Where I Stand — Myram Borders: Numerous stories led to molding of today’s Las Vegas

Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1998 | 10:37 a.m.

IN AUGUST, Where I Stand is written by guest columnists. Myram Borders was a news reporter and bureau manager for United Press International (UPI) in Las Vegas for 25 years before joining the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority news bureau. When asked to write about the most exciting story she covered, she concluded they were too numerous to choose, because ultimately every story molded into one -- the saga of Las Vegas. Here is a vignette from her career.

IT WAS LATE when I turned the car onto Sahara Avenue. The lights of the Strip were in the rearview mirror. Marie Callender's restaurant was coming up. I thought briefly about banana cream pies. Next was Tony Roma's, a respectable watering hole for this time of night. I decided to pass.

Suddenly my car rattled from the shock waves of an explosion. Flash fire engulfed a car parked in the lot between two of my favorite stops. The driver leaped up and down outside the car like an automated jumping jack waving its arms. The stunned man glared at the blazing death trap he escaped. His hair looked like porcupine quills standing at attention. His knees buckled but he refused to fall.

My car sputtered into the parking lot. I recognized the jumping jack as Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal. I wondered whether his hair was singed or standing up because the hat that usually covered a recent hair transplant was missing.

Rosenthal was a high-profile figure in the cosmos of Las Vegas power brokers at the time. He had fought with the Nevada Gaming Control Board and Gaming Commission to retain his gambling license. He dodged, for a while, state attempts to initiate him into Nevada gaming's "Black Book" club. The well-known and well-respected oddsmaker in gaming circles hosted a TV show from the casino of a Strip hotel. Talk-show guests such as Frank Sinatra not only answered when Lefty called, but showed up to charm late-night viewers. I had been writing Rosenthal stories for what seemed centuries. Rosenthal, who didn't like the "Lefty" nickname, always had been accessible to the media.

"Somebody's trying to kill me. I was set up," he said in a hoarse voice, patting his smoky clothes. He appeared in shock. I, of course, asked, "Who is trying to kill you, who set you up?"

"When I started my car ..." His voice trailed off. Even in a near-death experience, Frank Rosenthal, normally well-pressed, dapper and talkative, kept his cool and kept his own counsel.

He was angry. He was physically tattered. But he was not going to fink to a reporter.

Police, firefighters, ambulances and other news reporters arrived. The uniformed personnel cordoned off the area. Lefty was surrounded and protected by the establishment, for a while. I listened briefly. The officers weren't getting any more answers than I did, at least that I could hear. I raced for a telephone. The adrenaline kicked in. I had a beat. By coincidence, I was there when it happened. This was a headliner -- "Lefty Rosenthal's Car Bombed."

The incident was but one chapter in a long, continuous novel played out on the Las Vegas stage. The main characters in this particular chapter of the city were guys such as Lefty, Tony Spilotro, Herbie Blitzstein and Frank Cullotta, to mention but a few who desired power, control, fortunes and, ultimately, escape.

Rosenthal eventually left for safer pastures. Cullotta became a protected witness and squealed on his boyhood friend, Spilotro, in a Las Vegas federal court trial that zeroed in on "The Hole In the Wall Gang." Federal prosecutors attempted to prove Spilotro controlled a gang of thieves who hit rich country-club homes and businesses by drilling holes through the roofs or ceilings of buildings. The millions in loot were fenced out of state, federal attorneys said. Spilotro was never convicted by the system, but he was punished outside the system by unknown hitmen. Spilotro and his brother, Michael, were bludgeoned and buried alive in a cornfield near Chicago. Blitzstein was murdered recently in Las Vegas. Cullotta is living somewhere with a new identity bestowed by the federal protected witness program.

The last time I spoke with Spilotro was in front of a convenience store on Eastern Avenue. The jury was out on the "Hole in the Wall Gang" trial. He and Blitzstein were "walking and talking" on the public sidewalk, well away from any listening devices that plagued their lives and actions in Las Vegas for many years. "We're going to win," Spilotro said confidently in discussing jury deliberations. We said good night. I didn't know it was goodbye. A few days later, the court declared a mistrial in the "Hole in the Wall Gang" trial. Spilotro was murdered before the new trial started.

The night I wrote the story of Spilotro's murder, there was a rush of recall. I remembered speaking with members of his family a few days earlier trying to track down rumors that Spilotro was missing. I remembered Spilotro pacing up and down the corridor of the federal courthouse in Las Vegas during morning and afternoon trial recesses. At first he was uncomfortable and tense. But as the trial dragged on, he seemed to look forward to his recess time in the federal court hallway. I remembered his wife, Nancy, who never missed a day of the long, drawn-out proceedings. I remembered the words of federal prosecutors who said Tony "The Ant" was a ruthless animal who commanded a gang of thieves. I remembered defense attorney Oscar Goodman's well-prepared, logical appeals to the jury to acquit Spilotro and his friends. I remembered the forceful arguments of prosecutors calling for justice and an end to a reign of crime. Attorneys for both sides spent years preparing their cases and had filed volumes of complicated legal briefs -- none of which could now be used to save or condemn Spilotro. And I recalled Spilotro's associate, Rosenthal, dancing up and down in front of a blazing car one night on Sahara Avenue, brushing smoke from his clothes. All of it was a piece in the same tapestry that draped the image of Las Vegas.

Reporters working the streets of Las Vegas cover a glitzy puzzle that almost fits together -- piece by piece, year by year, story by story. Some of us witnessed the demise of a sometimes tainted power structure and then watched while the metamorphosis of Las Vegas transformed the city into Wall Street's darling. The players who once controlled the shadows of glamorous Las Vegas faded from sight either by death or by choice.

But the beguiling face of Las Vegas, never dampened by tears or aged by time, retains its Mona Lisa smile as bewitched new suitors flock to pay homage to Lady Luck.