I'll Do My Own Damn Killin': Benny Binion, Herbert Noble, and the Texas Gambling War

By Gary W. Sleeper

Book Overview

In the early days, before he founded the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas and became the patron saint of the World Series of Poker, cowboy Benny Binion was a horse trader, a bootlegger, and the "boss gambler" of Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. This book traces Binion's rise to power in the Dallas underworld during World War II. By 1946, more than two dozen "casinos" operated illegally in downtown Dallas in hotel suites, and Benny Binion owned at least half of them. The cowboy's only true rival for gambling supremacy in Texas was his former partner, Herbert Noble. For the first time ever, Gary Sleeper reveals the intricacies of the bloody feud between Binion and Noble, and their brutal war for control of Dallas and Fort Worth. Included are details of the thirteen attempts on Noble's life, the tragic murder of his wife, and Noble's bizarre plot to gain revenge by bombing Las Vegas from a private airplane.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1569804664
• ISBN13: 9781569804667
• Release Date: June 2012
• Publisher: Barricade Books
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

I'LL DO MY OWN DAMN KILLIN

I'll Do My Own Damn Killin'GREAT BOOK! MOST FUN I HAVE EVER HAD READING A BOOK.

Texas Mob Boss in Dallas & Las Vegas

If you have found yourself in Soprano-withdrawal, this book is for you. "I'll Do My Own Damn Killin'" is a raucous gangland tale of a long and bitter feud between two former partners for control of the Dallas gambling scene of the 1930s and 40s. Most people know Lester Ben Binion as the Las Vegas icon who owned some of the early casinos there, with the downtown Horseshoe Club being the most famous and longest-lived. But before his Las Vegas days he was known as the Dallas "boss gambler." He had most of Dallas law enforcement "fixed" so he could run his numbers, his policy wheels, and his poker games at the Southland Hotel without fear of arrest. He was temperamental, braggadocios, but also jovial in a sinister sort of way. The title of the book comes from a reply he gave when asked if he had ever hired a hit man. Herbert Noble ran crap games in downtown Dallas and soon came to resent the 25-percent protection money he had to pay to Binion. He had dreams of being the Dallas gambling kingpin himself, and formed a partnership with a like-minded underworld financier. Soon the gambling wars had begun, with one Noble partner after another turning up dead, and back and forth contracts put out on various hardcases from both sides. Noble himself had no less than thirteen assassination attempts made on him. As the author says, "By the early Fall of 1950, planning to kill Herbert Noble had practically become a cottage industry in Dallas and Fort Worth." Tragedy finally struck when Noble's 36-year-old wife made the fatal mistake of borrowing her husband's booby-trapped car. The explosion was heard eight miles away and the blast shattered windows for blocks. Her mangled body was laid to rest in a solid copper casket said to be the most expensive one ever sold in Dallas. After this incident, the hatred that consumed Noble escalated the war and led to a hellish confusion of such grisly murders and maiming that it's hard to believe that this actually happened in Texas and not in some 12-hour Francis Ford Coppola trilogy. Notorious people move in and out of the pages, people like Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, Bugsy Siegal, Meyer Lansky, Estes Kefauver, and even one Jacob Rubenstein, aka Jack Ruby. Finally by the end of the book, the good guys have arrived on the scene, the Texas Rangers, who put a stop to the violence. Thus ended the bloodiest two decades in Dallas history. The appendix contains testimonies, transcripts of recorded conversations, and progress reports on some of the still-unsolved murders from this shocking, full-scale gangland war that happened in Texas.

I Knew Benny Binion

This is a great book. I knew Benny Binion. My new novel, Texas Poker Wisdom, has several stories about Benny, including the day I met him in 1960. When Binion moved to Vegas, he took a giant step down being a casino owner considering the many things he controlled in Dallas and Ft. Worth and elsewhere. The gambling wars in Dallas and Ft. Worth are hard to believe. Mr. Sleeper has written a book any Texan, gambler, or curious reader will love. I loved this book. Johnny HughesTexas Poker Wisdom

The Texas Gambling War: he who lives by the shotgun dies by the shotgun (or nitro)

Although that fellow on the cover could not read, he was making over a million dollars a year from illegal gambling --in 1940! (That was a lot of dough!) Anyone encroaching on his business was killed in "a clear cut case of self-defense." ;^) The title is both a quote and a lie. He is portrayed as a self-made man in a world of treachery. This is more than a chronology of a gangland war; it is a window on another place and time: Texas in the old days, where you could get your tail kicked just for having a tail. ( Other notable persons in this story: Jacob Rubenstein (aka Jack Ruby), Clyde Barrow of Bonnie & Clyde fame, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade (as in "Roe vs. Wade"), and the "Two Tonys," whom I suspect inspired the twins in Mario Puzo's novel "Omerta." This is well-researched, well-written, and it's only got four typos --not bad copy editing by today's crummy standards. Includes a good index. One appendix is an interesting transcript of a bugged conversation. Got to agree with the suggestion that there is the potential for a movie here. [Confidential to Gary Sleeper: put your fishing pole away and write us another one.]

Goodfellas with a Texas-twang!

Who needs fictionalized characters when you have real-life crime bosses like Herbert Noble and Benny Binion to write about! We have all read and watched movies about organized crime and it usually involves men with last names ending in vowels living in New York, Chicago, etc. However, there is something to be said when the Italian mafia is sent packing when they tried to get involved in the action in Texas - now we're talking about some rough characters, but you are going to find few rougher than the criminals discussed in this book. The amount of detail Sleeper explores in this book pulls the veil off of the underpinnings of the Gambling War and organized crime in Texas. But most impressive about this book is not a simple re-hashing of facts, but revealing the story of two men, jocking for position in organized crime in Texas, and so full of hate for each other that it consumes them and almost everyone around them. The amount of violence and factual accounts of murder, conspiracies, political pay-offs, etc., which took place so publicly, were laid out by Sleeper in such a matter-of-fact way, that you can't believe all this took place only about 50 to 60 years ago. This book is about the ultimate grudge-match between two larger than life characters, who tried to have each other killed so many times and in so many different ways, that you get so caught up in the hunt more so than the result. If this book is not picked up by Hollywood, they are missing out on a chance to depict a true-life story of gambling, hate, violence, and the sad reality of politics and the justice system. As you can tell, I think this is a Damn good book.