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Lost Vegas: The Casino Pioneer Whose Mob Connections Led to His Mother-in-Law’s Murder

By jili tutorial · September 3, 2026

Lost Vegas: The Casino Pioneer Whose Mob Connections Led to His Mother-in-Law’s Murder

The Burbank Police Department still calls it one of the most infamous crimes in the city’s history. It inspired two books, an Oscar-winning Hollywood movie, and three executions — including one that may have claimed an innocent life.

The brutal 1953 slaying of 63-year-old widow Mabel Monahan might never have happened if Las Vegas casino pioneer Luther B. “Tutor” Scherer hadn’t kept the wrong company. His underworld associates reportedly mistook his friendly visits to his ex-mother-in-law’s Burbank home as occasions to stash hidden cash from Las Vegas casino skims.

From the Wrong Side of the Law to Las Vegas Legitimacy

Like many early Las Vegas casino figures, Scherer started his gambling career on the wrong side of the law. His résumé included floating casinos, underground downtown gambling clubs, and black-market bookmaking rings.

But Los Angeles gambling belonged to gangster Mickey Cohen. When Cohen’s enforcers turned up the heat, Scherer decided it was time to leave.

In Las Vegas, he found legitimacy. Scherer operated El Rancho Vegas and co-owned the Las Vegas Club and Pioneer Club. Above the Pioneer Club, he commissioned what would become the second most famous sign in a city known for spectacular neon: Vegas Vic.

Still, Scherer returned to Los Angeles often. When he did, he usually made time to visit the mother of his second wife, Iris.

A Friendly Relationship With a Fatal Misunderstanding

Mabel Monahan was no ordinary widow. She had spent years on the vaudeville stage, performing in a roller-skating duo with her husband, George, and also worked as a palm reader under the name Madam Martinez.

At the time of her death, she lived alone in a Burbank ranch house that Scherer had left to Iris in their divorce. Iris didn’t want the property — a decision that very likely saved her life.

According to Marcia Clark, the former O.J. Simpson prosecutor who authored the 2024 book Trial By Ambush, Scherer’s old criminal connections may have misread his visits.

“Some of the crooks who’d worked for Tutor before he decamped to Las Vegas probably noticed he was visiting Mabel… and surmised he was hiding cash in her house,” Clark told the Mob Museum’s Larry Henry.

The Deadly Home Invasion

On March 9, 1953, a crew of home invaders stormed Monahan’s house. They were looking for a mythical safe filled with Vegas skim money that didn’t exist.

Mabel Monahan was badly beaten and then strangled to death. The crime scene was so gruesome that even hardened police officers needed a moment to compose themselves.

But Monahan was not the only innocent victim that night.

The Woman Who Knocked on the Door

Also involved were Emmett Perkins, Jack Santo, John True, safecracker Baxter Shorter, and 29-year-old Barbara Graham — a heroin user, petty criminal, and dice-game shill whose life had been one long string of bad luck and worse men.

Graham’s role was simple: knock on the door and appear harmless enough to persuade Monahan to open it.

“Mabel was well known to be very security conscious, and she would never have opened her door to a strange man at night,” Clark explained. “Barbara, on the other hand, who was petite — 5 foot 3, 120 pounds and pretty — was a different story.”

Graham claimed her car had broken down and asked to use the phone. When Monahan opened the door, John True shoved his way in behind Graham.

“Bloody Babs” and the Execution That Went Too Far

Barbara Graham was essentially a bystander, Clark said. “The men actually killed Mabel.”

Her presence at the crime scene was enough to support a murder conviction, but likely not the death penalty. Yet the prosecution, led by J. Miller “Gas Chamber” Leavy, pursued Graham as if she were the mastermind.

John True, who flipped and received immunity, claimed Graham pistol-whipped Monahan. Jailhouse acquaintance Donna Prow set Graham up with a fake alibi, then testified against her. Evidence was twisted, witnesses disappeared, and the press turned Graham into a pulp-fiction villain named “Bloody Babs.”

The 1959 film I Want to Live! portrayed Graham with the sympathy she never received in court. Susan Hayward’s performance won her the Best Actress Oscar.

Graham was executed, along with Perkins and Santo, by cyanide gas at San Quentin on June 3, 1955. Baxter Shorter vanished — likely murdered for talking. The only person who walked away clean was John True, the prosecution’s star witness.

Scherer’s Own Downward Spiral

Scherer was questioned about the murder but never considered a suspect.

“I’m sorry as hell Mabel got knocked off,” he told reporters. “We always got along swell, even after the divorce.”

His luck in Las Vegas casinos continued, but his luck in love did not. His third wife, LaVeeda Varley, one of the most recognizable models in early Las Vegas history, caught him cheating three weeks before their first wedding anniversary — and fired a bullet into his leg.

Scherer died of a heart attack on August 19, 1957. He left behind four wives, a famous sign, a street named after him near Ansan Sister City Park, and a trail of death.

“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history.