The first class of characters placed on Nevada’s infamous “List of Excluded Persons” in 1960 was a mostly notorious lot.
Newspaper readers of the day probably recognized the names of several of the 11 men inducted into the so-called “Black Book” and banned from setting foot in the state’s image-sensitive casinos. From the Chicago Outfit’s upper echelon came Sam “Momo” Giancana, Murray “the Camel” Humphreys, and Marshall Caifano. From Kansas City came the Civella brothers, Nick and Carl, and their associate, Motl Grzebienacy.
Southern California was represented by Louis Tom Dragna, John Battaglia, Joe Sica, and an indefatigable fellow named Robert L. Garcia.
While mob aficionados and Las Vegas denizens have little trouble recognizing Giancana, Caifano and Humphreys and would be likely to know the Civella brothers and the names Dragna and Sica as well, Garcia’s story has been all but lost to history.
Back when Palm Springs was still considered a gambling oasis in competition for Southern California customers with Las Vegas, former boxer Garcia was a noisy nightlife promoter. He was sometimes called “Bobby” and “Taco Bob” in the press.
Although Garcia bristled at his official exclusion, his association with Mickey Cohen and a long class of hoodlums and former rumrunners made his nomination for the Black Book an easy call. He griped about it for years to come, but he also maintained close connections to nightclub gambling joints in the Palm Springs area.
Palm Springs was once a popular destination for Hollywood elites, captains of industry, and the sporting crowd, and men such as former Detroit Purple Gang leader Mert Wertheimer made big scores with their casinos and only occasionally ran into any serious heat from the law. Other crime figures, often through front men, were represented there and as far south as Tijuana.
Garcia was one part operator, one part casino pitchman with card club plans for Cabazon and other operations throughout a lengthy career. He managed to butt heads with law enforcement and local government for many years and wasn’t shy about his own political ambitions. He rightly understood that the best way to operate was to find a way to legalize the activity, and that meant making friends in high places.
When his gambling club idea was spurned, in 1958 he concocted a plan to create a “social club” in which members could play friendly games.
“I want to run my Social Club, and I am going to get it before the people of Palm Springs in a vote and I believe I can win by an overwhelming majority,” said Garcia, never at a loss for confidence. “I am proposing a Social Club where people can come and play cards, any game that falls within the state laws, and enjoy an evening out.”
While other clubs appeared to operate under an unofficial immunity, Garcia’s Hoopo Card Club in Cabazon regularly made headlines in the late 1950s — especially after a California Assembly Crime Commission report linked him to Cohen and other thugs.
“People have been very nice to me here,” Garcia told the Palm Springs Desert Sun in 1959, but the crime commission report had made him a target for law enforcement. “Business was bad before, but when the report came out no one came in. I had to close. I had no other choice.”
He ran unsuccessfully that year for the state Senate and continued to push for expanded gambling with mixed results.
He said he was going to seek an apology from the crime commission for publishing its “false reports,” but he likely knew that day would never come.
A decade later, Garcia was still pushing for a card club ordinance for Palm Springs. He ran for city council and became a spokesman for the potential of bingo and poker in the area.
He never lived to see the legalization of Native American casino gambling, and he never became a card club kingpin, but Garcia would go down in casino history as a member of the first class of Nevada’s infamous Black Book.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter @jlnevadasmith.
