Monday, April 24, 2006 | 7:18 a.m.
Pssst. Wanna buy Al Capone's yacht? Make an offer that Las Vegan Saundra Reed can't refuse, and she'll sell you the 76-foot yacht - plus throw in two ghosts. Free.
Reed needs a buyer or someone - the city of Las Vegas, she suggests - to take the boat off her hands before a California harbor has the 80-year-old wooden yacht declared abandoned and towed.
It would be the end of a colorful history, which includes Capone's alleged ownership - it has never been fully documented - and the two ghosts, one of whom, it is said, was a Capone henchman who guarded the gangster's loot.
The boat has been deemed unseaworthy and the costs to allow it to once again sail - as opposed to sleep - with the fishes are beyond Reed.
Her solution? She thinks it would be a great exhibit for the mob museum proposed by Mayor Oscar Goodman.
"The story goes that on more than one occasion when the boat was owned by Al Capone, more people went out on it than came back," said the 59-year-old Reed, who moved to Las Vegas 10 years ago.
A city spokeswoman, however, said it would be "premature" to discuss possible donations for that purpose. While Goodman wants to turn the historic post office at least partly into a mob museum, city officials have yet to develop plans for the building.
Finding a new home for the boat by giving it away to either a museum or a charity is not as simple as it might sound, despite its colorful past and potential high value should it be proven that Capone owned it.
There are plenty of costs involved, as Reed found out when she bought the boat called "Duchess III" last November. She knew the owner and bought it sight unseen because she liked the idea of owning a piece of history.
The boat, which had its engines removed several years ago, is uninsurable, making it a safety risk, said Douglas Cooper, dock master at Ventura Village Harbor in Southern California. Cooper has already given Reed one extension and said he plans to have the boat towed if it's not moved by month's end.
Reed said she was unaware that the boat needs $100,000 to $500,000 to make it seaworthy. Some alternatives are less costly, but still far from cheap. It would cost $30,000 to dismantle the boat or $10,000 to hoist it out of the water and transport it to Las Vegas. So she has put the boat up for sale for $15,000, which is about what she paid for it.
According to published reports, the white 30-ton boat with black trim was built by renowned nautical architect Ed Monk in 1925. It initially was used to transport prisoners and goods to McNeil Island federal prison in Washington state's Puget Sound.
The yacht supposedly was sold to mobster Dutch Schultz, who reportedly sold it to the Capone family in the late 1920s, with ownership put in the name of Frank Capone, Al's brother. The boat then supposedly was moved to Florida, where Al Capone had purchased an oceanside mansion in 1928.
Capone named the boat Duchess III in honor of one of his mistresses, Reed said.
Capone, the prohibition era's most notorious bootlegger, is said to have owned several large boats that he used for rum running. Reed said she was told by the previous owner that her boat was used by Capone for that purpose.
One news account quotes an owner prior to Reed as saying that the Duchess III was operated by Jake "Greasy Thumb" Cusack, one of Capone's accountants.
Although the boat does not appear in an inventory of the sale of Capone's Florida home by his widow, that has not deep-sixed the possible Capone connection. Numerous newspapers and others have researched the boat's history, but the investigations have usually ended in "maybe" conclusions.
While Scarface might be its most notable owner, the boat's intriguing history is not confined to him.
In the early 1990s, the boat was sailed into California's Ventura Harbor by a crew of skinheads who flew from its mast the Nazi swastika.
Since then, at least five people prior to Reed have owned the boat. One rented it out for $500 a night as a floating bed and breakfast. Another used it to stage interactive murder whodunit plays, and it also has served as a Wednesday night cigar aficionado meeting place - a tribute to the cigar-chomping Capone, photos of whom appear in the sleeping quarters.
The ghost stories started circulating in the 1990s when lights supposedly were seen moving below deck and ghost-like figures appeared in mirrors and snapshots. There also have been strange smells and sounds that could not be explained.
In addition to the former Capone underling said to be still aboard, the other ghost supposedly is a woman who made the fatal mistake of threatening her lover by saying she would tell his wife about their affair - a poor choice that earned her a sea voyage that lasted much longer than a three-hour tour.
In her efforts to unload the boat, Reed said, she tried to convince a Hollywood studio to take it and use it as a huge prop. She also called the Navy to offer it as a training vessel. But she received no response to either offer.
Other harbors also have turned her down.
"Now I'm open to just about any and all suggestions," Reed said.
No reasonable offer will be refused. And that's more than many people who crossed paths with Al in the past could say.
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