I’ll Do My Own Damn Killin’: Benny Binion, Herbert Noble, and the Texas Gambling War, by Gary Sleeper
I’ll Do My Own Damn Killin’ —a slogan that needs to be on a t-shirt!— is a rarely-told history of Dallas gambling history, a huge showdown killing instigated by the notorious gangster Benny Binion, and the crazy life of the Dallas G-Men.
Binion is best known for opening the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas, symbolized by the horseshoe in the front lobby that showed off a million dollars in $10,000 bills encased in plastic.
(The casino sold the horseshoe off in 2000 because the scarcity of $10,000 bills— little over 300 remained in circulation— made the display worth far more than a million bucks).
Binion led the Texas gambling underground in a savage war against his onetime partner, Herbert Noble, that lasted over 15 years. Noble survived at least eleven attacks on his life between 1938 and 1951, when a bomb planted in his mailbox finally killed him. Binion was never convicted for involvement in Noble’s death, but there was enough heat to make him leave Texas behind and start a new life—and a whole new legend—in Las Vegas.
With chapters like “The Plot to Bomb Las Vegas” and “That’s the Stuff That Killed My Wife,” Sleeper’s biography never slows down. Another winner for true-crime fans.
--Aretha Bright