Not much, although we can tell you that Ralph "Foots" Angelo, a.k.a. Ralph Angelus, a.k.a. Ralph Arcadia, was a notorious "numbers" writer from Pittsburgh with a bad heart and a sweet tooth, who was constantly in and out of jail, while Oscar "Hutch" Rappé, a.k.a. Rappaport, also from Pittsburgh, had a criminal record there dating back to 1931 on charges ranging from running an illegal lottery to being a "con and bunko" man, and was arrested for homicide while working as a pit boss at the Stardust in April 1965.
The two men evidently knew each other from back east, as according to Lt. Glenn Simmons of the Clark County sheriff's office, it was Angelo, along with Rappé's wife, who drove him to the hospital for the minor gunshot wound that he received during that rendez-vous in the desert on the night of April 14. The meeting left Louis G. Parees, also of Pittsburgh, with two bullet wounds, from one of which he would die several hours later, but only after he'd flagged down a passing motorist who drove him to Sunrise Hospital, and told police that Rappé had lured him into the desert in order to steal his money and had then shot him.
To backtrack a little, the submitter of this QoD is referring to a mammoth two-parter we ran back in February, 2011, concerning one-time managing director and vice president of the Stardust, Milton Jaffe. Another Pittsburgh transplant, Jaffe was in bed with the Mob and had been involved back home in similar illegal activities to Angelo and Rappé, including bookmaking and slot-machine rackets, but apparently tried to go straight when he took over running the 'dust.
Given the joint's status as the pinnacle of the illegal-skimming business, and the plethora of n'er-do-wells employed there, this seems to have been somewhat naive timing on Jaffe's part, to put it mildly. It was in this context, and the feds' investigations into the running of the north-Strip hotel, that our original answer described how: "G-Men found several denizens of the Pittsburgh underworld employed at the Stardust, including numbers runner Ralph 'Foots' Angelo and bookie Oscar Rappé, now a pit boss. It was at this time that the feds were advised by Angelo "Gyp" De Carlo, an underboss in the Genovese Family, that the Stardust was 60% owned by the Cleveland Mob. (At other times, the 'Chicago syndicate' was alleged to be running the place.)"
The reason for the long delay between our original running of the Jaffe bio., and our answering of this follow-up question, was simply the paucity of information about either of the two named hoodlums. Eventually, however, some overtime sleuthing through old newspaper archives, both in Pittsburgh and Las Vegas, revealed how Ralph Angelo was constantly being busted, including during a sweeping numbers-racket raid in November, 1946, when a cigar store allegedly owned by the already notorious "Foots" (he was described in subsequent media coverage as a "big shot") was among the venues targeted. In addition to a bunch of incriminating numbers slips and several hundred dollars in cash, the premises was found to house a secret "safe-within-a-safe" which, when finally cracked by two experts, reportedly contained city and state vending licenses belonging to Angelo but under a false name, plus dice, cards, a copy of the by-laws, other paperwork, and "a hoard of chocolate bars."
Foots was given a three-to-six month sentence in the county jail this time around, but by August 1948 (if not before), he was back facing a Grand Jury as the result of another round of illegal-gambling raids. We're not sure what the outcome was that time, but in January 1956 his name came up yet again in the Pittsburgh Press, when he and another defendant faced assault and battery charges in connection to a brawl that also involved a police officer. (Interestingly, eye witnesses to the incident stated that Inspector John Flavin was knocked out by one of the combatants, a fact that the officer himself denied. Whatever the truth, Flavin was suspended for 15 days for failing to make an arrest at the time.)
The last we read of Mr Angelo's capers, prior to his role as driver to the injured Oscar Rappé, was when he was freed from jail in June, 1963, having served just eight days of a three-to-28 month sentence for bribing a police officer. To this, among other charges arising as the result of a two-year undercover operation, the accused pleaded "no defense." In light of a prison physician's assertion that Angelo's continued confinement would jeopardize the ailing convict's life, a judge allowed the 52-year-old career criminal to go free.
As to Oscar Rappé/Rappaport, we could find no information prior to his 1965 arrest in Las Vegas for the murder of Louis (the Greek) Parees, a known gambler who also had a criminal record back in Pittsburgh.
In April 1965 Rappé was booked on an open charge of homicide, following the death of Parees, who claimed in a statement he gave to police before succumbing to the two gunshot wounds sustained during a scuffle in the desert, that his adversary had shot and robbed him of some $10,000 dollars, which he hinted had been on his person for the purpose of playing in an illegal gin rummy game, for which he had flown in especially from California.
Authorities did not entirely believe the victim's story, however, with Clark County District Attorney Edward G. Marshall suggesting that Parees may well have been a mob hitman or "torpedo" sent specifically to take Rappé out. (For his part, Rappé originally told officers that the meeting had been over $500 that Parees owed him, but later became "uncooperative" to their questions.) Sure enough, on April 23, the homicide charge was dropped, with Marshall stating to the press that, "The facts and evidence do not establish a murder. The prosecution would not even get through a preliminary hearing."
Neither the gun with which Parees was shot, nor the $10,000 he claimed to be missing, were ever recovered.
What became of these two shady characters thereafter, we have no idea. If anyone out there knows anything more, do drop us a line, since finally answering this question has served only to further pique our curiosity, especially with regard to the wily and elusive Mr Rappé...
