El Dorado Gambling Casino, Eighth Avenue, Ybor City Charlie Wall operated the El Dorado, which was a bolita house back in 1930. Local author Scott Deitche said that during Prohibition, El Dorado, pictured at right in the 1920s, was high class with a bordello upstairs. People would dress up, drink hard and play roulette and blackjack. One of Wall’s main lieutenants, George “Saturday” Zarate, was shot in front of the club by muscle hired by a rival gang. Zarate survived and later moved to Havana, where he met up with Santo Trafficante. The building was demolished in 1973, and the land is now a parking lot for Hillsborough Community College. A similarly shaped building, above, stands across the street from where the old one was.
TAMPA — The FBI says last week's arrests of alleged Gambino mob boss John A. "Junior" Gotti and five other men stemmed directly from its investigation into Tampa mob activity.
It was the latest chapter in a long and storied relationship between the Mafia and the Tampa Bay area, a pairing that goes back at least to the 1920s.
Over the years, local mobsters developed a number of favored haunts, places where they drank and gambled. There was a jazz club on West Kennedy Boulevard and a motel on Dale Mabry Highway. A Pasco County bottle club was the site of one of law enforcement's most successful mob takedowns. An Ybor City bolita club was the scene of a famous gangland shooting.
Some of the haunts are virtually unchanged. Others no longer exist, or have a new use. One is even a church.
All hold ghosts of a mob past, the FBI says, that lingers today.
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