1. Lou Blonger, born Louis Herbert Belonger, was a Wild West saloonkeeper, gambling-house owner, and mine speculator, but is best known as the kingpin of an extensive ring of confidence tricksters that operated for more than 25 years in Denver, Colorado.
Lou Blonger was born in Swanton, Vermont, on May 13,1849, the eighth of 13 children.
Lou Blonger's father, Simon Peter Belonger, was a stonemason born in Canada of French ancestry.
The Belonger family migrated from Vermont to the lead mining village of Shullsburg, Wisconsin, when Lou Blonger was five years old.
Around this time Lou Blonger began using a shortened version of the family name, as most of his brothers did.
Lou Blonger followed brothers Mike and Joe into the Union Army in 1864.
Lou Blonger spent the remainder of his 100-day enlistment recovering at the Marine Hospital in Chicago.
Lou Blonger was living in Mount Carroll, Illinois, with a friend named William Livingston when Sam returned.
Sam Lou Blonger was appointed marshal of New Albuquerque in February 1882 and quickly deputized his brother.
Lou Blonger was relieved of his duties while on a trip to Kansas City, and soon afterward, Lou and Sam split up for the only extended period of their adult lives.
Lou Blonger spent the next few years in the New Mexico towns of Silver City, Deming, and Kingston, living at least part of the time with Frank Thurmond, a well-known gambler, and his wife, Carlotta Thompkins.
In 1888, a woman calling herself Kitty Lou Blonger shot and killed a man who tried to break into her room in a Peach Springs, Arizona, brothel.
Lou Blonger soon arrived to arrange her defense, and eventually she was acquitted.
In 1895 Smith went on a drunken rampage through several Larimer Street establishments including the Blongers' saloon, where police removed him; one account alleged that Lou Blonger was crouched behind the cigar counter, ready to unload a shotgun.
In 1892 Sam and Lou Blonger found the gold mine they had been looking for in the mountains above Cripple Creek, Colorado, and named it the Forest Queen.
Sam and Lou Blonger had several partners in the mine at different stages of its development, some of whom were extraordinarily well-placed.
Lou and Sam Blonger claimed, bought, traded, and sold several mines in their lives, but both held onto the Forest Queen to the end, leaving their interest to their wives.
Only twice during this period did Lou Blonger come close to arrest.
The second occurred in 1915, when Lou Blonger was implicated in a swindling scheme uncovered by carpenters remodeling his office building.
Meanwhile, Lou Blonger expanded the gang's home base from Denver, where it operated only during the warmest months, southward to Miami and Havana, Cuba.
Van Cise monitored Lou Blonger's trash, spied on him from a building across the street, and had a Dictaphone installed surreptitiously inside his office.
Lou Blonger allowed a crooked police detective to work inside the district attorney's office, feeding him misleading information to confuse the gang.
Lou Blonger had a host of legal talent at his disposal, not to mention a sympathetic judge or two.
Lou Blonger was driven in a special car to the Colorado State Penitentiary on October 18,1923, and died there on April 20,1924, succumbing to organ failure.
Lou Blonger's funeral, held at Denver's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, was attended by hundreds of people from all walks of life.