There's a pretty simple explanation to this one, with no cover-up or skullduggery involved, at least not in terms of the location, which was a parking lot shared by Tony Roma's and Marie Callender's (also gone) on East Sahara. What he was doing there in the first place, history doesn't seem to relate, but it's doubtful Lefty was buying a lemon meringue pie, so that's probably why the location's more frequently quoted as Tony Roma's lot, which somehow sounds a little more in-keeping with his image. Here's what happened.
On Oct. 4, 1982, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal who, aside from his well-know involvement with organized crime, is credited with being the first major casino operator to hire women as card dealers on a regular basis and for being the pioneer of the modern Las Vegas-style sports book, stepped into his 1981 Cadillac Eldorado and started the engine, triggering a bomb placed under the car's gas tank that left the vehicle almost unrecognizable. As you can see from the images below, it's a miracle he escaped with his life, but Rosenthal survived due to a manufacturing fault unique to that model, which GM had fitted with a metal plate under the driver's seat to correct a balancing problem. The plate shielded Rosenthal's body from most of the explosion's force.
A journalist, who happened to witness the explosion first-hand, described it as follows: "I drove by Tony Roma’s and Marie Callender’s, I heard this huge boom. A guy was getting out of a car sort of smoky and his hair was standing on end." As she approached him, he shouted, "They’re trying to kill me, they’re trying to kill me!" At that point former Nevada Gov. Mike O’Callaghan, who had just finished dining at Tony Roma’s and was a long-time adversary who wished to see Lefty out of Las Vegas, apparently walked over and and said something to the effect that Frank was evidently having a rough night. O'Callaghan's wish came true, as Rosenthal took the hint -- from the bomb, not the former governor -- and moved first briefly to California, and then to Florida, where he resided and ran his sports-betting business until his death in 2008, at the age of 79, from natural causes, although he would return to Las Vegas in disguise from time to time to gamble.
That Lefty Rosenthal was the victim of a car-bomb attack was somewhat ironic, since he himself was a suspect in multiple business and car bombings in the greater Miami area during the 1960s. It was when the FBI opened an ongoing case file on him that spurred Rosenthal to move to Las Vegas in 1968. While no one was ever convicted in connection with his assassination attempt, Milwaukee mob boss Frank "Mad Bomber" Balistrieri is considered the prime suspect, having been known to have complained to various people not long before the attack about how he felt Rosenthal was responsible for bringing "heat" to the mob-run casinos, which he was also caught saying via a wiretap. Outlaw biker friends of Rosenthal's ex-wife Geri were also suspected, as was Tony Spilotro, who'd had an affair with Geri but may also have been working for the Chicago Outfit.
