Mayor urges Vegas to embrace Mob culture

London has its dungeons to commemorate medieval torture, and Rome its catacombs in memory of the early Christian martyrs. So why shouldn't Las Vegas inaugurate a museum to recall its long entanglement with organised crime?

A Mob museum is the latest brainchild of Las Vegas's Mayor, Oscar Goodman, formerly a defence lawyer for some of the city's most notorious gangsters. He thinks it will be a great success – an offer, as one local put it, that visitors to the city won't be able to refuse. "I think it would draw people like a magnet," Mr Goodman told reporters.

With a client list that ranged from Meyer Lansky, the Vegas Mob's top financier, to Tony "the Ant" Spilotro, an enforcer whose reputed exploits include squeezing the eyeballs out of a rival's head using a vice, Mayor Goodman has no lack of experience with the subject. He said he would gladly contribute items from his personal collection, including a tape of a Mafia induction ceremony.

The idea is not without controversy, however, particularly since the building being considered for the museum is a disused former courthouse.

Fearing intervention by the authorities, Mayor Goodman said he had meant "a mop museum". A spokesman, Erik Pappa, said the project may be expanded to a general history museum. But the Mob would still feature strongly. "You can't look at the history of Las Vegas and ignore the impact of organised crime," he said.