What can you tell us about Buffalo Jim Barrier and the Crazy Horse Two?
After being shuttered for the past eight years and sustaining at least two major fires recently, the long-time and infamous Crazy Horse Too strip club was razed and the now-vacant lot is surrounded by cyclone fencing.
The business, on Industrial Road right at Sahara Avenue, opened in the '70s as Billy Joe's and was soon bought by a known Mob associate and renamed Billy Joe's Crazy Horse Too; the new proprietor also owned the Crazy Horse Saloon in Vegas.
The third owner, Rick Rizzolo, was equally rough. He's alleged to have had mob connections; violence at the club wasn't uncommon; numerous law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI, investigated it (for tax, liquor, drug, and employment violations, plus organized-crime connections); and the federal government actually seized and closed the property for back taxes in 2006.
After five years in which no one wanted to buy it, Crazy Horse Too was finally auctioned off in 2011, but its days were numbered; it closed for good in 2014 and the license was revoked in 2019.
Unfortunately for “Buffalo” Jim Barrier, his auto- and boat-repair shop, Allstate Auto and Marine, at 2480 Industrial Road, was right next door to the Crazy Horse Too at 2476. In fact, Rick Rizzolo owned the complex and was Buffalo Jim’s landlord.
By all accounts, Jim Barrier was “a larger-than-life walking parade.” Six-two and 295 pounds, in addition to running Allstate, he was a wrestling promoter, man about town, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s “Most Colorful Character” of 2005.
He was born in Cleveland in 1953 and had done a bit of wrestling while growing up, though reportedly he dropped out of school after the fifth grade. He moved to Vegas when he was 19 and kicked around town as a mechanic before opening his own shop in the late ’70s. With a successful business under way, he turned his love of TV wrestling and showmanship into a vocational school for pro wrestlers, the Buffalo Wrestling Federation. Then he started promoting wrestling shows at venues around town.
In the meantime, what had started as a friendly landlord-tenant relationship with Rick Rizzolo slowly turned into a feud over Rizzolo’s plans to expand his strip club; he wanted Barrier to move, but Barrier wanted to stay. That was when weird things started happening at Allstate Auto: break-ins, vandalizing, even towing customers cars. In 2004, Barrier took Rizzolo to Small Claims Court, which ruled against Rizzolo, who had to reimburse Barrier for the towed cars.
But the ugliness escalated. Barrier started receiving death threats; in return, he began cataloguing evidence of all the illicit activities in and around Crazy Horse Too, then submitted it to local and federal law enforcement.
In 2007, Rizzolo went to federal prison for racketeering and tax evasion; after a year, he was released to a halfway house. Two days after Rizzolo got out in April 2008, Barrier was found dead at a Motel 6 on Boulder Highway. He was 55.
The coroner ruled that no foul play had been involved and listed the cause of death as “accidental,” given the lethal doze of cocaine in Barrier’s system.
Unanswered questions and speculation about Barrier and his death have lingered long enough for the popular TV show “Unsolved Mysteries” to air an episode, “Death in a Vegas Motel,” about them last October 25. Which is why we've received a number of questions about Buffalo Jim and the Crazy Horse Too ever since.
We certainly don't have any inside information. If you're interested in the full story, you can probably stream that episode or at least read more about it online.
