Lou Blonger
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Lou Blonger (May 13, 1849 – April 20, 1924), born Louis Herbert Belonger, was a Wild West saloonkeeper, gambling-house owner, and mine speculator, but is best known as the kingpin of an extensive ring of confidence tricksters that operated for more than 25 years in
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. His " Million-Dollar Bunco Ring" was brought to justice in a famous trial in 1923. Blonger's gang set up rooms resembling stock exchanges and betting parlors that were used by several teams to run "big cons". The goal of the con was to convince tourists to put up large sums of cash in order to secure delivery of stock profits or winning bets. The depiction of the "Wire Con" seen in the movie ''
The Sting ''The Sting'' is a 1973 American caper film. Set in 1936, it involves a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss ( Robert Shaw). The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who had dir ...
'' is a fairly accurate representation of a typical big con. Blonger had longstanding ties to numerous Denver politicians and law enforcement officials, including the mayor and the chief of police. In 1922, however, District Attorney Philip S. Van Cise bypassed the Denver police and used his own force, funded by donations solicited in secret from local citizens, to arrest 33 con men, including Blonger, and bring the ring to justice.


Childhood

Lou Blonger was born in Swanton, Vermont, on May 13, 1849, the eighth of 13 children. His father, Simon Peter Belonger, was a
stonemason Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone as the primary material. Stonemasonry is the craft of shaping and arranging stones, often together with mortar and even the ancient lime mortar ...
born in
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of French ancestry. His mother, Judith Kennedy, was raised in an
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in
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,
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, Ireland. The Belonger family migrated from Vermont to the
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mining village of
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, when Lou was five years old. After his mother died in 1859, Lou lived with his older sister and her husband for a few years. Around this time Blonger began using a shortened version of the family name (omitting the first "e"), as most of his brothers did. Blonger followed brothers Mike and Joe into the Union Army in 1864. Although he was still three days shy of his 15th birthday, Blonger was mustered in as a fifer at Warren, Illinois, and served a few weeks with Company B of the 142nd Illinois Regiment before suffering a leg injury at White Station, Tennessee. He spent the remainder of his 100-day enlistment recovering at the Marine Hospital in
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. Blonger pension file. At the conclusion of the
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, Blonger reunited with his brother Sam, ten years his elder, who had spent the war years prospecting in
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and driving freight over the mountains in
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and
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. Lou was living in Mount Carroll, Illinois, with a friend named William Livingston when Sam returned. While Sam courted and eventually married Livingston's sister Ella, Lou attended high school. Later Sam sent his brother to study at Bryant & Stratton Business College in Chicago.


In the Western boomtowns

In 1870 Sam and Lou Blonger, along with many of the Livingstons, left the Midwest for the western frontier. Following the path of the newly completed
Transcontinental Railroad A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous rail transport, railroad trackage that crosses a continent, continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks may be via the Ra ...
, they briefly ran a hotel and saloon in Red Oak, Iowa, before moving on to
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and the nearby mining towns of Stockton and Dry Canyon. In a pattern that repeated itself at many of their stops, Lou owned and operated saloons with assorted entertainments while Sam developed mining claims in the surrounding mountains, served occasionally as a peace officer and, in his spare time, raced horses. Similar stops followed in
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; Cornucopia, Nevada; Silver Reef, Utah; and again in Salt Lake City. Moving to
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in 1879, Lou Blonger took a shot at running a
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theater in Georgetown, while Sam made an unsuccessful bid to become the first
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of nearby Leadville. There the Blongers were joined by two other brothers: Simon, the eldest, who worked as superintendent at the Robert E. Lee Mine, and Marvin, the youngest, also a miner. Soon afterward, Sam and Lou were on the move again, this time to the burgeoning
railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...
town of New Albuquerque, New Mexico (soon to merge with Albuquerque).


Albuquerque days

Sam Blonger was appointed
marshal Marshal is a term used in several official titles in various branches of society. As marshals became trusted members of the courts of Middle Ages, Medieval Europe, the title grew in reputation. During the last few centuries, it has been used fo ...
of New Albuquerque in February 1882 and quickly deputized his brother. Newspaper accounts indicate that while the brothers engaged in a few shootouts and jailed their share of vagrants, they also took plenty of time off to pursue other interests:
prospecting Prospecting is the first stage of the geological analysis (followed by Mining engineering#Pre-mining, exploration) of a territory. It is the search for minerals, fossils, precious metals, or mineral specimens. It is also known as fossicking. ...
,
horse racing Horse racing is an equestrian performance activity, typically involving two or more horses ridden by jockeys (or sometimes driven without riders) over a set distance for competition. It is one of the most ancient of all sports, as its bas ...
, and even running a
brothel A brothel, strumpet house, bordello, bawdy house, ranch, house of ill repute, house of ill fame, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activity with prostitutes. For legal or cultural reasons, establis ...
. For a couple of months the Blongers were toasted as the solution to the town's law enforcement problem (a previous marshal, Milt Yarberry, had murdered two citizens). When Sam and Lou were joined briefly by brother Joe, a prospector in the nearby Cerrillos Hills, a local newspaper wrote: "The three brothers are all of them young, nervy and square western men and it would be a good thing for the town if they were all on the police force." In April 1882, Lou Blonger served as acting town marshal while Sam traveled to Denver to negotiate the sale of a mine. Lou's stint roughly coincided with the escape to
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by the Vendetta Posse, composed of
Wyatt Earp Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American lawman in the American West, including Dodge City, Kansas, Dodge City, Wichita, Kansas, Wichita, and Tombstone, Arizona, Tombstone. Earp was involved in the gunfight ...
, Doc Holliday, and five others. Hoping to make their way to legal sanctuary in
Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...
, the men took temporary refuge in New Albuquerque after killing several men to avenge the murder of Wyatt's brother Morgan. According to one theory, Lou or Sam (or both) may have been called upon to provide shelter for the posse members during their stay. Sam Blonger's appointment as marshal of New Albuquerque lasted just five months. He was relieved of his duties while on a trip to
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, and soon afterward, Lou and Sam split up for the only extended period of their adult lives. Lou spent the next few years in the
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towns of Silver City, Deming, and Kingston, living at least part of the time with Frank Thurmond, a well-known gambler, and his wife, Carlotta Thompkins (better known as Lottie Deno). Blonger also got married, probably in 1884, to Emma Loring. In 1888, a woman calling herself Kitty Blonger shot and killed a man who tried to break into her room in a Peach Springs, Arizona, brothel. Lou Blonger soon arrived to arrange her defense, and eventually she was acquitted. Kitty had previously worked in Albuquerque, where she had a soiled reputation. She may have been one of Blonger's madams, but the exact nature of their relationship has not been determined.


The Denver underworld

Soon after the Kitty Blonger trial, Lou Blonger relocated permanently to Denver, rejoining his brother Sam. The pair operated several saloons and gambling houses in the area of Larimer Street and Seventeenth Street over the next few years, including the magnificent Elite Saloon at 1628 Stout Street, with its
mahogany Mahogany is a straight- grained, reddish-brown timber of three tropical hardwood species of the genus ''Swietenia'', indigenous to the AmericasBridgewater, Samuel (2012). ''A Natural History of Belize: Inside the Maya Forest''. Austin: Universit ...
fixtures and
fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...
ed ceiling. In addition to hosting the typical array of
poker Poker is a family of Card game#Comparing games, comparing card games in which Card player, players betting (poker), wager over which poker hand, hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, with varying rules i ...
and faro tables, the Blongers' operation also branched out into the "policy racket" (also known as the " numbers game"), an illegal lottery that paid out on a daily basis. The Blongers aggressively targeted
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s, who were lured to the saloon by a network of henchmen called "steerers" and then cheated out of their money. The sophistication of the swindles developed over time. In the early years they were as simple as marked cards or
loaded dice A die (: dice, sometimes also used as ) is a small, throwable object with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. Dice are used for generating Statistical randomness, random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including List ...
; later, elaborate " big cons" became the Blonger trademark. Denver had a reputation as a wide-open town in the 1890s. Gambling shops bought protection from the police force and the mayor's office and operated openly except when occasional crackdowns were required for show. In addition to making direct payments to authorities, Sam and Lou Blonger also engaged in election fraud for candidates from both parties, from Denver mayor Wolfe Londoner in 1890 to Congressman Robert W. Bonynge in 1902. Testimony in the latter case indicated that Blonger's network of steerers had already been in place for several years. The Blongers' policy shop had plenty of competition, including saloon man Ed Chase and Soapy Smith, the famous Western con man. Smith was an uneasy Blonger ally for a while, but the frequent quarrels between steerers from the rival groups suggested a confrontation was brewing. In 1895 Smith went on a drunken rampage through several Larimer Street establishments including the Blongers' saloon, where police removed him; one account alleged that Lou Blonger was crouched behind the cigar counter, ready to unload a shotgun. In the wake of the rampage, Smith and his brother Bascomb were charged with the attempted murder of a saloon manager. Realizing he had lost control of the situation, Soapy left for the mining boomtown of Skagway, Alaska, in 1897, ceding control of Denver's underworld to Lou Blonger.


The Forest Queen

In 1892 Sam and Lou Blonger found the gold mine they had been looking for in the mountains above
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, and named it the Forest Queen (). Sam and Lou had several partners in the mine at different stages of its development, some of whom were extraordinarily well-placed. Two of them, Neil Dennison and Robert W. Steele, served as
district attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, county prosecutor, state attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or solicitor is the chief prosecutor or chief law enforcement officer represen ...
in Denver during the 1890s. Dennison was the son of a former
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and Steele later became chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court. Jackson. A third partner of note was J. W. McCulloch, manufacturer of Green River Whiskey, who supposedly traded 20 barrels of his product for a piece of Lou Blonger's stake. Once developed, the Forest Queen provided its owners with periods of steady income, if not the fortune that came out of the nearby Independence Mine. Lou and Sam Blonger claimed, bought, traded, and sold several mines in their lives, but both held onto the Forest Queen to the end, leaving their interest to their wives. The Blongers were keen observers in the frequent labor struggles between miners and mine owners. Conditions reached a head in 1894 during the " Battle of Bull Hill", when striking miners took up arms in the hills near the Forest Queen. Lou Blonger and several allies from Denver were frequent visitors to the area during the months-long dispute and its aftermath, calling themselves "detectives".


"Million-Dollar Bunco Ring"

As his gang branched out into bigger and more complicated "big cons" that attracted a more well-to-do clientele, Lou Blonger found he no longer needed his saloon and the relatively small take it provided from card and dice games. Eventually he moved into headquarters in the American National Bank building on Seventeenth Street and styled himself as a mining magnate. A crucial moment in the development of the bunco gang was Blonger's partnership in 1904 with Adolph W. Duff, who had operated his own gang of confidence men in
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before being run out of town by the police. With Duff handling the details of coordinating gang members and scheduling locations for the scams, Blonger was free to conduct the business of schmoozing public officials and bribing law enforcement, all while cultivating the image of a model citizen. In the summertime he made the rounds of friendly politicians and policemen, paying off favors with boxes of
cherries A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus ''Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit). Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet ''Prunus avium'' and the sour ''Prunus cerasus''. The name ...
from his
orchard An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit tree, fruit- or nut (fruit), nut-producing trees that are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also so ...
in suburban Lakewood. For the next 18 years Blonger and his gang operated virtually unmolested by local law enforcement. Gang members were specifically instructed not to solicit victims from Colorado, concentrating instead on out-of-state tourists who would find it difficult to help prosecute a criminal case. Only twice during this period did Blonger come close to arrest. The first was in 1910, when he escaped prosecution in connection with the Maybray Gang of
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. The second occurred in 1915, when Blonger was implicated in a swindling scheme uncovered by carpenters remodeling his office building. Sam Blonger's participation in his brother's gang waned as bigger and more sophisticated cons were developed, and he died in 1914. Meanwhile, Lou Blonger expanded the gang's home base from Denver, where it operated only during the warmest months, southward to
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and
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, where he reportedly compared notes with his old friend Allan Pinkerton, president of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.


Investigation and arrest

During the 1920 primary election for Denver
district attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, county prosecutor, state attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or solicitor is the chief prosecutor or chief law enforcement officer represen ...
, Blonger approached Republican Party candidate Philip S. Van Cise and offered assistance in the way of campaign contributions and votes. To Blonger's surprise, Van Cise turned down his offer, and after his election, Van Cise called Blonger into his office to warn him that one of his goals would be the eradication of Blonger's gang of con men. Recognizing that the police force was in Blonger's pocket, Van Cise undertook a private investigation underwritten by donations from 31 wealthy benefactors. Over the course of a year, his detectives gathered information and watched the habits and movements of the gang members. Van Cise monitored Blonger's trash, spied on him from a building across the street, and had a
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installed surreptitiously inside his office (an action that did not require a search warrant at the time). He also allowed a crooked police
detective A detective is an investigator, usually a member of a law enforcement agency. They often collect information to solve crimes by talking to witnesses and informants, collecting physical evidence, or searching records in databases. This leads the ...
to work inside the district attorney's office, feeding him misleading information to confuse the gang. In the summer of 1922, Van Cise made it well known he was going on a long fishing vacation to the
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, signaling to the gang members that the heat was off their operation. While the con men plied their trade openly on the streets of Denver, Van Cise and his assistants plotted a huge roundup that required a willing victim to help catch the gang in the act. With incredible good fortune, J. Frank Norfleet showed up in Denver at precisely this moment. Norfleet was a
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rancher who had previously been scammed twice by other gangs and was on a nationwide manhunt to bring the men who swindled him to justice. Entering the lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel, Norfleet was hooked by unwitting gang members who saw him as an easy mark, and the plan was set in motion. The posse assembled early on the morning of August 24, 1922: eighteen
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to arrest the gang members and several private citizens to chauffeur them to a holding cell in the basement of the First Universalist Church. Blonger and Duff were among the first to be
arrest An arrest is the act of apprehending and taking a person into custody (legal protection or control), usually because the person has been suspected of or observed committing a crime. After being taken into custody, the person can be question ...
ed; eventually 33 gang members were hauled in before news of the raid reached the street, allowing the remainder of the gang to flee. Although newspapers across the country carried the particulars of the unusual sting, the ''
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'' at first declined to print Blonger's name. Co-publisher Harry Heye Tammen was a close friend of Blonger's, but his partner Fred Bonfils ordered the paper's editors to end the embargo and support Van Cise and the prosecution of the "Million-Dollar Bunco Ring". The nickname the papers hung on the gang didn't tell half the story. The con men's total haul was impossible to determine, but in any case was well in excess of a million dollars per year.


Trial

Blonger had a host of legal talent at his disposal, not to mention a sympathetic judge or two. His personal lawyer, Thomas Ward, Jr., was a former U.S. district attorney who had argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. While the rest of the gang was represented by lesser names, they all benefited from the roadblocks laid down by the lead lawyers in the
conspiracy A conspiracy, also known as a plot, ploy, or scheme, is a secret plan or agreement between people (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder, treason, or corruption, especially with a political motivat ...
case. The defense successfully fought to have Van Cise removed from the prosecution of the case on a technicality, but Van Cise considered this a tactical error, since it allowed him to spend more time devising the prosecution's strategy and less time in court. The case proceeded with two special prosecutors, S. Harrison White, former chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, and Harry C. Riddle, a former district court
judge A judge is a person who wiktionary:preside, presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other Evidence (law), evidence presented by the barris ...
. The
trial In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, w ...
began on February 5, 1923. Day after day the prosecution called a series of victims, bilked out of their life savings, to the stand. The star witness, however, was Len Reamey, one of the gang's
bookmaker A bookmaker, bookie, or turf accountant is an organization or a person that accepts and pays out bets on sporting and other events at agreed-upon odds In probability theory, odds provide a measure of the probability of a particular outco ...
s, fourth in the hierarchy behind Blonger, Duff, and bookmaker Jackie French. Reamey provided the inside story of how the gang defrauded hundreds of victims and divided the spoils among themselves. When the prosecution rested after seven weeks of testimony, the defense attorneys surprised everyone by resting their case without presenting a witness, and further by offering to forgo their closing arguments if the prosecution did the same. Van Cise directed the special prosecutors to call their bluff, and so the case went immediately to the
jury A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence, make Question of fact, findings of fact, and render an impartiality, impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a sentence (law), penalty or Judgmen ...
without any closing arguments. During the trial rumors were rampant that the jury had been fixed. Blonger's men approached at least four of the jurors, but struck out when they attempted to bribe Herman M. Okuly, a
mechanic A mechanic is a skilled tradesperson who uses tools to build, maintain, or repair machinery, especially engines. Formerly, the term meant any member of the handicraft trades, but by the early 20th century, it had come to mean one who works w ...
. Okuly played along with the offer, but immediately reported the deal to his boss, who informed Van Cise. After four days of deliberations, with three jurors still favoring acquittal, Okuly played his ace, telling the holdouts "the difference between me and you is that I got my five hundred dollars, but turned it over to the Judge, and you've still got yours." The three relented, and on March 28, 1923, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against Blonger and the other 19 defendants who remained on trial.


Incarceration and death

Blonger's health, poor even before his arrest, grew increasingly worse during the long trial. In the days after his conviction, while he was still battling to stay out of prison, Blonger received a final blow when the ''
Denver Post ''The Denver Post'' is a daily newspaper and website published in the Denver metropolitan area. it has an average print circulation of 57,265. In 2016, its website received roughly six million monthly unique visitors generating more than 13 mil ...
'' revealed that he had led a double life for 20 years, living with his wife, Nola, on weekends and a mistress, Iola Readon, during the week. Rocked by the revelation, he reconciled with his wife, transferring his property to her in anticipation of his incarceration. As one legal appeal after another failed, Blonger made a final plea to Van Cise to remain free, a plea the district attorney forcefully rejected: Blonger was driven in a special car to the Colorado State Penitentiary on October 18, 1923, and died there on April 20, 1924, succumbing to organ failure. His funeral, held at Denver's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, was attended by hundreds of people from all walks of life. Despite his wishes to be buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery, his wife directed that he be interred at Fairmount Cemetery instead.


Family

Lou Blonger married twice. In 1882 or 1884 in
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
, he married Emma Loring, about whom nothing is known. Blonger received an uncontested divorce in 1889 on the grounds of desertion and quickly married 30-year-old Cora "Nola" Lyons (née Morehouse), who was said in younger days to have been a "successful variety actress." Van Cise, p. 6. Blonger had no children. Upon Nola's death the remainder of Blonger's estate, including his interest in the Forest Queen Mine, passed to her fourth husband, William J. MacAuley.


Notes


References

*Lou Blonger's military pension file
filed 1887-11-05.
* * Available at th
Cripple Creek District Museum
* * * * *


External links


BlongerBros.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blonger, Lou 1849 births 1924 deaths People from Swanton (town), Vermont American confidence tricksters American crime bosses Burials at Fairmount Cemetery (Denver, Colorado) People from Red Oak, Iowa People from Mount Carroll, Illinois 19th-century American criminals 20th-century American criminals People from Shullsburg, Wisconsin Bryant and Stratton College alumni Union army soldiers