Gambling Leader Philip Kastel Shot Fatally in Body Is Found In Apartment Preliminary Report of Suicide Issued.
NEW ORLEANS, Aug." 17 (UPI) Philip (Dandy Phil) Kastel, an underworld gambling leader since prohibition days, was found shot to death with a bullet through his head in his apartment yesterday. He was 68 years old. Officials Issued a preliminary report of suicide. Kastel, a slot machine operator and reputedly one of Frank Costello's chief henchmen in the South, had been ill for several months and was said to have been going blind.

Kastel's nurse heard a shot, rushed into his room in the Clai- borne Towers apartments on Canal street and found him dead. First reports had said his wife found him. No note was found. He was convicted of mail fraud in 1926 and grand larceny in 1930. Aaron Kohn, New Orleans Crime Commission managing director, called Kastel one of the principal figures in slot machine operations in New Orleans.

He said a series of corporations was formed to operate the slot machines, and Kastel was one of the principals. A major crackdown on slot machines began in New Orleans in the early 1940s, and they were practically wiped out when Lesseps S. Morrison was elected New Orleans mayor.

Morrison is now United States representative to the Organization of American States. Kastel later joined with Costel-lo in opening the Beverly Country Club, a suburban gambling spot which became one of the principal points of controversy when the Kefauver Committee visited tfk; New Orleans area. After tfie hearings, the club was closed by the sheriff. It reopened in 1959 as a restaurant, but remained in business only a few months. Of Kastel's death, Kohn said it represented "the passing of one of the most nefarious members of the organized" American underworld.".