GANGSTERS & OUTLAWS > COPS & OTHER CHARACTERS

DANCING FOR GAMBLER: The Nick Bissell Story

One Last Gamble

It was over. Nick Bissell had gambled everything in court and he had lost. It was all gone. His reputation, his money, all he had in the world was a Jeep Cherokee and the $47,000 pension he had cashed in on the day he was convicted and most of that was gone. His mother had to put up her condominium so he could make his $100,000 bail, just so he could remain free until his sentencing. His wife was looking at nearly five years behind bars. Bissell was looking at 10.

There are some people who thrive in prison. They have no problem surrendering control of the most minute details of their lives: when to sleep, when to wake, what to eat. They may not be able to live by the rules outside of prison, but inside, they take a certain comfort in the all-encompassing regulations.

But there are others for whom prison is hell. Nick Bissell was one of them. It wasn't that he had been a lawman. The truth is, there are lots of lawmen in federal prison and their fellow inmates don't generally target them. After all, it wasn't like the local prosecutor in Somerset County was responsible for putting any of the federal prisoners away.

No, guys like Bissell fear prison because they cannot find the strength to relinquish control. For them, prison is worse than death.

In the weeks after his conviction, Bissell seemed despondent. A man who had spent years developing a carefully cultivated public persona, and who indulged himself by wearing only the finest suits, now hunkered down in his suburban house. He gave up shaving, and bit-by-bit, he sold off the pieces of the life his wife and he had built. By November 18 two days before he was to have been sentenced he pawned the furniture and the knick-knacks.

Barbara Bissell wasn't home the morning that Nick Bissell sliced off the ankle bracelet the feds used to monitor his whereabouts while he was under house arrest. It wasn't until 11 a.m. that anyone noticed that he was gone.

Authorities said that Bissell left behind a suicide note. That no one took the note seriously at the time is a measure of how deeply rooted the public image Bissell had constructed was. To most, it was another example of Bissell's desire for the spotlight, his penchant for high drama.

Some of those closest to Bissell believed that he was serious. The authorities did not. They issued an international all points bulletin for the fugitive former prosecutor.

Colorado Belle Casino, Nevada

Ironically, Bissell, who was never reluctant to sneer at defendants who he had led to their own demise, and who never missed a chance to ridicule them for the clues they left behind, left a trail of clues all over the country during his eight-day flight. There were cell phone calls to friends and family. He left behind receipts, most of them under childishly obvious pseudonyms. Most intriguing is the fact that when he pulled into Laughlin, Nevada, and checked into the 374-room Colorado Belle Casino, he did it under his own name.

The night before he died, lost and alone, he tried to strike up a conversation with a dancer named April, whom he had hired with his few bucks to help him while away a few desperate hours. He had said he was a businessman or something and that he was on his way to Vegas. He had even told her his name, his real name, though to April he was just one more of thousands of desperately lonely men who drift through the gaudy gaming town of Laughlin, Nevada, every year, guys far from home and looking to get lucky one way or the other. She had no way of knowing that the next morning, Bissell would be dead, that he would have put a single round from his pistol into his own head.

All April knew was that she was dancing for a gambler whose luck had clearly run out.