On the Coat Tails of a Gambler
You may recall, from the prologue, On the Coat Tales of a Gambler episodes were published at my original website of Playing4Keeps.com, which I started in 1995. For the historical record, I also published most of the episodes at Dicesetter.com website, in the newsletters that I wrote. I managed Dicesetter.com for 18 years. In February of 2024, the ownership was transferred to the custodianship of a new owner.
Web banner from the original 1995 Playing 4 Keeps® website.
Around 2015 I had to restructure the Playing4Keeps.com website, transitioning from antiquated Microsoft Front Page Editor to a Web Press format. Due to the work in involved, making the switch from old to new meant I had to make choices regarding which pages would be transferred to the new Web Press site. More than half of the original website would be left behind. I am a self-taught web guy, not a tech expert. Sure, I had a bit of guidance from angels of mercy in the beginning, but essentially, I was left on my own to fly the machine. I learned the basics of MS Front Page, creating and editing pages, publishing articles, newsletters, and updating seminar promotions, which led me to publish the episodes for On the Coat Tales of a Gambler.
However, when I published the Web Press version of Playing4keeps.com, I was on my own. In order to keep things simple, I postponed adding the original episodes of On the Coat Tales of a Gambler; I lacked the knowledge, and thus the inspiration to do the necessary work. Ten years passed, leaving the project dormant, lacking a vision of how I wanted to restructure Sailor’s stories. However, the unfinished job gnawed at my passion for writing, and I was not comfortable abandoning the unfinished stories.
Stymied with the daunting task of revising and ordering all of the episodes were not the only obstacles. The sticking point had to do with not knowing what happened to Scarpone, after Sailor left Robstown. I did not have an ending for Sailor’s stories about Scarpone. I needed a path leading to the final episode’s ending. When Sailor left Robstown for the navy, he parted ways with Scarpone, his gambling buddies and his comrades at the firehouse. Sailor said goodbye to Scarpone, Robstown, even his wife and that was his end to the story. I was not content with that ending. As far as I knew, Scarpone probably continued on, as he had, until, until what? What happened to Scarpone?
In the Summer of 2023, I began to organize my thoughts to revise, order and publish all of the old episodes and add several incomplete episodes not previously published. However, I was still in a quandary about what happened to Scarpone. I knew what happened with Sailor or did I really. I last had contact with Sailor by email late in 2009, and after that, he stopped using computers. He did call me a few times after that, just to say hello, until 2012.
By October of last year, 2023, I was still struggling for a vision that aligned with my feelings for what I wanted to do with the stories. Realizing that I had all of Sailor’s emails, my drafts, and all the published episodes archived on an old XP computer inspired my creativity. Additionally, I had backed up both playing4keeps.com and dicesetter.com websites on the old dinosaur. I also had access to Microsoft Front Page software which allowed me to view each website, and the timeline of the episodes as originally published.
After countless hours of reading the published episodes and cross referencing them to my saved documents and scouring Sailor’s emails for any details I may have left out, I decided to research Scarpone on the Internet. Obviously, I was not searching using the made-up name, John “Scarpone” Ladrón, but all I had was a surname and a nickname. Sailor could not recall Scarpone’s first name back in 2008. My quest was like looking for a haystack in a hurricane to find a needle. I stuck with the task through the month of November; I was not deterred by dead ends. I knew that I just had to discover the “key” to unlocking the door. I had to keep trying different approaches, guessing at “key words” in the search engine that would pull up an old newspaper clipping, a court case, an obituary, or otherwise any story that could put me on the coattails of John Ladrón. Surprisingly, my persistence paid off.
My first discovery was a murder case. However, it did not involve Scarpone. It was about the murders of a Robstown sheriff and son; coincidently, corresponding to the time Sailor mentions, in one of his emails, that a “new cop in town cleaned up the illegal gambling.” This was after Sailor left for the Navy. I was disappointment, I almost discarded my discovery, as it had nothing to do with John Ladrón. Fortunately, I saved the link and went back to it many times, reading and rereading the information, hoping something in the murder case would relate to something Sailor might have said in one of his emails. I admit, I wanted to give up on this lead, albeit my intuition encouraged me. Additionally, I do not believe in accidents or happenstances. I came upon the murder story for a reason, and I was determined to discover the reason. I continued my search online but in vain, with nothing new. My intuition whispered in my ear, “go back to the only lead that you have.” Inspired by something I remembered Sailor mentioned, long ago, about a new sheriff cleaning up illegal gambling, after he left Robstown. I dug deeper into this murder report.
Early one morning, my eyes popped open at 3:38, and I was wide awake. Unable to regain slumber, I got up and began working on this story. I do not know what I typed into the browser or what I clicked on, but I stumbled across another website with the sheriff’s murder case. However, the focus was on the accused, apparently wrongly convicted, the governor pardons the man after he had served many years in prison. Next, I discovered an extensive list of names accounting for the witnesses and people involved with the murder investigation and trial. Someone had put in a lot of effort to create the list and there was a chronological order of events. The names on the list also had a brief mention of each person’s connection in the murder case.
As I read the list of names, I found a commonality amongst a few of the people listed. They held an opinion believing that the murders were a mob hit and not the doings of one man attempting a robbery that ended with the murders of the local sheriff and his son. Both of the murdered victims were shot in the head, execution style, and both still had wallets with money. The murder weapon was never found. Several individuals felt that the accused and convicted man had nothing to do with the murders. Trial witnesses, with vague testimony identified the accused man, whose only crime, in the south, was being black and was seen running after the shooting had occurred.
These opinions were inspiration for me for a couple of reasons. Sailor had once mentioned that he thought Scarpone may have had connection to an illegal gambling gang and numerous times said that the illegal gambling was made possible, because the authorities were on the take. However, the connection I wonder most about was Sailor’s words, telling me, a new sheriff came to Robstown after he left for the navy and the “new cop” was cleaning up the illicit gambling.
There were over thirty names on the list. Some of them had an outbound link which provided more information about their involvement. At the time, I felt as though I had abandoned my focus from Sailor’s Robstown story to chase a completely different story that had absolutely no connection to Scarpone. Still, I kept at it until I was sidetracked again, by a person on the list who was a known member of the Dawson Gang / Dixie Mafia. I recognized the name, Dawson Gang, probably from my childhood, watching old movies with my Aunt Nell and younger sister. I stopped reading from the list of names and went back to the Internet and hopped down another rabbit hole, researching the Dawson Gang. It turned out to be a quagmire, but it was worth my effort.
I stumbled across another murder trial. At the time, it appeared as another dead end in my hunt for Scarpone. I did read some things of interest, but there was nothing that would put me onto the trail of Scarpone. For one thing, the murder trial involved the Dawson gang, but it was in another state. Still, I saved the link and for some reason, perhaps because it was about the Dawson Gang. I reread it a few more times, hoping that by combing through the court proceedings, I might find a clue. As it turned out, two names stood out, the defendant and the prosecutor’s key witness, Danny Kamara, and Jackie Knight. Due to my persistent investigation of Scarpone, both names will have significant importance. However, you are going to have to wait until I take you there when their roles are revealed in later episodes.
The eerie thing, after reading Sailor’s emails describing Robstown, as I read about the case of the sheriff’s murder, I could visualize the scene in Robstown, where the murders took place. After reading one of the witness’s account, I could see the garage just off the main street, where the murders took place and the alleged killer running down the side street, then crossing main street at the V.A Club, before disappearing down an ally. I guess what I am trying to share here is how Sailor’s descriptions of Robstown and the witnesses’ accounts fit with my imagination of the setting described in Sailor’s email notes.
Most of the names on the list did not have an outbound link, just a brief mention of the person’s connection, you know, if they were a witness in the trial, a police officer, or an investigator for example. However, as I scrolled down the extensive list of names, nearing the end of the list, I was stunned. His name just popped off of the page. Was I really reading the real nickname and the surname of the gambler in Sailor’s stories, along with his first name and middle initial? To be clear, Scarpone had absolutely no involvement or connection to this murder case. In fact, his name being listed befuddled me, it made absolutely no sense.
(I concluded, since I was searching Scarpone Ladrón’s given last name and alias, it was because his name appeared in sheriff’s murder list, it must have been the connection for the search engine to pull up the webpage.)
Unfortunately, there was no outbound link, just a brief notation that Scarpone Ladrón was a known gambler and gangster considered to be one of the deadliest men in the south. Now, I felt like I was on to something. With Scarpone’s true identity, I felt that I would have more success with my research on the web. And, do you know what, that’s exactly what happened. I discovered why Scarpone was considered to be so dangerous, and I will be sharing the evidence in the next episode of On the Coat Tales of a Gambler. Teaser alert, Sailor shares added information that astonishes me.
On The Coat Tales of a Gambler continues in
Episode 26 – Bad Trouble