deadly negotiations: a car bombing and a 100-year lease

a former fbi agent and a car bombing

Former FBI agent, ex-president of the State Bar of Nevada, two-term member of the Nevada Assembly, and prominent local Las Vegas attorney Bill Coulthard left his law office located in the ten-story Bank of Nevada Building in downtown Vegas on the scorching 115-degree summer afternoon of July 25, 1972, and made his way to the parking garage located on the third floor of the building.  The attorney entered his Cadillac and cracked the windows before inserting his key in the ignition.

BOOM!

An explosion thundered throughout downtown Vegas.  Four sticks of dynamite hidden near the steering column of Coulthard’s vehicle detonated with the turn of his key, transforming the Cadillac into a twisting hulk of scorched metal and setting several other nearby vehicles alight.  The force of the blast was so powerful it shattered light fixtures in the bank lobby on the first floor of the Bank of Nevada Building and tore a hole in the 16-inch concrete floor of the parking garage.

The gas tanks of several blazing vehicles in close proximity to Coulthard’s destroyed Cadillac soon ignited, sending further shocks throughout the downtown area. Pungent black smoke billowed from the center of the Bank of Nevada Building as stunned onlookers gathered on the sidewalk below.

Casino magnate Benny Binion – who was suspected of murdering the wife of a rival back in Dallas with a car bomb during a gangland war over illegal gambling rackets – listened to the explosion from his offices in the downtown Horseshoe Casino a mere two blocks away from the bomb site. He knew that all of his hard work in Las Vegas wouldn’t be for naught and that his legacy would be protected.

an iowa boy makes vegas home

Bill Coulthard was everything that Benny Binion was not.  Where Binion was brash and blunt, Coulthard was civil and refined.  While Binion had made his fortune through murder, bribery, and deceit with a natural comfort amidst the underworld, Coulthard made his reputation, career, and livelihood through obedience to the rule of law and conventional means of success.

Bill Coulthard was born and raised in Iowa, being admitted to the Iowa Bar in 1936 and joining the FBI shortly after.  He was assigned as the first resident FBI agent to the sleepy desert town of Las Vegas in 1940, just before the mobsters that would come to define a generation for the city arrived from the east.  In 1946 he was admitted to the practice of law in Nevada and retired from the FBI that same year. 

Coulthard quickly became a respected pillar of the business and legal community.  This entry was eased through his marriage to the daughter of P.O Silvagni, a wealthy casino owner and contractor in Las Vegas.  The connections and financial resources afforded by his spouse’s family allowed Coulthard to run two successful campaigns for the Nevada legislature where he served as speaker pro tempore of the Assembly. 

Sadly, Coulthard’s wife passed away suddenly during surgery in 1955. As a result, Coulthard inherited his wife’s varied business interests in local casinos. Unknown to Coulthard, these interests would bring him into direct conflict with one of the most ruthless gangsters-turned-businessmen in the city.

binion: an immediate vegas influencer

Another man that would come to adopt Las Vegas as his home arrived to town a few years after Coulthard.  Benny Binion moved to Vegas in 1946 with two suitcases loaded with cash earned from the decades he operated illegal gambling rackets throughout Dallas.  Binion had fled Dallas after his chosen candidate for sheriff was defeated and an anti-corruption crusading District Attorney came into office in the ’46 election.  He decided to make a new home in the only city in America where he could make a legitimate living as a gambler.

And Binion demonstrated remarkable “juice” – that intangible mix of money, power, and prestige that acts as underground currency in Las Vegas – very soon after his arrival in town. Dallas authorities tried for years to extradite Binion back to Texas on gambling charges, and the governor of Nevada ordered his extradition on two separate occasions. But each time local Las Vegas judges blocked Binion’s extradition. Binion would go on to exercise that type of power for the rest of his time in Vegas.

But before becoming one of the most powerful people in Nevada, Binion charmed, fought, and killed his way through the ranks of the Dallas organized crime world. While Benny Binion was an affable sort (these authors’ father/father-in-law worked for Benny as a pit boss and he had nothing but kind words to say about the man), those that crossed him were subject to the killer instinct he had honed back in Texas.  As detailed in our story on the Shumate slaying, Benny Binion was not shy about using the tools that had been so helpful in maintaining control of the Dallas gambling rackets after settling down in Vegas – including car bombs.

the most ruthless gangster in dallas

Benny Binion had climbed to the top of the Dallas gambling rackets by the 1930’s.  But one stubborn rival remained – Herbert “the Cat” Noble.  Noble earned the nickname “the Cat” because he apparently had at least nine lives given how many assassination attempts he had survived, with many of these attempts at the hands of Binion. 

On one occasion, Binion’s hitmen engaged in a running gun battle with Noble during a high-speed chase in which the Cat managed to escape by outmaneuvering and outracing his would-be assassins.  A few years later, Binion’s hitmen waited in the bushes outside Noble’s ranch, opening fire with rifles and sub-machineguns.  Though he sustained serious wounds to his arm, Noble survived the attack and continued to frustrate Binion’s efforts to monopolize the Dallas gambling rackets.

Even after Binion fled Dallas for more welcoming environs in Las Vegas, the feud continued between the two rivals. Binion still received a cut of the proceeds from the Dallas gambling rackets that he transferred to his henchmen’s control after skipping town, and he would allow nothing to jeopardize his profits. 

Things would escalate dramatically in 1949.  In that year, Noble’s wife entered her car parked in front of the couple’s Dallas home and turned the ignition.

BOOM!

A car bomb allegedly planted by one of Binion’s killers turned Mrs. Noble’s car into a twisted hulk of smoking metal. The blast was so powerful it left human remains scattered in nearby trees. And the message was clear – the Dallas gambling rackets were to be a monopoly and there could be only one owner.

a thousand mile quest for revenge

The murder of Noble’s wife drove him into a state of deep depression.  The only thing occupying his mind was revenge.

Noble did not wait long to strike back.  The first response was the shotgun murder of Binion’s most reliable Dallas hitman, Lois Green, who was known for burying his victims alive.  Next was an attempt on Benny’s life in his new home of Las Vegas.  Noble sent his top hitmen – a cryptic figure known only as “the Groceryman” – to Las Vegas on a mission to murder Binion.  But Binion’s men captured the Groceryman and sent him back to Dallas to commit a double-cross murder of his boss, with Binion perhaps using his Dallas connections to threaten the Groceryman’s relatives if he refused to turn against his employer.

A week after the murder of Binion’s most trusted Dallas executioner, the Groceryman lie in wait outside of his former employer’s home.  When Noble exited his front door, he was greeted by the blinding glare of headlights followed by a burst of automatic rifle fire.  True to his name, the Cat was wounded but survived the attempt on his life.

Over the next few months Herbert “the Cat” Noble formulated the perfect plan to eliminate Benny Binion once and for all.  Noble was an accomplished pilot that owned a fleet of planes, and he would put his aeronautic knowledge to use in an audacious assassination attempt against his arch-rival. 

Noble obtained aerial maps of Las Vegas and plotted out the property on Bonanza Road where the sprawling Binion estate was located.  Then the Cat affixed bomb tracks to his most reliable aircraft along with extra fuel tanks to stretch his plane’s effective range. After revamping his plane, he used his connections to acquire two live bombs – one incendiary and the other high explosive.  He intended his feud with Binion to end in spectacular fashion, with the leveling of his rival’s home while Benny, his wife, and five children were inside.  Binion was ever-cautious against attempts on his life, but even he would never suspect an aerial assault.

The intricate plot was foiled in its final stages as Noble prepared to perform one last dry run of the attack on Binion’s Vegas home.  As Noble was preparing to enter his plane, an officer with the Dallas Police Department rolled up to the ranch.  The officer was on an unrelated assignment to interview the Cat in relation to U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver’s investigation into the impact of organized crime on American society. 

Upon catching sight of the approaching officer, Noble reached for a nearby rifle.  But the cop was quicker on the draw.  Defeated in his quest to avenge the death of his wife, the Cat dropped his weapon, collapsed to his knees and sobbed, complaining to the officer, “Benny gets all the breaks.”

Benny went on to get one last break against his old-time nemesis.  One day in August of 1951, Noble parked his car next to the mailbox along the quiet road where his ranch was located.  A devastating explosion, likely triggered by a hitman watching from a nearby tree, decimated Noble’s vehicle and killed him instantly.  The Cat’s lives had finally run out.

A tense lease renewal negotiation turns to violence

Benny Binion had built a national reputation founded upon his downtown Horseshoe Casino, which was further fueled when the Horseshoe hosted the first World Series of Poker tournament in 1970.  But Binion didn’t own the land upon which he had built his empire – he leased it.  And his principal landlord was none other than Bill Coulthard, who controlled a 37.5% interest in the land Binion’s Horseshoe Casino was situated upon.

Binion’s lease was set to expire in the early 1970’s.  And the straight-laced former FBI agent Coulthard was not in the mood to renew the lease of a vicious gangster that had already developed a reputation around Las Vegas for using violence to settle disputes.

Benny engaged in furious negotiations in an effort to get Coulthard to come around.  But the well-to-do attorney was already among the wealthiest members of Vegas society, so Binion’s usual resort to monetary inducements did nothing to sway Coulthard.  As one of Binion’s associates would later say of Old Man Binion’s efforts to renew the lease, “He tried to negotiate with the asshole, but the son of a bitch wouldn’t budge.”

In the end, Coulthard decided to lease the land to new tenants, ones with less questionable backgrounds than Benny Binion’s. But Binion was not about to let the multi-million dollar enterprise he had built from scratch go without a fight.

binion’s hitman

When Benny Binion needed a dirty job done, he had one man that he knew he could turn to.

Tom Hanley had known Binion since his days in Dallas and had arrived in Vegas a few years before the Old Man.  Hanley spent his time making inroads into the local unions to coopt them as part of Binion’s larger organized crime enterprise. 

Hanley was an intimidating figure at 6’2 with a hulking frame.  He ran into his first trouble with the law in Las Vegas in 1948 after he went on trial for brutally beating a member of the local sheet metal union.  The union member had come into Hanley’s office to complain about being taken off of a building project.  Hanley responded by beating the man so severely he required three stitches to his skull and suffered several broken ribs. 

Hanley was ultimately acquitted of the assault, the first of many failed attempts by the justice system to stop Hanley’s decades-long crime spree on behalf of some of the most powerful people in Las Vegas.  He was responsible for the murders of rival union bosses and of former associates that had decided to turn “rat” by cooperating with the police.  There were even rumors that Hanley had a role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy – after all, Benny had been questioned by the FBI about his Dallas connections to Jack Ruby in the months following the President’s murder.

Regardless of the extent of Hanley’s role in the most famous political murder in American history, it is unquestionable that Tom Hanley was the man Benny Binion relied upon to solve problems via less-than-legal methods.  And since the mid-60’s, Tom Hanley had worked with his son, Gramby Hanley, to carry out at least six murders, as well as over a dozen bombings, arsons, and several burglaries throughout Las Vegas.  Gramby Hanley, who fell into a years-long heroin addiction while working as a hitman, later fondly remembered how as a young man his father would patiently shown him the proper way to wire an explosive charge or the best way to dispose of a body.

Sometime in early 1972, Benny Binion determined there was only one way to save the Horseshoe Casino. He paid Tom Hanley a hefty sum to eliminate a problem for him.

This was not the first time the paths of Hanley and Coulthard had crossed. Vegas has been a small town for folks that have lived here for any appreciable amount of time in the sense that paths often intersect. And as a deputy city attorney, Coulthard had prosecuted Hanley for that beating of the union member back in 1948.

Tom and Gramby then went to work scouting out Coulthard’s routine, including staking out his residence on Rancho Circle. They were fortunate that Coulthard was a creature of habit, coming and going at usual times from his downtown office.

Tom Hanley secured several sticks of dynamite and the duo entered the Bank of Nevada Building after Coulthard had arrived for work. The Hanleys operated with practiced yet cold efficiency in carrying out their assignment. One of the father-son hitman team stood lookout while the other walked along the row of parked cars on the third floor garage until he located Coulthard’s vehicle. The assassin pretended to drop something so that he could bend down next to the car. In under a minute the bomb had been placed under the Cadillac and the killers were out of the building, on their way to establish an alibi for the time of the bombing.

a town in shock and a deadend investigation

The daylight execution of Bill Coulthard rocked Las Vegas.  This wasn’t some degenerate that got out of line at a Strip casino or a gangster that ran out of luck and ended up in a shallow desert grave.  This was a respected attorney and former legislator that sat on corporate boards murdered at his place of business.  The power brokers of the city knew and liked Bill Coulthard, and they demanded action in response to the brutal slaying.  The local Chamber of Commerce gathered $75,000 within days as a reward for information leading to the capture of those responsible for Coulthard’s death.  The ability to solve the crime would prove that law and order still existed in a town that had developed a habit of turning a blind eye to the activities of its less savory characters.

The homicide detective working the case, Beechers Avants, diligently tracked down leads and within a few months determined that the most likely suspect had been Tom Hanley and that the most likely motive was Binion’s desire to maintain control of his casino.  Though he didn’t yet have enough evidence to make an arrest in the case, whenever Detective Avants saw Tom Hanley around town he would publicly yell to the notorious hitman, “I’m going to put you away for Coulthard!”

Detective Avants ran into an additional insurmountable roadblock. His boss, Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb, was a close personal and business associate of Benny Binion.  In fact, Sheriff Lamb would face a federal investigation years later in relation to tens of thousands of dollars in “loans” Binion had given the sheriff.

In 1977, Detective Avants presented to the FBI what he believed was enough evidence to indict the Hanleys for the Coulthard bombing. But federal agents and prosecutors did not act on the information.

A lot had changed in the five years since Bill Coulthard left his office and never returned home. Tom and Gramby Hanley were now cooperating witnesses in the federal investigation into mafia control of Strip casinos, corrupt union officials, and notorious organized crime figures like “Lefty” Rosenthal and Tony “the Ant” Spilotro. Federal investigators were focused on what they viewed as the “bigger fish” in Las Vegas rather than a years-old cold case.

Aftermath: A Cold Case, New Leads, and a 100 Year Lease

Coulthard continued his contributions to the community even after his death. His family requested that donations be made to the Clark County Law Library or to the UNLV Library in lieu of flowers. Coulthard’s family grieved their loss and waited for the investigation to run its course, but they never expected it would lead to a deadend that could never provide finality.

The $75,000 in reward money raised by the Chamber of Commerce was quietly returned to the donors after the Coulthard investigation went cold.  Benny was questioned by police in relation to the bombing but denied any responsibility.  However, the shenanigans surrounding the case did not stop with Binion’s interrogation. A local court reporter was arrested and unsuccessfully tried for stealing secret grand jury transcripts regarding the bombing, with the court reporter claiming powerful individuals in town had been implicated in the murder.   

But efforts to solve the murder of a respected member of the Las Vegas community did not die without one last attempt at obtaining justice.  Informants came forward to police in 2000 and 2001 with new information about the Coulthard killing. The lead homicide detective on the case in 2001 said of the new information, “It still looks to be due to his business dealings and at this point we're trying to put a prosecutable case together against those responsible.” But the new leads went nowhere. 

As for Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, after Coulthard’s death, the control of his shares fell to his deceased wife’s brothers, who signed a 100 year lease with Benny Binion. The Horseshoe continues to stand today in the same spot it did on a hot summer day in 1972.