Phil Van Cise: Scourge of Denver's Underworld

The defense soon got Van Cise banned from the courtroom, citing a tenuous connection between him and one of the victims' attorneys. Special prosecutors were appointed, and Van Cise was forced to work behind the scenes. He seethed in silence as the bunco attorneys defamed him repeatedly in open court, insinuating that he was at "the bloody battle of Ludlow" and other canards.

Twenty defendants went to trial in early 1923. Several others had been turned over to other jurisdictions or jumped bond; one had been declared insane. The smart money in the Larimer gin mills was running 2-1 in favor of the gang walking free. Sure, Van Cise had his spies and machines, but money counted more than evidence. And word had it that cash was already being waved in front of the jury pool: five thousand for a hung jury, ten thousand for acquittal.

The bunco prosecution was the longest criminal trial the state had ever seen. The parade of witnesses marched on for weeks, a relentless presentation of a sprawling conspiracy to defraud. It was front-page stuff — startling, contentious, lurid.

The prosecutors used victim testimony and captured stock equipment to explain the scam. They introduced surveillance reports and documents seized from Blonger's office, including his own address book, to tie the Fixer and Duff to the steerers and spielers. The defense attorneys postured and provoked; tempers soared, and esteemed members of the bar invited each other to step outside. But each day the noose of evidence tightened.

Van Cise had two aces in the hole. The first, the Dictaphone, was mostly bluff; the hard-to-decipher snatches of conversation his team collected were never actually introduced into evidence. But they were useful as a deterrent, to discourage defendants from taking the stand and spinning their own version of what went on in Blonger's office.

The second ace was a killer.

After the arrests, Blonger had failed to bail out one of his top men, Len Reamey, alias J.K. Ross, a former racetrack tout who'd worked his way up from steerer to top "bookmaker" — the clerk who handles the boodle. Aggrieved and suffering the pangs of opium withdrawal, Reamey cut a deal with Van Cise for complete immunity in exchange for sharing his knowledge of the inner workings of the gang. And Reamey knew plenty.

He knew who'd played what part in dozens of scores. He knew that no con man could operate in Denver without Duff's okay. He knew how the dough was divvied up — about 40 percent to the steerer, 15 to the spieler, 5 to the bookmaker and nearly a third to Blonger and Duff for "overhead," including the cop payoffs. Reamey figured the bosses pocketed 10 percent apiece and spread the rest in graft.

The defense attorneys attacked Reamey mercilessly. They called him a liar and his wife a whore. They professed shock at his arrest record and his dope use. Reamey shot back that the pipe and smoking materials found in his safety-deposit box belonged to Kid Duff and Jackie French. (GAY OPIUM PARTY BARED, a Post headline declared.)

Van Cise's book doesn't dwell on the danger Reamey faced by testifying. But Reamey's own version of a conversation he had with French, which has survived in a little-known manuscript collection dealing with the bunco ring, clarifies matters. French visited Reamey at the county jail before the trial began. "Looks like you are going to send everybody to the pen," he said. "Would you consider going out on bond?"

"I would not go out if the back door was open," Reamey replied.

"We will give you money to leave the country."

"Absolutely not. I will not consider it."

"You may not go to the pen in Colorado," French went on, "but you know Duff can frame up a sucker and get you brought back to Omaha, and the fixers can bury you there. And if he can't do it in Omaha, Joe Rush and I can do it in Chicago."

Reamey told French to do what he liked. He was going to testify. And he did, burying Duff, Blonger, French and the rest. At least one of Blonger's associates tried to bring a gun into the courtroom while Reamey was on the stand, but he was frisked and arrested.