The casino at Spring Lake, near Hot Springs, had enjoyed a busy night. Quiet now prevailed as the boss was counting the take, and the employees were cleaning up for the next day’s group of hopefuls. The quietness of the work routine was suddenly shattered as the club owner bolted out of the counting room with the money box in hand and fled down the hall toward the parking lot. Banging his way through the exit, he sprinted to his car and raced off into the night. In less than 10 minutes, he was back.
As he opened the car door, he was greeted with a hail of bullets and slumped over the wheel motionless. Several employees sprang to his aid, but he was beyond mortal help. Amidst the excitement and bewilderment, the employees had just begun to wonder what brought this chaotic scene when the sky suddenly lit up in a bright glow. The casino was on fire! Was the murderer also an arsonist?
After dealing with the fire, the employees discovered that the money box, reputed to contain some $50,000 in cash and a lot of expensive jewels, was not in the car, and it has never been found. Attesting to this is the fact that there has never been any evidence of the fencing of the jewelry, not even by gossip.
The facts stand out to suggest that the owner was aware of a threat of robbery. First, he was moving the money at night. Second, he was doing it by himself. Ordinarily, when transferring money, the owner would handcuff the money box to another man and then drive him to the bank during daylight hours to make the deposit.
The owner’s family searched diligently for the treasure box, as did scores of others, but nothing was turned up. It would seem apparent that the box was cached near the casino, as the owner was gone for fewer than 10 minutes, but the steep ravines, gullies, and small canyons have proved to be a safe depository for the cache since 1923.