Ruby Kolod and the Desert Inn

Ruby Kolod. Las Vegas Casino owner.
He was born Rubie Kolodidzky in New York City on July 27, 1910, to Abe and Tessie Kolod. He attended high school for two years and then quit.
In July of 1929 he was arrested in New York for assault and robbery and then arrested again in August, under the name Ruby Cohen, for breaking and entering and sentenced to the state reform school in Elmira for a three-year term.
He escaped the reform school and fled to Cleveland where was arrested in 1929 under the name Ruby Spector, as a fugitive from Justice. He was arrested again in 1932 under the name Jack Lewis on a bootlegging charge.
He married Esther Seltzer in Ohio in 1932 and moved to Cleveland Heights.
At around this time he started with working with Moe Dalitz, a local gambler.

During World War Two he enlisted in the army and was stationed stateside. When the war ended, he oversaw the Pettibone Club from 1946 until he left Ohio for Vegas. Moe Dalitz had worked there from 1939 until 1949.
Supposedly Kolod and George Gordon managed many of the Cleveland Syndicate illegal casinos from the late 1930s until 1950.
In 1945 Wilbur Clark used the $1.5 million proceeds from the sale his share of the El Rancho Vegas and another casino to begin building the Desert Inn on what would become the fifth casino Las Vegas Strip.
Construction begin in 1946, the same year, “Bugsy” Siegel opened the Flamingo.
However, in 1947 Clark ran out of money because post-World War II building materials are expensive and scarce. Moe Dalitz, provide the additional funding, for a three-quarters interest in the DI. Dalitz partners were Kolod, who moved to Las Vegas in late 1949 and Morris Kleinman
Desert Inn opened on April 24, 1950, with Kolod having an 8 percent share in it.
On paper, George Gordon, a Cleveland hood, held the remaining ownership of the hotel for the mob in Cleveland.
In June 1959, Robert Sunshine, a disbarred lawyer persuaded Kolod to join him in an oil-lease investment in Nebraska. Kolod and Willie “Icepick” Alderman paid $78,150 in cash for a joint interest that.
The money was skimmed from the counting room at the Desert Inn.
About $10, 000 went to buy out another partner and the remainder, $68,150 was turned over to Sunshine to be held in escrow pending transfer of warranted title
Sunshine took the escrow money to pay off encumbrances on the oil properties, and by October 1960 the escrow money was completely exhausted.
Kolod and Alderman flew Sunshine’s office in Denver and demanded their money back, the full purchase price, either in a lump sum or in oil payments, because Sunshine had given personal guarantee that the deal was flawless.
The money never arrived and Kolod and Alderman began calling and threatening Sunshine several times a month. What they didn’t know was that the FBI had bugged the phones at the Desert Inn executives’ offices and was recording all the conversations between them.
In June of 1961, Kolod called Sunshine and told him to give the money to Kolod’s nephew who would be attending a dentists’ convention in nearby Boulder, Colorado.
The nephew returned empty handed, and it was at that point that
Kolod called Sunshine to tell him that the matter had been discussed with Alderman and they had decided “to send a lawyer from Chicago to take care of” him.
On July 6, 1961, Felix Alderisio and Americo DiPietto showed up in Sunshine’s office.
Alderisio had known Kolod and Alderman for ten years, and a week before the visit to Denver he had been a guest at the Desert Inn where Kolod paid Alderisio $16,600.
According to Sunshine, Alderisio introduced himself, sat down, and stated: “Ruby sent us. We came here to kill you”
After over an hour of discussion, Alderisio told Sunshine that only Kolod could save him. At Sunshine’s suggestion, Alderisio called the Concord Hotel in the Catskills Mountain in New York where Kolod and Alderman were on Vacation with their family’s
Sunshine was put on the phone and Kolod told him that “he and Alderman had sent Alderisio to let [Sunshine] know that there was no fooling around; that they meant business.”
He was given a week to come up with the money. Before Alderisio left he told Sunshine that if he had to come back for the money, he would kill him whether he got the money or not.
In December of 1962, Sunshine was indicted for embezzlement of funds from a Dr. W. S. McClymonds of Denver which led to his disbarment and to Kolod, Alderman, Alderisio and Di Pietto to be indicted for extorting Sunshine.
The case ended in 1964 with Kolod being sentenced to a term of four years and a fined of $7,500; Alderman got three years and a fined of $5,000; and Alderisio was given four and one-half years and a fine of $7,500.
In early 1965, Kolod managed to appeal his case and was released on a $35,000 bond, but the appeal looked bleak.