Beverly Hills divorce lawyer Charles “Chick” Weiss confirms Freddy O.’s statement. “Freddy’s the king of the L.A. private eyes, even though he lost his license and has gone into the hotel biz now. Listen, I do divorce work, and sometimes it’s not pretty. Freddy’s my liaison to the wheelman community, these hot-car guys who tail the cheating spouses to their extramarital rendezvous. He’s a battle-trained urban warrior, just the kind of guy to make it big in a high-stress burb like Las Vegas.”
“Howard Hughes can buy up all the big joints on the Strip and Glitter Gulch,” Otash told this reporter. “I’m here to play to the junket crowd and the working Joe who wants to have fun without losing his shirt. Don’t call my place a ‘carpet joint’ or a ‘low-roller joint,’ either. Call me the friend of the discerning gambler on a budget who appreciates a bang for his buck.”
Los Angeles private investigator Clyde Duber offers a dissenting view of Fred Otash, which he claims is not the minority one. “Freddy is strictly shakedown,” he said. “His only friend is the almighty dollar, so you might say that Vegas is the perfect place for him.”
Ouch! Tell me, Fred O., what do you say to that?
“Clyde’s just jealous,” Otash said with a grin. “He always played second banana to me, and it’s always rankled him. Yeah, I’m colorful, and I’ve got a few rough edges. You know my motto? ‘I’ll do anything short of murder, and I’ll work for anyone but Communists.’ How can you quibble with that?”
How indeed-and spoken like a true Las Vegan! So, once again, welcome to the Jewel of the Desert, Mr. Fred Otash!
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/20/68. FBI telex communiquй. From: SAC Wilton J. Laird, St. Louis Office. To: Special Agent Dwight C. Holly. Marked: ”Confidential 1-A: Recipient’s Eyes Only.”
SA Holly,
Per our phone conversation and your preceding memo (Confidential 1-A memorandum #8506) requesting an update on rumors pertaining to the M. L. King homicide circulating at the Grapevine Tavern, St. Louis, the following may warrant your attention:
1.-Electronic surveillance equipment, perhaps of Bureau manufacture, was discovered on the premises at the Grapevine Tavern in early to mid-June of this year. Confidential Bureau informants frequenting the tavern have reported that the apparatus was discovered by NORBERT DONALD KLING amp; ROWLAND MARK DE JOHN, convicted felons and tavern habituйs and the acknowledged “leaders” of several other tavern habituйs (CLARK DAVIS BRUNDAGE, LEAMAN RUSSELL CURRIE, THOMAS OGDEN PIERCE amp;; GEORGE JAMES LUCE), all convicted felons active in numerous far-Right paramilitary organizations.
2.-The discovery of the apparatus has led to growing conjecture among the above mentioned. IE: that the apparatus was part of a monitoring process developed to lure accused King assassin JAMES EARL RAY into a “FBI-mandated” King assassination plot. While obviously preposterous, it should be noted that this rumor might prove to be damaging to the Bureau’s prestige, given Mr. Hoover’s many recent derogatory comments about King, and given that Ray’s brother CHARLES ELDON RAY is a part owner of the tavern.
3.-This office had no part in installing electronic surveillance apparatus, if indeed it was Bureau-manufactured equipment that was discovered on the tavern premises. If some other Bureau field team installed the equipment, I did not know about it personally, nor was such equipment installed by any agent under my command.
4.-According to statements made by the above-referenced tavern habituйs, there was frequent discussion of a $50,000 “bounty” on King, allegedly to be paid by a cabal of wealthy segregationists to any “White Race Warrior” who would “buck LBJ’s liberal hegemony to off Martin Luther Coon.” This preposterous line of talk was frequently indulged by numerous tavern habituйs in the months preceding King’s death.
5.-The “FBI hit plot” rumors are growing in both virulence and frequency. Alarmingly, confidential sources within the St. Louis Office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have informed me that the tavern will soon be placed under ATF surveillance, pertaining to evidence of gunrunning taking place on the tavern premises proper. The above-referenced tavern habituйs are not gunrunning suspects, but I find ATF’s proximity to the tavern disturbing, given the virulence and frequency of the anti-Bureau rumors amp; CHARLES ELDON RAY’S part ownership of the tavern.
Respectfully, SAC Wilton J. Laird, St. Louis Office/EYES ONLY/PLEASE DESTROY UPON READING.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/26/68. Los Angeles Herald Express article:
STILL A BAFFLER: “THE BIG HEIST”
AND THE COP STILL OBSESSED
Tuesday, February 24, 1964. It was chilly in Los Angeles, with storm clouds hovering. The early morning silence was shattered by the collision of a milk truck and a Wells Fargo armored car carrying a multimillion-dollar cargo of U.S. currency and priceless emeralds. The quiet corner of 84th and Budlong streets became the scene of a holocaust, and within minutes four armed guards and two members of a daring robbery gang were dead-the latter obviously betrayed and shot by a fellow gang member-and the robbery-murder case has remained unsolved for four and a half years now.
“Not exactly,” Sergeant Robert S. “Scotty” Bennett stated at Piper’s Coffee Shop. “It’s been four years, five months and two days.”
One does not quibble with Sergeant Bennett on anything pertaining to the case he has worked on so hard and for so long. He has been the lead investigator since that bloody morning, and his determination to crack the case has become legend within the Los Angeles Police Department. The man, all six-foot-five of him, is a legend himself. He has killed 18 armed robbers in the line of duty and commemorates the LAPD record with small 18’s embroidered in the Scottish-plaid bow ties he always wears. When asked about those shootings, he replied, “When you let that buckshot go, there’s no taking it back.”
It’s a funny line with a harrowing truth behind it: detectives working the LAPD’s Headquarters Robbery Squad go up against armed-and-dangerous criminals routinely, and they are a determined breed of man proud to be wearing “211” tie bars, the number noting the California Penal Code designation for armed robbery. “The Heist,” as it’s known around the Robbery Division squadroom, is a near-constant topic of speculation, and Scotty Bennett addresses it with great relish. “It was planned down to a ‘T,’ ” he said. “The fake milk-truck collision was very forceful and potentially fatal, which obviously convinced the guards that it was real. The robbery gang knew what the armored car would be transporting, and we’ve never determined exactly how they got that information. More importantly, we’ve never determined whether the heist gang was comprised of white men or Negroes.”
Sergeant Bennett sipped coffee and continued. “The heist was conceived and executed boldly,” he said. “And I believe that the leader of the gang decided beforehand to kill his underlings at the scene and obscure their identities, and their races, by burning their bodies past recognition. All fine and good, but obscuring racial identification requires more than burning the surface of the skin, and the man first dosed the bodies with a chemical accelerant that greatly enhanced the tissue damage of the burning. We’ve never been able to identify the chemical that he used, which is another reason why the heist has remained such a baffler.”
Some other reasons?
“Well,” Sergeant Bennett said, “we know that many of the cash stacks stolen from the armored car were wrapped with ink-exploding bands, and ink spill was found at the crime scene. Also, ink-stained bills have surfaced periodically in south Los Angeles, so I’m convinced that there was at least a partial Negro component to the gang. Also, the origin of the emeralds remains undetermined. It was a very valuable cargo, and intermediaries for the consigner and the consignee signed secrecy waivers with Wells Fargo, which has impeded the investigation.”