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The Mafia Chronicles: Schedule Set For Las Vegas MobWorld Summit

By Larry Henry

The panel discussions slated for the first-ever MobWorld Summit next month cover the nation’s deadly Mob map.

The Summit brings together some of the county’s top Mob experts for story-telling and book signings at the Plaza hotel-casino in downtown Las Vegas on Father’s Day weekend, from June 15-17. Also on tap is an evening reception and tour at The Mob Museum, featuring guest of honor Richard Bryan, a former Nevada governor and U.S. senator.

The Summit is open to the public. Tickets, which include admission to panel discussions at the Plaza and The Mob Museum reception, are available at https://bit.ly/2pMNSVQ

Mob experts from Los Angeles and Las Vegas in the West to Hot Springs in the South to New York in the East will be on hand to discuss their experiences.

Below is a tentative schedule of the panels at the 2018 Summit. I will serve as a moderator, along with Geoff Schumacher, senior director of content for The Mob Museum, and Casey Robert McBride, an expert on racketeer Frank Costello.

Saturday, June 16, Plaza hotel-casino

10 a.m.: Frank Cullotta on the real “Casino,” moderated by Geoff Schumacher

11 a.m.: Gary Jenkins on the Kansas City-Las Vegas skim, moderated by Casey Robert McBride

11:30 a.m.: J. Michael Niotta on Los Angeles Mob wars, moderated by Geoff Schumacher

Noon: Robert Raines, on Hot Springs gangsters, moderated by Larry Henry and Casey Robert McBride

Sunday, June 17, Plaza hotel-casino

9:30 a.m.: Ronald Fino on going undercover, moderated by Gary Jenkins

10:30 a.m.: Bill Friedman on the mobsters who built Las Vegas, moderated by Larry Henry

11:30 a.m.: Pamela Payton on “The Frank Rosenthal Show,” moderated by Larry Henry

Noon: Cathy Scott on Mob daughter Susan Berman’s murder and the Robert Durst investigation, moderated by Geoff Schumacher

For more information on each of the panelists, click here.

Robert Raines is a recent addition to the lineup. Author of “Hot Springs: From Capone to Costello,” he also is director of The Gangster Museum of America in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Before Las Vegas became the popular tourist destination that it is today, Hot Springs was home to numerous illegal but open casinos and was a favorite vacation spot for many mobsters, including Al Capone, Frank Costello and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel.

Raines and other experts, including special guests Luellen Smiley and Chris Kasparoza, will be available between panel discussion to meet with those who attend the event.

Smiley is the daughter of Allen Smiley, a Hollywood partner of Siegel’s, and is the author of “Cradle of Crime” about coming to grips with her father’s past. Allen Smiley was seated on the sofa beside Siegel on the night in 1947 when Siegel was shot to death in Beverly Hills.

Kasparoza, a journalist and fiction writer, is working with John A. “Junior” Gotti on the Witsec Mafia documentary regarding the federal Witness Protection Program, or witsec, meaning witness security. The Hollywood film “Gotti,” based on Junior Gotti’s book “Shadow of My Father,” opens the weekend of the Summit.

Also on hand at the Summit will be merchants with Mob-related T-shirts and other items for sale.

Plans for future Summits include rotating the annual event to cities with a significant Mob history from Los Angeles to New York.

Larry Henry’s YouTube channel includes videos he shot of mob sites in Las Vegas, the apartment building in Santa Monica, California, where Whitey Bulger was arrested, and the remote Arkansas airport where Barry Seal transported drugs into the U.S for the Medellin Cartel. Subscribe HERE.

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