Nevada Lore Series: 50 year old Tahoe mystery includes an assassination, a secret safe, and Oprah Winfrey

On August 27, 1968, Richard Chartrand was going about his morning as usual in his Skyland Drive home in South Lake Tahoe, just north of Zephyr Cove, when things went horribly wrong, and a mystery began that is still unsolved today.

Chartrand was the operator of two casinos in Stateline, and an avid gambler himself. The 42-year-old California man moved to Tahoe from Fresno in 1964, and acquired a controlling interest in Barney’s Club as well as the South Tahoe Nugget Casino. In Fresno, he had been a real estate salesman, and operated a charter air service.

In those days, Skyland was a neighborhood that catered to more than a few casino adjacent characters.

Frank Johnson, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, who specialized in investigations, lived across the street from Chartrand. Lou Tyler, Chartrand’s next door neighbor, was head of security at one of the major casinos. Bill Harrah had a house just down the road, and owned several more in the lake-front neighborhood to entertain visiting celebrities and performers.

As Chartrand pulled out of his driveway in his new Cadillac, everything changed.

A massive blast tore through the Cadillac, courtesy of a bomb hidden beneath the floorboards of the car. It tore a hole in the road, and even knocked a curtain from the window of Johnson’s house across the street.

Chartrand was blown to pieces. Parts of his body were scattered among the neighborhood, and, according to my uncle who was down the block at the time, pieces had to be removed even from the trees.

No one could figure out why Chartrand had been assassinated. Some people say he was a part of the mob, others say it was a disgruntled employee, and there are even some who say it was an accident, that Chartrand hadn’t been the correct target.

Almost immediately, an unemployed bartender by the name of Don Lee Cavnar was served with a warrant for first degree murder and taken into custody.

Cavnar had worked for Barney’s as a bartender and poker dealer until he was fired by Chartrand two weeks before his arrest. On multiple occasions, Cavnar talked about killing Chartrand by putting a bomb in his car.

However, on August 29, two days after the killing, Cavnar was released on a lack of evidence.

Then acting Douglas County District Attorney, Ted Stokes, said a portion of the evidence the warrant was issued on was based on testimony by an informant.

“Cavnar had on several occasions threatened to kill Chartrand and stated to the informant that he planned to plant a bomb in Chartrand’s auto,” said Stokes. “Although such statements were admitted by the suspect, the other evidence developed in the case does not warrant holding Mr. Cavnar to answer a charge of murder.”

The case went cold. In 1969, Barney’s Casino and the South Tahoe Nugget offered a reward of $5,000 to whoever could offer any information or explanation for the assassination.

There was no discernible motive. He had never been married, he had no apparent connections to the mob, and he wasn’t in a huge amount of debt for gambling. He seemed to be just a regular, hard-working casino manager.

Generally, this would be the end of the story, as the case is still unsolved and will more than likely remain so. However, in 2011, the murder came back into the public’s eye with the discovery of a wall safe hidden away in Bill’s Casino Lake Tahoe.

Bill’s Casino opened in 1987, as an offshoot of Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, named for Bill Harrah, the original owner. It officially closed its doors in January of 2010, when it was purchased by attorney Mike Laub, who intended on turning it into a large strip club.

During renovations of the building, they made an interesting discovery: hidden in the walls, completely sealed behind sheetrock, was a single locked safe.

Barney’s Casino had originally occupied the building from 1960 to 1987, which led Laub to the conclusion that the secret safe most likely belonged to Chartrand, and could potentially give clues to his murder.

The safe had a broken handle, and numerous locksmiths were unable to gain access to the safe — at first.

In a bizarre twist, the rights to the reveal of the safe were given to none other than TV star Oprah Winfrey, whose network was filming a new tv show “Found” at the time.

A Douglas County Sheriff’s Office investigator was present during the opening of the safe in September of 2011, but would only state that there was nothing inside relevant to an investigation.

To this day, we still have no idea what was inside that safe, as the Oprah Winfrey Network’s show never aired, and since they have exclusive rights, they can decide to release the information or not. It was originally supposed to air a month after the safe was opened, but for whatever reason, it stayed unpublished.

According to a YouTube video, someone reported they knew what was inside the safe, which were nothing but bags of obsolete Barney's chips, but they have no proof of this whatsoever, and I like to think it is something a lot better than bags of old poker chips.

Will we ever know what was inside the safe? Did it belong to Chartrand? Is Oprah somehow connected to his murder?

The mysteries, at least for now, will remain mysterious.

— The Nevada Lore Series focuses on the legends of Nevada and the surrounding areas that help build our culture, from ancient Washoe stories, to Old West ghostly visions, to modern day urban legends.

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