Word: bramlet
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...Died. Al Bramlet, 59, powerful boss of the Las Vegas local of the Culinary Workers Union since 1952; found shot, in a rock pile in the desert, 30 miles from Las Vegas. A wheeler-dealer with enemies even in his own union, Bramlet ran into trouble when he brewed up a new scheme with the Mob to skim money from the union's pension fund. Two weeks after the fund's trustees vetoed the idea, Bramlet disappeared (TIME, March...
...afternoon of Feb. 24, Bramlet flew back to Vegas from a one-day trip to Reno. Waiting for him at the airport, TIME has learned, were three men. Bramlet spoke with them briefly, then called union headquarters to tell his daughter Chris that he would be home in 30 minutes. He never got there. Several hours later, Bramlet phoned an official at the Dunes Hotel casino and asked that a $10,000 "personal" payment be made to a gambler. It wasn't, and Bramlet has not been heard from since...
...reason, investigators say, may have been a quarrel Bramlet was having with the Mob over the use-and presumably abuse-of a portion of the culinary local's $42 million pension fund. Some $16 million of the fund has already been loaned out to resorts and developments that are backed by Las Vegas gambling bosses...
...Bramlet had no objections, but he kept insisting on a bigger cut for himself. Says an investigator: "He was demanding more out of the thing than the Mob thought he should get." Following one stormy negotiating session last summer, Bramlet was severely beaten. "I fell off a barstool," he told friends. Then, two weeks before his disappearance, the pension fund trustees turned down what is known in the union as Bramlet's "memorial hospital." Said an insider: "That thing was just too shaky. The trustees couldn't hold still for it." Bramlet was left in the awkward position...
...Bramlet desperately started trying to convert his assets into cash. Perhaps he intended to pay off the mobsters, or maybe just flee, since a contract had reportedly been put out on him. In either case, he will not be drawing his own pension from the fund...