The murder of Al Bramlet, powerful union boss, 42 years later

Las Vegas Review-Journal

5 years ago

Funeral services for Al Bramlet, union boss of the Culinary Workers Local 226, in Las Vegas in 1977. Bramlet, who began as a dish washer to rise to running the mob-infested Culinary Union, was murdered and his body was dumped in the desert west of Mount Potosi in February 1977. (Las Vegas Review-Journal file photo)

Al Bramlet (Las Vegas Review-Journal file photo)

Al Bramlet, union boss with the Culinary Workers Local 226, drives his Lincoln past striking casino workers outside Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, circa 1970s. (Las Vegas Review-Journal file photo)

Family members and friends of slain labor leader Al Bramlet paid tribute to him Friday, one year after his death. Identified persons in the front row of the church included Bramlet’s widow, Stella, at right, and his daughter Christie, third from left. (Las Vegas Review-Journal file photo)

Less than 400,000 people lived in Clark County in 1977, Tony Bennett and Joey Heatherton were rockin’ the Congo Room at the Sahara, and Al Bramlet was the most powerful labor leader in Nevada.

He ran the Culinary Union Local 226 with an “iron hand, building it from a struggling 1,500-member union in 1954 to a mighty force that virtually shut down Las Vegas during the now-infamous 1976 Strip strike,” the Review-Journal described in an article on Feb. 24, 1978, marking the one-year anniversary of his disappearance and murder.

According to a 1999 Review-Journal story, the 60-year-old Bramlet was handcuffed and gagged with duct tape by three men after arriving at McCarran Airport following a business trip to Reno on Feb. 24, 1977. He had just telephoned his daughter from the airport, telling her he would be home shortly. Bramlet never made it home.

His nude, partially decomposed battered body was discovered by hikers about three weeks later under a pile of rocks, west of Mount Potosi. He was shot six times, including in each ear.

One of the three men who abducted Bramlet, Eugene Vaughan, spilled the beans to a woman. Police found out and Gramby Hanley, and his father, Tom, pleaded guilty and got life sentences without parole.

Vaughan cooperated and got less of a sentence.