I'll Do My Own Damn Killin' [Hardcover]

Gary Sleeper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 28, 2006

People know of the notorious Benny Binion for opening the Horseshoe and becoming the most successful casino owner in Las Vegas. But before he became the patron saint of World Series Poker, Binion lead the Texas underground in a vicious, nefarious gambling war that lasted over fifteen years. With electrifying details and piquant style, author Gary Sleeper presents the previously unseen details of Benny Binion's life leading up to his infamous Las Vegas days, when he became the owner of the most successful casino in the world.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Barricade Books; 1st ed edition (August 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569803218
• ISBN-13: 978-1569803219
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #498,357 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Goodfellas with a Texas-twang!, October 17, 2006

By 

Desiree Leverett (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I'll Do My Own Damn Killin' (Hardcover)

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Texas Gambling War: he who lives by the shotgun dies by the shotgun (or nitro), December 11, 2006

By 

John (Southern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I'll Do My Own Damn Killin' (Hardcover)

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. <- Appropriate word considering what rats the "soldiers" were. It was double-cross-o-rama.) Although it has 16 pages of photos, I wanted even more as I read about these formidable characters, some of whom are not pictured, and most of whom succumbed to lead poisoning. In a refreshingly realistic observation, the author points out that they were lousy shots. The book is a fun little romp until it gets to what happened to a 36-year-old Mildred Noble, who really had nothing to do with any of this.

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.]

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Texas Mob Boss in Dallas & Las Vegas, January 4, 2008

By 

Cindy W. Bonner (New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: I'll Do My Own Damn Killin' (Hardcover)

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.