Satan's Playground: Mobsters and Movie Stars at America's Greatest Gaming Resort
About this ebook
Less than a year after Agua Caliente opened, gangsters held up its money-car in transit to a bank in San Diego, killing the courier and a guard and stealing the company money pouch. Paul J. Vanderwood weaves the story of this heist gone wrong, the search for the killers, and their sensational trial into the overall history of the often-chaotic development of Agua Caliente, Tijuana, and Southern California. Drawing on newspaper accounts, police files, court records, personal memoirs, oral histories, and “true detective” magazines, he presents a fascinating portrait of vice and society in the Jazz Age, and he makes a significant contribution to the history of the U.S.-Mexico border.
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About the author
Paul J. Vanderwood (1929-2011) was Professor Emeritus of Mexican History at San Diego State University. He was the author of several books including Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint, also published by Duke University Press; The Power of God against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century; Disorder and Progress: Bandits, Police, and Mexican Development; and Border Fury: A Picture Postcard Record of Mexico’s Revolution and U.S. War Preparedness, 1910–1917.
