Pablo Torre

And there were economic incentives for this to happen.

It was good for Vegas to have Tark still at UNLV, and therefore it was good for the mob.

Yeah, I mean, the depiction in Winning Time, you know, they reveal that it's Jerry Buss' business card on Vic Weiss' disfigured face.

And it's there to send a message to Jerry Tarkanian.

It's a warning, you know, don't go to the Lakers.

You know, a mob hit like this is so violent, it's personal.

And where the body was discovered, it was definitely to send a message.

So this is possibly how, you know, the message was depicted or potentially received.

Yeah, that has been the prevailing theory here.

But these documents, all of this research indicates that turns out there's a lot more to the story.

So it is no exaggeration to say that our correspondent today, film producer Sean Carey, has spent years examining what is, on one level, a pretty simple story.

Because there is no doubt that the murder of Jerry Tarkanian's longtime confidant and agent, Vic Weiss, was a mob hit.

Yeah, I mean, I have relatives that grew up in Vegas.

It was mob city.

You know, everything is mob-adjacent.

But the big lingering question we're here to solve today is a lot more complicated.

Why?

Why did the mob really stuff Vic Wiese's body into that trunk, scaring Tark away from the NBA and, in a sliding doors moment, saving UNLV and big time team sports in Vegas?

Although Tark, who died in 2015 at age 84, didn't exactly love talking about why he turned down the Lakers.

But this week, the same week Vegas also just got named host of the 2029 Super Bowl, it is time.