Pablo Torre Finds Out - "Don't Go to the Lakers": We Unraveled the Case of the Mob Hit That Saved Vegas

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

When the body of a Vegas power broker showed up in the back of a Rolls Royce in 1979, the new sports capital of America was born. Why the hell did superstar UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian's guy really get whacked? Correspondent Sean Carey unearths police reports, a thrown fight against Sugar Ray Leonard... and a bag man on the skim who re-legitimized Sin City — and proves HBO's hit show wrong.(Additional reporting by Kris Belman) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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-tie 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 Spalachro 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, hit 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 going to 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. 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 to start as casino kind of outpost. It's exploded, you know, over the last few decades into, you know, this mecca, this 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 2008, the Oakland days are relocating, and Las Vegas just want to bid to host a final four. And F-1.

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 Tarkany, the head coach at a run-and-reau. I mean, don't let them con you, by the way, about talking about any experience, 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. It made it to four final fours, 1977, 87, 1987, 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 this. They were one of the most electric, high-flying teams, known for breaking offensive records. At one point, you know, scoring 110 points per game without a three-point. line. And I think what people haven't experienced is how entertaining they were. 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 the bastard and one of us break out before you get slammed up at the

Walter Payton, you know, Frank Sinatra was one of the biggest boosters. Wuppie Goldberg, Eddie Murphy, Mike Tyson, Tupac was wearing the gear. Unbelievable. They had the number of one merchandise revenue of any program, you know, 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 out this plane, it was all business now. You know, there's no more, fun, you know, came out here to do a job. It was like NWA and meets casino. Yeah, look, the branding exercise of you want us to.

to be the bad guy and 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, you know, he was unapologetically himself.

He was, you know, so eccentric. He was, you know, 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 was 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 Ruggish. 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 Tarkini and in 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 Tarkhanian 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 Tarkhanian is a very, you know, formidable woman.

You know, she was a very successful teacher in her own right. And she was very religious. You know, she always had a rosary beads 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. 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 grand a year, 700 grand guaranteed over five years, 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 L.A. 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 Bus, played by John C. Riley, at this restaurant, secretly closing The Deal with Jerry Tarkhanian

and Vic Weiss. Did we just make a deal? That's what it sounded like to me. A couple cars, 750. Are we done? 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 Cook and Jerry Bus at Cook'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 Tarkini 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 opened 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 Vickwis 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 L. Roy Orozco, who's a legend. You know, he's known for a lot of famous L.A. homicide investigations, the Nightstalker.

He was there for the Bobby Kennedy assassination. From perspective of a investigator, you know when you get to call, it's what it involves. But it's eerie when you get to the parking structure at the Universal Shardney. The park was walked around and you see it all by itself, the Rose Royce sitting there. As you close you get, you can smell it. 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 Roscoe's police report.

rumor coming out of Las Vegas was that Vegas people were very upset about the possibility of Tarkhanian leaving Vegas. All indications were that Tarkinian was going to accept the Laker position. It was just a matter of Wies negotiating the proper contract. Some sources believe this was the reason he was killed. Who were those guys? Come on. What 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 Tark to stay in Vegas. They wanted Jerry Tarkanyan, 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 Tark 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 Buses business card on Vic Weiss disfigured face and it's there to send a message to Jerry Tarkhanian. It's a warning 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 of this research indicates that turns out there's a lot more to the story. So it is no exaggeration to say that our correspondent today, film producer Sean Kerry, has spent years examining what is on one level a pretty simple story. Because there is no doubt that the murder of Jerry Tarkhanian'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, 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 Weese's body into that truck, scaring Tark away from the NBA and, in a sliding door's 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'd 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 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 Tarkhanian family, and they all have different stories, but we talked to George Tarkhanian. 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 Spalatro. And Anthony Spalatro, to be very clear, for those not familiar with Anthony Spalatro, is who? I mean, he's probably the most infamous, I guess you could call him crime boss 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***a 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, as a small community, they, you know, knew some of these people that see them 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 too much later.

The mob in Las Vegas kept a little profile. And they did that for a reason. They got away with so much because they kept a little 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 fucking tough guy told my friend, stick it up his f*** ass. And this is where, by the way, the blending of fiction and nonfiction is a bit of a throughline in the story. The cinematic adaptation of real-life events that are also fucking insane. Yeah. How central? How close is Vic Weiss to the life of Jerry Tarkhanian 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, Rogitz, 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 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 he's, he's, he's, he had a guy. deeply personal relationships in which he's kind of my age and he's functioning as in, 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 took into job because I remember going on a trip with him to Southern California, and we actually traveled around Pallas Verde's 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 think 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 one of the. the focuses of this investigation involved boxing. Vic Weiss, who was apparently lots people's guy as well, not just Tark's guy, but these other boxers 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 Munez, who was a 1968 Olympian. He was a title contender, four-time welterweight title contender. Hello again, everyone. We're coming to you.

Shortly, you'll be seeing Sugar Ray Leonard against Armando Munoz a 10 round. Of course, there's been a growing... There are two detectives work in the case, Detective Sergeant John Helvin, and our guy, we heard earlier, Detective Leroy Orozco, and specifically, they looked into a fight between Mando Munoz 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. Mando 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. They have apparently stopped the fight. I don't believe this. At the end of six rounds, it 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 ended. We've got to get to the bottom of this. We got to get to the bottom of this.

I mean, Cocell kind of spells it out. Yeah, yeah. Should that fight have been stopped? Did you want it stopped? Well, I personally didn't. My corner said, why go on with a bad... I have a bad elbow. I have a tendonitis or something like that.

Every time I extended it, it's just an available pain. I want to go on, you know, and my corner says, 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 fishing. You know, it's like, what are we doing? You're playing sugar Ray Leonard.

Yeah, I mean, he's never stopped to fight before. So I get why Detective Orozcoe, Leroy, is very interested in this. And it sounds like, yeah, he had follow-up questions of his own. As did 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 now.

And he starts with we interviewed with Mondo. The boxer? Yeah. He says, I said, I was good. I told him I was okay. He said, no, you're hurting. I want to save your life from those. So he threw it?

Did he do a talent? Yeah. And you see the, when you see the film, you see Vic talking to Mondo in the corner. In between rounds? In between rounds. They call it, and they call it a fight. Yeah.

So 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 Mando 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. That would have been, yeah, that would have been a, you know,

that's what they do. So he would have been doing that with their support. And even Lois Tarkhanian, she had heard a rumor. There's so many rumors that maybe, you know, they had mob wanted to buy into a boxer, the Vic didn't want to let them in and refused. And they interviewed a guy named Harry Kabakoff. 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 Kabukov, Wies made his money betting on some of the fights. He would occasionally bet against his fighter knowing he was going to lose. But Kabakoff 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 Weese's murder. The question of why organized crime would kill the guy who was allegedly fixing fights for them to pay off his debts and 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 Roselle suspended future Hall of Famers Paul Horning and Alex Karris 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 Bachelors 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 bagman 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 Tarkhanian mentioned being in school with the nephew of Anthony Spilatro, you know, he was intertwined with the Stardust. I spoke to a journalist named Dan Moldeia 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, Leffey Rosenthal, the Robert De Niro character in Casino. And Tony Spalachro was his enforcer. Of course, played by Joe Pesci. Yeah. What happened to the fucking tough guy told my friend, stick it up his f*** ass. So just to recap here, Moldeia, the mobologist, believes that Tony Spillotro, Joe Pesci and Casino, put a hit on Vic Weiss because Vic Weiss was skimming money.

Yes. He was skimming. He got caught. He got wax. 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 founded a truck of his car at the Sheridan Universal, that sounds like a Tony Spilatro 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 it 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, 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 Wiese would be a central possible witness for the government, and both Carol Rose and Vick Wiese both mysteriously, suspiciously get killed within two months of each other. And so, Detective Leroy Orozco, is this the thing?

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 bagman

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, a 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 brought him into, you know, present him as a general manager and give him a cut of all these dealerships.

The spin-off 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 Wiese. And so does this pass the smell test? You know, Leroy told me a story about interviewing one of these guys who worked at Cutterford 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 out of 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 hotspots, Moni's Steakhouse in Encino and across, you know, LA and the Tower of Pizza in Vegas. And in the parking lot, all these hangouts were, you know, Cutter Ford tags. Cutter Ford, you know, Rose 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 Rose Royce. Yeah.

And they went on to interview Rose about it, Vick's wife. One of the first things we did was go to the Vicks house to talk his wife. There was about ten guys in there. Some suited up or not that we introduced a guy named Jerry Cutter. He owns the Rose Royce of the dealerships. So that's all we know. He was already in the house. He's there.

So we took her aside to the, like, the dining room. First thing he knows, I'm like talking to you. I ask you a question, and you turn around and look at a cutter. So we picked up our partner was on this side. And he sees. Every time she turned, he'd go, or what this 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 pretence of his, getting the friendship with the Lakers, the Rams, was all the front. He didn't have anything. Everything he had was Cutters. Wait, 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 affront 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 Vick's wife,

Jerry Cutter is there. Yeah. And she, Vick'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 Vick 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, six-seven blonde-haired guy, talked to Vic and convince 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 parked 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 Moldeia, you know, Cutter has, you know, family relations that tie back to 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 Spilatro. Exactly. I don't know whether you notice or not, but you only have your f-cassino 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 Spilatro because Gerald Cutter apparently also emerges in connection to that. Yeah, this is from Dan Molde'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 magnet 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 turned up 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 Spolotro there.

And one of the conversations they had was Spolotro 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 Spilatro 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 Arrof, 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 Vickwis, apparently, was skimming. And Tony Spalatro, the famous Tony Spalatro, 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 Tarkhanian, thinks the same thing. I knew De Ma probably, or someone from organized crime, killed him, by the way, he was killed. He was shot in execution style. He was throwing in the back of his world's voice.

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 Tarkini got the message. I'm staying here. I'm not messing with it. 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 Tarkhanian. 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 Park away from the Lakers job and the NBA. And the suspect in question was that aforementioned six-foot-seven 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 were 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 of 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 Vicuisse'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 Splatrow Dow and Joe Pesci and the trunk of that rolls Royce. And I have you, Sean, to thank for it.

But just 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 Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.