    

That night after the group returned to the Fox Ranch, Hall and his wife stepped out of the car.  Hall walked a few feet, but his emotions, loosened by alcohol, took control.  He turned back toward the car and said, “Jack, your folks have been spending my money around here pretty free and I have heard some other things. I want to talk with you about them.”

O’Brien began to roll away in his car.  Hall demanded that he stop.  When O’Brien kept inching forward, Hall pulled out a revolver and emptied it into the driver’s side of the vehicle.  O’Brien had been hit in the back with three .38 rounds.  He came to a stop and opened his door, stumbling out and then running as best he could down the dark dirt road until he finally collapsed a few dozen yards away. 

Lillian O’Brien emerged from the passenger side of the vehicle and began to strike Hall while screaming that he had shot her husband.  Hall responded by repeatedly striking Mrs. O’Brien with his empty pistol.  Hall returned to his cottage in an effort to find more ammunition, and he later reported to police that he intended to return to the vehicle to shoot Mrs. O’Brien and her daughter. 

Hall began to panic and gathered his wife and the couple fled the scene of the shooting on foot, heading west as fast as they could.  The Halls eventually managed to catch a lift on the back of a passing truck.  Hall, still inebriated and consumed by rage at the theft of his money, boasted to the driver of the truck that he “would hate for the boys back in the Carolinas to know” that he had only hit O’Brien with three of his six shots, particularly in light of Hall’s prowess as a marksman while serving in the military in the Philippines.    

O’Brien’s step-daughter Lillian ran to Las Vegas and alerted local authorities to the attack.John O’Brien was taken to the local hospital but soon died of his wounds.

it was all about the money

Hall and his wife remained on the lam for a month before being taken into custody by a California highway patrolman in Yermo on July 16, 1931.  Hall initially denied any role in the murder, but while being driven back to Las Vegas, Hall proudly admitted that he had killed O’Brien for stealing his money and that he had settled on killing his business associate the first time he saw him spending his stolen money.

At trial Hall maintained he was acting in self-defense, alleging that O’Brien had reached for his own pistol prior to Hall opening fire.  Hall also alleged that O’Brien had attempted to sexually assault his wife a few days prior and that Hall was acting in defense of his wife.  But Hall’s statements to multiple people after the shooting that O’Brien had it coming to him sunk Hall at trial.  He was convicted after a day of jury deliberations. 

Clark County District Attorney argued strongly for the death penalty to send the message to new residents that murderers would be dealt with harshly.“People we used to call friends are submerged beneath the new arrivals flocking into our fold,” District Attorney Harmon argued.“We welcome these people into our arms and our hearts, and will work with them, and mingle with them; but let them leave their guns behind, we want no murderers here!”The District Attorney went on regarding the facts of the O’Brien slaying, “This was a matter of money, not honor.” District Attorney Harmon obtained a death sentence from the jury just as he had in three of the four other murder prosecutions he conducted that year.

a mystery solved on death row and a calm execution

Hall was transported to Carson City and, having exhausted his appeals, a little more than a year after his trial he was brought to the gas chamber at the Nevada State Prison on November 28, 1932.  His case briefly made headlines when it turned out Hall was actually a former building contractor from Morganstown, North Carolina that had gone missing a few months prior. 

Hall went to the gas chamber with a supremely calm demeanor.After he was strapped into the chair in the center of the cinder-block chamber, he smiled and offered what wave of his hand he was able to the dozens of onlookers peering at him through windows.The prison doctor registered his pulse at a normal 84 beats per minute.He did not even flinch when the cyanide pellets landed into a crock of water, creating the lethal gas.

the confidence of believing in life after death

Hall was apparently under the belief that a future feat of medical science would be able to bring him back from the dead.  He had requested his attorneys to donate his body to a San Francisco doctor that had recently saved the life of a medical student that had been injected with cyanide.  With the medical student treatment for the cyanide poisoning had been administered before the patient perished, but Hall was apparently under the mistaken impression that he could be revived from death by cyanide poisoning.  The San Francisco doctor refused to accept Hall’s body.

Another sidenote from Hall’s execution is that the Nevada gas chamber was touted by local officials as a human means of administering the death penalty.California was considering whether to replace the gallows with the gas chamber, and so the warden of Folsom Prison, Court Smith, was present to observe the execution of Hall.Smith had observed dozens of hangings in his time as a warden.Smith peered through a window into the gas chamber as the gas began to fill the cell and immediately looked away.He looked back one more time before walking away from the scene, never to look back.Press accounts of the execution note Hall’s smile quickly gave way to a look of agony once gas began to fill the chamber, and it took 11 minutes of writhing against his restraint before Hall’s heart stopped beating.The prison doctor claimed Hall “knew nothing after his first breath.”