A conversation with Sister Janet Sister Janet Bucher, July 2025. Photo by David Rotenstein. Sister Janet Bucher was one of the first people I met after moving to Covington, Kentucky, last summer. Before the move, I had subscribed to City of Covington email lists promoting future events in our new…

A gambler who played a key role in regional & national sports betting history died while living in an apartment inside this Northern Kentucky building.

How naive I was to be astonished by Pgh. madam Mae Scheible's audacity running a brothel across the street from the county courthouse. Covington gamblers did something similar & fire insurance maps labeled the casinos, including one marked "gambling 2d [floor]." Jail "rock breaking yard" a bonus!

Assembling sites for new crime history tours in 2026. One site that should be on the bike tour but won't b/c it's too far afield is this brick building (left). It has ties to the birth of syndicated horse race betting, Churchill Downs, and key Cincy area casinos. If only its walls could talk!

In December 1935, racketeers cooked up an audacious scheme to use a Depression-era federal work program to hire bookies to take bets in Covington, Kentucky. Did they get away with it? 🗃️ youtu.be/x7ji5ez3kDc

How much more criminally corrupt was Northern Kentucky than Pittsburgh? Where do you see "Pittsburgh" in this 1985 graphic?

Did Jakie Lerner ever gamble in Northern Kentucky? He was friends with and did "business" with many of the region's big-name racketeers, including Moe Dalitz & the Lookout House's Sam "Gameboy" Miller. Are we going to find his footprints here? pittsburghquarterly.com/articles/fin...

Ever wonder how bookies working inside taverns & casinos got their "dope" — early intel on horses, jockeys, tracks & race results? I explored some of the architectural aspects of this information network in a new Vernacular Architecture Forum newsletter article. 🗃️ www.vafweb.org/resources/Do...

As you get to know COVertNKY, you can either blame or thank Hank Messick for its arrival.

The largest urban redevelopment project in the Midwest is underway in Covington, Ky. The city is transforming an IRS processing facility built in the 1960s into a mixed-use development. I wonder if folks see the irony in the IRS locating there & the many IRS gambling busts, 1950-1980s? 🗃️

Did you know that in 1950, Covington had the most (legal, sort of) slot machines in all of Kentucky? Starting in the 1940s, the IRS required gamblers to buy licenses for coin-operated vending machines that paid cash prizes or tokens redeemable for cash. Covington had more than Newport!