Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Whenever there was a big murder, especially a brutal murder like this where a guy is hog-tied and is in a shot twice in the back of the head and found in a truck of his car, that sounds like a Tony Spolatro hit. And if you listen to our show on Apple Podcasts, you can now watch video there as well. Just update to the latest iOS, head over to our show page to start watching. But for right now, just a quick word from our sponsors. I mean, look, we just don't start many episodes with documents that say at the top, first homicide investigation progress report. And this is an episode that's gonna be fundamentally about a dead body in the trunk of a Rolls Royce. Sean, and thank you for being here, by the way. Yeah, thank you for having me. But we're talking at a point at which the city of Las Vegas has never been warmer or cuddlier. We're talking the week after the NBA's Board of Governors just officially said, we are going to explore an expansion team in Las Vegas. Yeah, I mean, it's become a corporate boomtown. It's become a place that's one of the fastest growing cities every year. Start as casino kind of outpost. has exploded, you know, over the last few decades into, you know, this mecca, the sports capital of America. Yeah. 2017, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, the NHL team, they're founded. 2020, the Raiders move to Vegas, the NFL team. In 2028, the Oakland A's are relocating. And Las Vegas just won a bid to host the Final Four. And F1. It's endless. It's endless. And I think the thesis that I want to establish at the top here, Sean, is that none of this, None of these boom times in sports would be possible without a single person by the name of who. Tark the Shark. I'm here tonight with Jerry Tarkanian, the head coach of the Running Rebels. Don't let him con you, by the way, about talking about inexperience, because the Running Rebels will be loaded this year. We're picking them very high. Well, I think they're the type of team that's going to really play. I mean, he was the winningest coach of his era. But play as hard as you can play so you don't get bad habits. Create good habits, have good concentration, get good execution. They made it to four Final Fours, 1977, 87, 1990, 1991. Most notably, this iconic championship game over Duke. They won by 30. It was the largest margin of victory in a championship game to this day. This win is for the kids, but it's mostly for the great people in the state of Nevada. The whole state supports us, and I'm just so happy for them. They were one of the most electric, high-flying teams, known for breaking offensive records. Uh-oh, showtime! Uh-oh! At one point, you know, scoring 110 points per game without a three-point line. Played by Larry Johnson, really stepped out on Miller. And I think what people haven't experienced is how entertaining they were. Yes. It was this wild pre-show. They had fireworks. They had red carpet. They had music videos, hip-hop videos. If you're ever between a bastard and one of us, break out before you get slammed up. Act up. Walter Payton, Frank Sinatra was one of the biggest boosters, Whoopi Goldberg, Eddie Murphy, Mike Tyson, Tupac was wearing the gear. Unbelievable. They had the number one merchandise revenue of any program competing with Notre Dame. Denver, Colorado greeted the Rebels with freezing temperatures and snow, plus a horde of reporters, all wanting to know more about the so-called bad boys of basketball. Well, you know, when we got off this plane, it was all business now. There's no more, you know, fun. Came out here to do a job. It was like NWA meets casino. Yeah, look, the branding exercise of you want us to be the bad guy will happily play the role in contrast to Duke. Yeah. In contrast to Notre Dame and Tark the Sharks' wars with the NCAA. Yeah, I mean, he was an outlaw. He was an outsider. He connected with misfits. He was unapologetically himself. He was so eccentric. He was sucking on a towel. What was the towel deal about? He got so parched during games, he needed something to help with his hydration. And, you know, he's very superstitious. He kept, you know, the seat next to him empty. He was so myopic and he was so, you know, focused on basketball. He was just a very unique character. How Tark arrived in Vegas, you know, to take that job in particular. There's one story that I would like you to tell, and it's about the recruiting trip. that Tark himself went on. You know, Tark was killing it at Long Beach State. I mean, they were top five in the country multiple years. He was on the national stage. So they were trying to make, you know, as good of an offer. And Sig Rogich. My name is Sig Rogich. He's a marketing guru. Everything Sig has done has been towards the reinvention of the image of Las Vegas and its growth. And I think we're doing an interview today on Jerry Tarkany and his life. He saw the potential of what Jerry could bring in a winning sports program in Las Vegas in the byline. And he wanted them to understand this is a community. It's not just gambling, casinos, prostitution, drugs, all the Sin City vices you might expect. And so Sig took Lois Tarkanian and Jerry on a tour of Las Vegas. I was driving them around the community and showing Lois churches and pointing out the cultural side of this town because that was important to her. Lois Tarkanian is a very formidable woman. You know, she was a very successful teacher in her own right. And she was very religious. You know, she always had her rosary beads on her. She was very Catholic. So she had her reservations. We were driving, and we came to a stoplight, and I'm driving the car, and I look over, and a car pulls over. It's a convertible, and there's three people in the car. It's a driver and a guy and this girlfriend, and they're having sex right next to us. I was mortified, you know, after this big buildup. And Jerry pointed it out. He said, Sig, you know, and I'm not going to tell you what he said. I know what Jerry said to Sig. What did he say? He said, Sig, look, she's going down on him. A tactical mastermind at all times. Yeah, yeah. Observing the offense as well as the defense. What's crazy about the story we're here to do today is that as incredible as the Tark dynasty would become, it was so close to not happening at all. because it's 1979 and his agent is his childhood friend, a guy by the name of Vic Weiss. And there is a job offer that Tark gets. It is to be the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. And that would have been the highest paid coaching gig in NBA history at that point. Over a million dollars, over four years. I've read that it was $350,000 a year, $700,000 guaranteed. you know, over five years, you know, included some luxury cars, one for Jerry, for Lois and their oldest daughter, Pam. And it got so close, it sounds like that the Tarkanians had actually picked out the house they wanted to live in. It was too good to pass up. You know, they knew Magic Johnson was going to be the number one draft pick. It was the LA Lakers. It was too good of a financial offer. So yeah, I mean, it was too good of a situation. And the first place that I should say that I saw this codified in popular culture was on HBO. In this series they did called Winning Time that was about the Lakers of this era, came out in 2022. And in this scene, you have the new Lakers owner, Jerry Buss, played by John C. Reilly, at this restaurant, secretly closing the deal with Jerry Tarkanian and Vic Weiss. Did we just make a deal? That's what it sounded like to me. A couple cars, $7.50. Are we done? Because I would love to trade in this sludge for some bubbly. Champagne, sir. Jesus, you do get good service here. From the gentleman. So good. And yet, Jerry Tarkanian, Tark the Shark, does not leave Las Vegas, as history will tell you, because something insane happens. Vic, on June 13, 1979, goes to meet Jack Kent Cooke and Jerry Buss at Cooke's home in Beverly Hills. And they finalize the terms. They sketch it out on a notepad and Vic takes it with him. He's supposed to go meet Lois along with his own wife Rose and Jerry Tarkany at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach to review the terms. But he doesn't show up. He's missing. June 17th, he's discovered in the back of a maroon and white Rolls Royce at the Sheridan Universal Hotel in North Hollywood. And they open the trunk and he's wrapped in a blanket. His hands and feet are tied. His face is completely disfigured. He's been shot in the face twice and the body's completely decomposed. The police report here, it characterizes Vic Weiss as having been, quote, professionally executed. And, Sean, you actually talked to the detective who co-wrote, who co-authored this very report. Yeah, Detective Leroy Orozco, who's a legend. You know, he's known for a lot of famous L.A. homicide investigations. The Night Stalker, he was there for the Bobby Kennedy assassination. From the perspective of a investigator, you know when you get the call, it's what involves. But it's eerie when you get to the parking structure at Universal Sheridan. You're parked, you're walked around, and you see it all by itself. The Rolls Royce sitting there. As you closer get, you can smell it. Ah, s***. Tark was devastated, obviously. I mean, there's this quote from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the paper in Vegas. Quote, I feel left with a void in my life, and I'm really overwhelmed with hurt and grief. End quote. Yeah, I mean, Tark gave his eulogy. And he said, you know, Vic did a lot for him growing up, did a lot for him as a coach. And he said Vic did more for him than anyone in his life. Thank you, Vic. And so the next quote I feel like we should read is from the police report. It's about the rumor now coming out of Vegas about why all of this happened. Yeah, this is from Leroy Rusko's police report. A rumor coming out of Las Vegas was that Vegas people were very upset about the possibility of Tarkanian leaving Vegas All indications were that Tarkanian was going to accept the Laker position It was just a matter of Weiss negotiating the proper contract. Some sources believe this was the reason he was killed. Who were those guys? Come on, who do you think? Bing, bing, bing, bing. Yeah. Not the most subtle depiction of mafia members, I would say. Raising glasses there. But just the basic thrust of it, though, was the mob, they wanted TARC to stay in Vegas. They wanted Jerry Tarkanian, the head of this very successful college program that was giving national attention to what was once simply this corrupt desert. And there were economic incentives for this to happen. It was good for Vegas to have TARC still at UNLV, and therefore it was good for the mob. Yeah, I mean, the depiction in Winning Time, you know, they reveal that it's Jerry Buss's business card on Vic Weiss' disfigured face. And it's there to send a message to Jerry Tarkanian. It's a warning, you know, don't go to the Lakers. You know, a mob hit like this is so violent, it's personal. And where the body was discovered, it was definitely to send a message. So this is possibly how, you know, the message was depicted or potentially received. Yeah, that has been the prevailing theory here. But these documents, all this research indicates that it turns out there's a lot more to the story. Thank you. To share recipes from NYT cooking, wire cutter articles, or athletic articles, we are a family of four. I would like them to have access to the subscription too. Thank you. Neeraj, we heard you. Introducing the New York Times Family Subscription. One subscription, up to four separate logins for anyone in your life. Find out more at nytimes.com slash family. So, it is no exaggeration to say that our correspondent today, film producer Sean Carey, has spent years examining what is, on one level, a pretty simple story. Because there is no doubt that the murder of Jerry Tarkanian's longtime confidant and agent, Vic Weiss, was a mob hit. Yeah, I mean, I have relatives that grew up in Vegas. It was mob city. You know, everything is mob adjacent. But the big lingering question we're here to solve today is a lot more complicated. Why? Why did the mob really stuff Vic Weiss's body into that truck, scaring Tark away from the NBA and, in a sliding doors moment, saving UNLV and big-time team sports in Vegas? Although Tark, who died in 2015 at age 84, didn't exactly love talking about why he turned down the Lakers. You ever offered officially the head coaching job of the Los Angeles Lakers? Yeah, I was offered that. Yes. Did you turn it down? Yes. What? Well, at the time, there was a lot of reasons, but I was very impressed with Jerry Buss, but it was just, it was the timing was wrong. It was the wrong time. But this week, the same week Vegas also just got named host of the 2029 Super Bowl, it is time. It's finally time to dive into the unsolved mystery at the root of a major American city, which also meant that we needed to make a lot of calls about the influence of the mob, specifically. I've talked to all of the Tarkanian family, and they all have different stories, but we talked to George Tarkanian. You know, a lot of people ask me, what's it like growing up in Las Vegas, or what's it like being a son of a famous basketball coach? And the interesting thing is, I have nothing to compare it to, so it seems normal. Who kind of shed light on his own experience. In high school, there was a person in my class called Anthony Spilatro, who was the nephew of Anthony Spilatro. And Anthony Spilatro, to be very clear, for those not familiar with Anthony Spilatro, is who? I mean, he's probably, you know, the most infamous, I guess you could call him crime boss, you know, in Las Vegas in the 70s and 80s. He was known as the enforcer, probably the most violent crimes of any mob figure of the time. He was depicted in Casino, the Joe Pesci character. I don't know whether you notice or not, but you only have your f***ing casino because I made that possible. I'm what counts out here. Wait, wait, so Anthony Spalatro, to be very clear, is the real-life Joe Pesci in casino. Yes. But for George, Tark's son, was it immediately obvious what this was like? No. I think like most people, you know, it was a small community. They, you know, knew some of these people that see him at the supermarket. There weren't that many places to go. So everyone was kind of familiar with each other. So he didn't realize a lot of this until much later. The mob in Las Vegas kept a low profile. And they did that for a reason. They got away with so much because they kept a low profile. Now, I learned this by watching the movie Casino, which I jokingly say was a documentary, not a movie. Because so many events they had in there, I remember actually happening. I'm putting two and two together watching them. What happened to the f***ing tough guy? I told my friend, stick it up his f***ing ass. And this is where, by the way, the blending of fiction and nonfiction is a bit of a through line in the story. The cinematic adaptation of real-life events that are also f***ing insane. Yeah. How central, how close is Vic Weiss to the life of Jerry Tarkanian when it came to negotiations with the NBA, but also in general? Yeah, it depends on who you ask about that. I mean, Vic, he did negotiate Tark's deal with Sig to come to Vegas. And if you ask Sig Rogic, the UNLV booster, the founder of the Rebel Club, you know, what he had to say about Vic, he'll tell you for himself. I really didn't care for him very much. and he knew it. Jerry knew him from Long Beach, from the area down there, and they were friends. And I told Jerry one day, I didn't want to deal with Vic Weiss anymore, about anything, ever. You know, and Jerry was kind of oblivious to it. All he thought about was basketball. I said, I just don't trust him, and I think he's self-serving, and he's telling the world that he's your agent. You know, and Jerry said, well, I don't have an agent. And I said, well, he thinks he is your agent. The truth is, yeah, Jerry didn't, you know, he just like, you know, anybody who he knew was new business, he trusted. You mean like he didn't? He had a guy. Yeah, he had a guy. Jerry had a guy. Tark had a guy. I don't think he had an agent after Vic. But this is also part of the story, which is that these deeply personal relationships in which he's kind of my agent, he's functioning as it, but he's also my guy. Right. And so when does Tark find out that his guy has been killed? He was in L.A. looking for homes with his family. And, you know, George remembers it well. I do know he probably would have taken the job because I remember going on a trip with him to Southern California, and we actually traveled around Palos Verdes looking for possible homes. It was that weekend where Vic Weiss disappeared. And so we find ourselves, once again, staring at the disfigured face of this question. which is why did Vic Weiss, why did Tark's guy get whacked? What did George think about why his dad's childhood friend was killed? Well, you know, George, as well as, you know, the rest of the family, started to think it might have to do with his interest in another sport. After we know how, learned how he died, I remember conversations where I overheard that they speculated It was an organized crime hit. And they were speculating, they think it was with his boxing ties. Because organized crime was very much tied to boxing. And Vic was very much involved in boxing as well. Yeah, and this is where we turn back to our handy police report. And it turns out that one of the focuses of this investigation involved boxing Vic Weiss, who was apparently lots of people's guy as well. Not just Tark's guy, but his other boxer's guy. and the question of gambling debts. Yeah, I mean, Vic got involved in boxing in the early 1970s. It started out with a high-profile client, Armando Muñiz, who was a 1968 Olympian. He was a title contender, four-time welterweight title contender. Hello again, everyone. We're coming to you live. Shortly, you'll be seeing Sugar Ray Leonard against Armando Muñiz at 10 round. Of course, there's been a growing... There are two detectives working the case. Detective Sergeant John Helvin and our guy we heard earlier, Detective Leroy Orozco. And specifically, they looked into a fight between Mondo Muniz and Sugar Ray Leonard. In 1978, Sugar Ray was top of his game, one of the greatest fighters of all time, Olympic gold medalist. He's undefeated. Mondo was at the tail end of his career. He was injured. And so it was a high-profile fight. And I think we can even look at the footage and see how it played out. These men are fighting. The end of the round. What have they done here? They have apparently stopped the fight. I don't believe this. They've called it a TKO. Cunhas, at the end of six rounds, he had appeared to be coming on in the fourth and fifth rounds. Held his own in the sixth until that flurry we just showed you. And then suddenly the fight ruled ending. We've got to get to the bottom of this. We've got to get to the bottom of this. I mean, Cosell kind of spells it out. Yeah, yeah. Should that fight have been stopped? Did you want it stopped? Well, I personally didn't. My coroner said, why go on with a bad elbow? I have tendinitis or something like that. Every time I extended it, it's just unbearable pain. I want to go on, you know, and my coroner said, mother, look, one more fight. Am I going to ruin your elbow for the rest of your life? Why don't you just, you know, hang it up? Super f***ing fishy. It's like, what? What are we doing? You're writing Sugar Ray Leonard. Yeah, I mean, he's never stopped a fight before. So I get why Detective Orozco, Leroy, is very interested in this. And it sounds like, yeah, he had follow-up questions of his own. As did, you know, my colleague, filmmaker Chris Bellman, who sat down with Leroy and interviewed him. We were told that he guaranteed Vegas the ninth the fifth round or sixth round or something And he starts with a little bit it and Mondo The boxer Yeah He says I said I was good I told him I was okay He says, no, you're hurting. I want to save your life. So he threw it? Did he tell it? Yeah. And when you see the film, you see Vip talking to Mondo in the corner. In between rounds? In between rounds, and they call it, and they call it a fight. Yeah. You can't do that. Somebody made a ton of money. To me, it's a story. So just the theory here is that Vic Weiss is engineering the throwing of matches by Mondo against Sugar Ray Leonard, in particular in that case, in order to pay off what seemed to be gambling debts. Fixing fights would have been what the mob wanted. You know, that would have been, yeah, that would have been, you know, that's what they do. So he would have been doing that, you know, with their support. And even Lois Tarkanian, she had, I mean, she had heard a rumor. There's so many rumors that maybe, you know, the mob wanted to buy into a boxer that Vic didn't want to let them in and refused. And they interviewed a guy named Harry Kabakov. He's an eccentric, you know, fight promoter and trainer in Los Angeles. And he's also close friends and partners with Vic Weiss. I'll read from the police report. According to Kabakov, Weiss made his money betting on some of the fights. He would occasionally bet against his fighter knowing he was going to lose. But Kabakov feels personally and from his sources that the death is not related to boxing. And this is where the story begins to escalate. We've gone through college basketball, the NBA, and boxing. But it turns out that there is yet another sport, another professional sport of note, that may have gotten Vic Weiss into trouble because he was also someone else's guy in a different context. Yeah, the NFL. So I just got to jump in here to establish that no, Detective Leroy was not moved by the fixing fights theory of Vic Weiss's murder. The question of why organized crime would kill the guy who was allegedly fixing fights for them to pay off his debts never totally added up in his view. But this NFL angle seemed different. Vic had an athletic career. He had a stint with the Green Bay Packers. in the early 50s, and then was a semi-pro football player in Southern California for 10 years, kind of part-time. And something to know about pro football in the 60s and 70s is that as messy and mobbed up as gambling in sports seems now, as we've covered on this show previously, in the legalized era, especially of the NBA, in the NFL of the 60s, Commissioner Pete Rozelle suspended future Hall of Famers Paul Horning and Alex Karras for a whole season for betting on NFL games and associating with gamblers. Roselle also forced Jets quarterback Joe Namath to divest his ownership stake in a New York bar called Bachelor's 3 because it was frequented by bookies and gamblers. Yet the craziest character in all of this, arguably, wasn't even a player. It was an owner. An owner who became the subject of an FBI investigation, as PBS Frontline in a piece called An Unauthorized History of the NFL reported back in 1983. No owner had more dubious associations than the late Carol Rosenblum. He used to bet against his own team, the Baltimore Colts, and was even accused of fixing games by leading key players at home. In 1972, Rosenblum sold the Colts and bought the L.A. Rams, but he continued to play with fire, placing huge bets with mafia-linked bookies. And you'll hear, in fact, a familiar name emerging again. Rosenblum used a bag man to courier his illegal bets in and out of Las Vegas. Identical briefcases would be exchanged in front of a newsstand. Victor Weiss was the man who carried Rosenblum's cash and placed his bets. Who was Vic Weiss supposedly working with in Vegas when it came to this sort of a scheme? Yeah, I mean, all the bookmaking was running out of the hotels, you know, like the Stardust. And remember earlier when George Tarkanian mentioned being in school with the nephew of Anthony Spalatro? Spalatro, you know, he was intertwined with the Stardust. I spoke to a journalist named Dan Moldea who wrote about all this. He's an old school crime reporter. He's got a substack mobologist. He's an expert on the mafia, Jimmy Hoffa, the Bobby Kennedy assassination. He wrote a book called Interference about the NFL and his mob connections, where he covered the Vic Weiss murder. The allegation was that Weiss was skimming. He was being sent with money from the layoff bookmakers in Los Angeles to Vegas. And the skim in Vegas was being centered at the Stardust Hotel Casino on the Strip. and ostensibly the manager of the Stardust was Leffy Rosenthal, the Robert De Niro character in Casino. And Tony Spolaccio was his enforcer. Of course, played by Joe Pesci. Yeah. What happened to the f***ing tough guy told my friend, stick it up his f***ing ass! So just to recap here, Moldea, the mobologist, believes that Tony Spolaccio, Joe Pesci in Casino, put a hit on Vic Weiss because Vic Weiss was skimming money. Yes. He was skimming, he got caught, he got whacked. To me, whenever there was a big murder, especially a brutal murder like this, where a guy is hog-tied and is in a shot twice in the back of the head and found in a truck of his car at the Sheridan Universal, that sounds like a Tony Spolatro hit. Which also brings up this other thing that happened that was insane to Carol Rosenblum, the owner of the Rams, which was that Carol Rosenblum just two months before Vic Weiss died in that brutal fashion, died suspiciously in a drowning. That was what made this FBI investigation into these allegations of fixed games during the 78 Ram season. Yeah, he dies two months before Vic. It's very suspicious. Our friend Howard Cosell was very close with Carol Rosenblum. He thought it was suspicious. And yeah, there was an FBI investigation into the point fixing. and before they got a chance to talk to Carol Rosenblum or Vic, they were both gone. So the other timeline that is, again, not accounted for in winning time, and it's not part of the NBA college basketball narrative, is that, yeah, the Lakers job, cool, that's over here. But meanwhile, there's an FBI investigation in which Vic Weiss would be a central possible witness for the government, and both Carol Rosenblum and Vic Weiss both mysteriously, suspiciously get killed within two months of each other. And so, Detective Leroy Orozco, is this the theory that he finally lands on? Like, this explains why Vic Weiss wound up in the trunk of that car. No, I mean, there's still yet another theory to this. Because of course there is. At this point in the story, as we are retracing the steps of Detective Leroy Roscoe's investigation into Vic Weiss's murder, it is worth remembering that looks can be deceiving. Leroy doesn't think that Vic Weiss was killed by the mob because of gambling debts and fixed fights, despite all appearances. And Leroy also doesn't think that it was simply because Vic had been skimming money as a bag man for mysteriously deceased and mob-connected Rams owner Carol Rosenblum. In fact, Leroy had other questions here about how flashy Vic Weiss was able to hobnob with all these teams and celebrities from Muhammad Ali to Red Fox and even drive that maroon and white Rolls Royce where his corpse would ultimately be found. Which takes us to yet another classic Vegas sort of establishment from the 1970s. A car dealership. A car dealership whose owner was a memorable Las Vegas character in his own right. It was Gerald Cutter. Who is Gerald Cutter? Gerald Cutter portrayed himself as a pillar of the community. He was the president of the Chamber of Commerce in North Hollywood. He backed a boys club at the North Hollywood YMCA. He had come to Southern California in the late 60s, And he set up all these dealerships from Hermosa to Van Nuys across the valley. And then in Vegas, Prestige Motors. And these were Rolls-Royce dealerships, Fiat Agency, Ford. And, you know, he kind of discovered Vic Weiss and brought him in. And he took him under his wing. He recognized, you know, Vic was very charming. He was very charismatic. So he kind of recognized that this guy, you know, can hang with athletes, high rollers, celebrities. And he was involved in promotions. and he even, you know, brought him in to, you know, present him as a general manager and give him a cut of all these dealerships. The spinoff show about Vic Weiss is itself this insane text. I'm imagining these scenes in which he apparently is bringing by Cutter Ford, Muhammad Ali, Reggie Jackson. Like, again, he's everyone's guy. And it turns out that Jerry Cutter, to the surprise of perhaps nobody listening at this point in the story, had ties to another institution. Yeah, this is from Leroy's police report. It is rumored that Cutter is connected with organized crime and allegedly was while in St. Louis. He has present employees who are listed as consultants that allegedly have organized crime connections. Cutter maintained throughout the investigation he had no knowledge of the murder and no organized crime ties. The murder, of course, again, the murder of Vic Weiss. And so does this pass the smell test? you know Leroy told me a story about interviewing one of these guys who worked at Cutter Ford in in the valley and you know he came in and you know he's suspicious he was a consultant but he didn't know anything about cars and you know he said he was a really nice guy but he looked straight at the godfather you know he was smoking cigars and it was just a really interesting reaction and then they started you know following organized crime figures in Vegas and in Southern California. They go to kind of the hot spots, Monty's Steakhouse in Encino and across, you know, LA and the Tower of Pizza in Vegas. And in the parking lot of all these hangouts were, you know, Cutter Ford tags, Cutter Ford, you know, Rolls Royce and other cars, you know, fill the parking lots. I mean, this is a pretty good reason to be suspicious of Jerry Cutter, it seems, as a central character in why that body wound up in that Rolls Yeah, and they went on to interview Rose about it, Vic's wife. One of the first things we did was go to Vic house to talk to his wife There was about 10 guys in there Some suited up We introduced a guy named Jerry Cutter He owns the Rolls Royce of the dealerships. That's all we know. He was already in the house. He's there. So we took her aside to the dining room. First thing he knows, I'm talking to you. I ask you a question, and you turn around and look at Cutter. So we picked up my partner was on this side, and he sees. Every time she turned, he'd go, or what's happened? This guy's in control. Then we learned the house is his, the cars are his. This wasn't any of Dick. All this pretense of his getting the friendship with the Lakers, the Rams, it was all front. He didn't have anything. Everything he had was cutters. So just to clarify, so the performance of Vic Weiss as the guy behind these very high-profile guys, what Leroy is saying, the detective is saying, is that that's all our performance because the truth of it is that he's a front for this other guy. Yeah, I mean, even in the papers, Vic calls himself a millionaire. You know, he always wanted to, you know, present himself as, you know, incredibly successful, always had a lot of cash, jewelry, Rolex, Rolls-Royce. But yeah, it was all a front and people discovered, including his family, after he died. And just to describe the body language and the power dynamic that Leroy is remembering from when they interview Vic's wife. Jerry Cutter is there. Yeah. And she, Vic's wife, is basically asking with her body what she should be saying to the police. Yes. He believes that Cutter might have been involved in setting up Vic, and it's because another witness came forward. Susan Brow, who was an ex-girlfriend of Jerry Cutter. And her witness testimony was that day, June 13th, the day Vic went missing. Oh, wow. That he showed up in the Rolls Royce in the driveway, and she saw him pull in and a Cadillac pull in behind it. And two guys, one, a large 6'7", blonde-haired guy, talked to Vic and convinced him to get back in the driver's seat. And that was the last time anyone saw him. And now it's my turn to read from the police report, because this is what Detective Orozco says. Quote, According to her, sometime before darkness, she saw the concerned Rolls pull up and park behind her residence. Just as the car parked, a late model white Cadillac pulled up behind the rolls. Two Caucasian men emerged from the Cadillac wearing three-piece suits and dark sunglasses. A short conversation appeared to follow. Weiss then got back into the rolls as the driver, the large man in the right front passenger seat, the other man in the rear of the rolls. The rolls then followed the Cadillac from the location. End quote. But I'm still left wondering, okay, but why? Why did, allegedly, Jerry Cutter set up Vic Weiss? Well, you remember those alleged ties to the St. Louis outfit? Yes. According to our mobologist, Dan Moldea, you know, Cutter has, you know, family relations that tie back to St. Louis and bookmaking. His cousin served time for illegal gambling, and his uncle was a one-time manager of the Stardust. And, of course, if that is true, then Gerald Cutter, through his family to the stardust, ends up being connected to Tony Spolatro. Exactly. I don't know whether you know this or not, but you only have your f***ing casino because I made that possible. Yeah, and that FBI investigation, which we talked about before, with the NFL and the gambling scheme and Carol Rosenblum, it is worth pointing out that this also connects to this part of the story and to Tony Spolatro because Gerald Cutter apparently also emerges in connection to that. Yeah, this is from Dan Mildea's book. Like Weiss, Cutter had also been mentioned in the 1979 FBI internal report. One car dealer in Las Vegas, Nevada, last name possibly Cutter, is also allegedly involved in this scheme. Cutter had a life insurance policy on Weiss's life and also held the mortgage on his house, the FBI report stated. Which feels like a relevant detail. That in fact, Jerry Cutter, car dealership magnate and guy who was backing Vic Weiss's performance of being a guy who matters, he also stood to profit, literally, from his death. Yeah, I mean, and I think it also shows he answered to somebody else. Right. this gets us to, I think, and there are lots of contenders for this, but I think this is the most damning piece of evidence in this entire investigation that we've been doing here. Because this involves an audio tape and a device that turns out to be quite consequential. Yeah, I mean, Leroy, they talked about being stonewalled by the FBI and law enforcement across Southern California and Vegas, but they got connected to a cop investigating mob activity out of the Tower of Pizza Hangout. And so they got a wire from the guys talking at the restaurant. They were wired into Spilotro there. And one of the conversations they had was Spilotro asked, the person he's talking, is the Vic thing taken care of? And he says, the guy says, it's done. I guess I just have to borrow the quote that we just heard at the end there, which is, it seems like the Vic thing has finally been taken care of. We have a guy saying on a wire to Tony Spolatro, to Joe Pesci, it's done. So finally, here it is. It's done. No, not even close. So I am trying to be done here. And I just got to say that Detective Orozco, Leroy, is on my side on this because he has now said, thanks to this wire that was being worn, that he now has been persuaded that Vic Weiss, apparently, was skimming. And Tony Spolatro, the famous Tony Spolatro, is the guy who ordered the hit, right? That's what Detective Orozco has concluded. Yeah, and it was that, that's the most personal thing you can do is to skim. And so that's why they had to send a message, a violent murder, and George Tarkanian thinks the same thing. I knew the mob probably, or someone from organized crime killed him. By the way, he was killed. He was shot in execution style. He was thrown in the back of his Rolls Royce. We didn't know why, but no one sent a message to my dad. That had nothing to do with it. Winning time will make you think like, oh my God, Jerry Tarkanian got the message. I'm staying here. I'm not messing with you. That had nothing to do with it. Yeah, it is funny to remember. Oh yeah, we started this conversation with the Lakers. I've talked to a lot of players, people involved who came in after the fact. And yeah, a lot of people believe that Vic was warned. They didn't want Jerry to leave. And the Lakers, obviously, are their own sliding door scenario here as they were trying to replace their head coach, Jerry West, with Jerry Tarkanian. But now we're getting to the part of our story here where Detective Leroy Orozco even identifies the contract killer. The contract killer, he believes, carried out the hit that maybe only incidentally kept Tark away from the Lakers job and the NBA. And the suspect in question was that aforementioned 6'7 blonde guy whose name, it turns out, is Glenn Donald Stewart. But Leroy was never able to bring a case forward in the justice system about this, which eats away at him still today, even though he was pushing and pushing for it up until his own retirement back in 92. And if you are wondering why that effort finally stalled out, it is because one day Leroy Orozco found out that Glenn Donald Stewart not unlike Vic Weiss, suddenly could not be located anymore and was later found dead. No one disputes that the mob killed Vic Weiss at this point. We've established that. But the intent is what's not done. That's the thing that everybody can forever cling to, right? Like their own pet theory that maybe serves their own personal interests. Yes. I mean, I think some people know. I mean, Vic had a lot of friends, and nobody seems to know what happened. And I think, you know, I think the answer is out there. Yeah, I mean, I dare say the answer has already been presented. But what seems clear, though, is that, like, the reason you have been spending so much of your life looking into this is because what is not in dispute is that modern Las Vegas, as it stands today, the new home of an NBA franchise, as well as an NFL franchise and an NHL franchise and a Major League Baseball franchise and the college basketball tournament, March Madness in a couple years. All of that was built on the body in the trunk of that Rolls Royce. And this is obviously horrific for Vic Weiss's own family to contemplate, but that dude does deserve some amount of credit for this strange and very mobbed up chapter of sports history in America. Yeah, he took two bullets, you know, for this to happen. God. Yeah. I mean, this is the turning point. You know, this is the legitimization of Vegas after this. You know, Tark's staying there. And, you know, the running rebels, you know, rising in national prominence. What's interesting, as I realize now at the very end here, is that I've been obsessed myself with investigating gambling scandals and organized crime and corruption. And meanwhile, the place American sports is turning to next, Las Vegas, I cannot think about without thinking of Tony Spalatro now and Joe Pesci and the trunk of that Rolls Royce. And I have you, Sean, to thank for it. Which is to say that that story, not done. But this episode, finally, it is done. It is done. Thank you. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.
