Number 8 The Circus Circus Casino Heist
In 1993, the Circus Circus Casino in Las Vegas was robbed of $2.95 million.
Heather Tallchief and her accomplice, Roberto Solis, disappeared from the scene in an armored
truck.
Over 10 years later, in 2005, Tallchief turned herself in to the Las Vegas authorities.
She was sentenced to five years and three months for her role in the robbery.
Solis, a criminal with an extensive history in robbery, was never found, and none of the
stolen money has ever been recovered.
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Number 7 Esmeralda Gonzalez
On May the 31st of 2019, Esmeralda Gonzalez, a Vegas glamour model, was reported missing
by her family.
Her remains were found 5 months later encased in a homemade concrete structure in the desert.
24-year-old Esmeralda was reported to have mental problems, and it’s believed she’d
mistakenly entered the home of her killers thinking it was her own.
She had recently stopped taking her medication, according to her brother.
Christopher Prestipino, 45, and his girlfriend, 31-year-old Lisa Mort were the occupants of
the house.
After coaxing her with illegal substances, they tied her to a bed, at which point Esmeralda
began to experience a mental breakdown.
She threatened to call the police on the deranged couple, which led to Prestipino strangling
her to death.
She was then injected with poisonous pool cleaner, which investigators believe had been
a measure taken to ensure she was dead.
Prestipino proceeded to dump Esmeralda’s body in the Las Vegas desert, where he encased
her with concrete.
An investigation was opened into Esmeralda’s disappearance and a tip was given to the police
by a friend of Prestipino’s.
The friend allegedly claimed that Prestipino had told him that he’d killed the missing
girl.
Prestipino was arrested, along with his girlfriend, Mort.
He was put on trial and originally faced charges of murder, first degree kidnapping and murder
conspiracy.
However, he was later committed to a mental psychiatry hospital after undergoing professional
examination.
Mort’s charge was listed as conceal and aiding an offender, she later confessed guilty
to accessory to murder.
Number 6 Murder of Melissa James
In December of 2005, a motorist stumbled upon a Jaguar in the middle of the desert.
It had been torched and inside the trunk of the vehicle was the body of 28-year-old Melissa
James.
Melissa had moved to Vegas only four months earlier, having been coerced by her employer,
Craig Titus.
Craig and his wife, Kelly Ryan, were fitness industry superstars.
Between them, they held multiple bodybuilding titles.
Melissa had been employed by the couple as a live-in personal assistant, and although
Craig and Kelly denied any involvement in her death, mounting evidence loomed against
them.
The autopsy revealed Melissa had been strangled, shot with a Taser and injected with a lethal
dose of morphine prior to her death.
Craig and Kelly were eventually arrested on suspicion of the murder, and in 2008 they
pled guilty to it.
They are currently serving their time in prisons in Nevada.
Number 5 The murder of Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur was a 25-year-old hip hop artist from the west coast.
He was murdered in Las Vegas, on September the 7th of 1996, in what is thought to have
been an organized hit.
Tupac was a passenger in a car driven by Suge Knight, the founder of Death Row Records.
While stopped at a red light, a white, 4-door Cadillac appeared and drove up to his vehicle.
Gunmen inside the Cadillac opened fire on Tupac, and he was hit by four bullets.
Two penetrated his chest, one went into his arm and another into his thigh.
Tupac was rushed to the hospital having initially survived his injuries, but six days later
died of cardiac arrest.
To this day the murder of Tupac Shakur remains unsolved, and this has prompted many theories
from his devastated fans and the hip-hop community.
Some of them propose the hit had been ordered by Suge Knight himself, rival music groups
from the east coast, or even that Tupac had staged his death and is, in fact, still alive.
Number 4 Pipe Bombing at the Luxor
The Luxor, a luxury hotel and casino in Vegas, was hit by a pipe bomb attack on May the 7th
of 2007.
The pipe bomb was sophisticated, having been disguised as a coffee cup.
It was placed in the parking garage, on top of 24-year old Willebaldo Antonio’s car.
Equipped with a motion trigger, as Antonio went to his vehicle, it blew up, killing him.
The creator of the bomb had allegedly built it for his friend, who was jealous that Antonio
was dating his former girlfriend.
The two suspects were arrested and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
Number 3 Arson at the Las Vegas Hilton
In 1981, a 23-year old busboy at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas made headlines as he started
a fire in the elevator lobby.
Philip Cline, described as a troubled young man, was initially thought to have tried to
put the fire out, but it was later determined he’d intentionally started the blaze.
The fire spread through the hotel fast and trapped guests in their rooms.
Over 200 people were injured, and 8 people died.
Cline was convicted of the 8 counts of murder and confessed to the arson in a jail interview.
He said that he’d purposefully used the lighter to set fire to some curtains.
Number 2 Tony Carleo
One morning, in December of 2010, Tony Carleo, who’d become known as the “Biker Bandit”,
set his sights on the Bellagio Hotel & Casino.
Five days prior, Tony had successfully robbed another casino, the Suncoast.
He’d held up the poker room and had made it out with $19,000 in cash.
It was his first casino robbery, and he intended to carry forward the momentum he had built.
Wearing dark overalls, gloves and a motorcycle helmet, Tony walked towards the Bellagio with
a gun hidden in his right pocket.
He casually exchanged waves with an elderly security guard as he walked through the entrance.
Although the casino was quiet in the early hours, he knew his presence would quickly
raise the alarm.
Tony went straight for a high-limit craps table and pulled out his gun.
In front of him lay chips worth millions of dollars.
Tony threw handfuls of chips into a backpack as fast as he could, before he fled from the
casino to his motorcycle outside.
Speeding away from the crime scene, Tony had successfully made off with $1.5 million in
his backpack.
Tony returned to the casino regularly to convert his stolen chips into cash he could use.
Posing as a regular player, he would sneak the stolen chips into his stack at the games
he joined.
The first time he did this was the day after the robbery, and at one point he even joined
the same craps table that he had robbed.
He cashed out successfully multiple times.
With his newfound fortune, Tony began to live the high life, indulging in everything Vegas
had to offer.
Meanwhile, detectives looking into the high-profile case were coming up with no leads.
That was until Tony was flagged by the Bellagio's computer systems.
Over 1 million dollars of the chips Tony had stolen were $25,000 chips, known as cranberries
due to their color.
Players capable of holding these chips have a history of playing the highest of stakes
at the casino, and the Bellagio have digital records of these high-rollers.
On these records, the name Tony Carleo was nowhere to be found.
This drew suspicions from the casino, and Tony’s name was passed over to the police
investigation.
However, even with this information, the authorities still didn’t have any evidence that Tony
had committed the heist.
That was until Tony’s greed got the better of him.
He had begun posting on a poker forum online, in an attempt to find local players who would
pay him smaller denomination chips for his cranberries.
He provided one user of the forum proof that he held the cranberries he claimed to have,
and out of pride, supplied evidence that he was the infamous biker bandit.
The user forwarded this information to the authorities.
Now evidence was beginning to stack up against Tony.
An undercover police officer working on the investigation soon befriended him, and the
two worked out deals for Tony’s chips.
Then one day, after the cash had exchanged hands, the undercover officer walked off without
a word.
Six police officers appeared, surprising Tony and giving him no opportunity for escape.
They forced him to the ground and handcuffed him.
Just 7 weeks after pulling off the heist, Tony was arrested and paraded out the doors
of the Bellagio.
He was sentenced to nine years in prison for his crimes.
He reportedly regrets not being able to pull the heist off just as much as he regrets committing
it in the first place.
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Number 1 Murder of Ted Binion
Ted Binion was a high-rolling gambling executive.
His father, Benny Binion, was a casino business magnate and a well-known personality in Vegas.
In 1998, Ted was found dead in his Las Vegas home.
An autopsy revealed a cocktail of drugs, both prescription and illegal, in Ted’s system.
Initially thought to be an accidental suicide due to Ted’s known addictions, detectives
reclassified his death as homicide six months later, believing that it had been staged.
In June of 1999, Ted’s former girlfriend along with her lover at the time, were arrested
on suspicion of murder.
The couple was also charged with robbery, grand larceny and burglary, due to Ted’s
vault having been emptied.
However, 4 years later, in 2003, their convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court.
The court ruled that the judge had erred in his instructions to the jury during the couple’s
original trial.
They were retried in 2004, when they were both acquitted of murder and instead were
convicted on lesser charges.
The couple has since been released from prison.
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