Atlantic City

ATLANTIC CITY — The stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists outside a casino hotel left tourism officials stunned and dismayed Monday, casting a shadow over the formal opening on Memorial Day weekend of the newest gambling palace and tripping up a $30 million-a-year campaign to rebrand and revive the sagging resort town. The two victims, women ages 80 and 47, were stabbed and killed during a robbery Monday morning outside Bally's Atlantic City casino hotel, just steps from where a police officer was sitting in a patrol car. Police declined to provide the names of the victims, or precisely where they were from, pending notification of family.

ATLANTIC CITY — At the East Coast Gaming Congress here on Thursday, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno sounded more like she was on the campaign stump than simply speaking to gambling-industry executives. Guadagno, a fill-in for Gov. Christie, dodged all questions regarding Internet gaming and sports betting at the gathering in the new Revel Casino. Instead, she chanted a familiar chorus: That it was her boss who ensured that Revel got built with $261 million in state tax credits, who streamlined regulations in the battered gambling town to entice investors, and who was going all-out to get Atlantic City back on track.

ATLANTIC CITY - This town isn't Las Vegas, but the $2.4 billion Revel Casino wants to take visitors there with A-list entertainment, posh rooms, and celebrity-chef restaurants in a luxurious setting where the champagne and water in 10 swimming pools are always flowing. The 20-acre resort - draped in silvery-blue reflective glass - literally curls to and fro like the ocean it embraces. Many see Revel as the lifeline for this down-on-its-luck gambling mecca in need of a revival.

The enormousness that is the new Revel Atlantic City can be boiled down to numbers: 14 restaurants, 1,900 guest rooms, in a mega-casino towering 47 stories over the city's South Inlet section. But Revel's restaurant complement can be boiled down to two Philadelphia men who operate as Vibrant Development Group: Chuck Bragitikos and Jason Spillerman. More than five years ago, they met with Kevin DeSanctis, Revel's chief executive. DeSanctis told them that it not only had to be big, it had to be distinctive.

If they build it, will we come? Construction crews are finishing a $27 million, 75,000-square-foot expansion of Atlantic City International Airport that will add new gates and a federal inspection station for international flights and expand the baggage-claim area. Plans are under way for a $40 million connector road to better link the airport to the Atlantic City Expressway by 2016. A new parking garage has been built, and a contract has been awarded for a hotel adjacent to the airport, although construction has not begun.

ATLANTIC CITY - Jeffrey Barton moved to the Shore from Redondo Beach, Calif., a year ago to cash in on an unprecedented building boom here. "I'm here for one thing," said Barton, 44, who makes $31.97 an hour as a tile finisher. "The work. " There are plans over the next four years for $20 billion worth of casino, hotel, restaurant and retail construction and renovation projects, many of which began in 2003. And in a slowing national economy, all that development is attracting construction workers from around the country.

Miss American Pageant contestants Showing off in swimsuits in Atlantic City are (jumping) Susan Campbell, Miss North Dakota, and (from left) Katherine Ann Killen, Miss Minnesota; Nancy Humphries, Miss South Carolina; Cindy Hodgkins, Miss Illinois; and Patricia Brant, Miss Louisiana.

The women have arrived in Atlantic City for the Miss America Pageant, and they're hard at work. Miss Nevada, Stacie James, works out on a Nautilus machine; Miss Texas, Jo Thompson, gives an interview. They're all hoping to be named Miss America 1988 on Saturday night.

A national television audience, including viewers in localities where casino-gambling proposals are under consideration, got a grim look at the realities in Bill Moyers' CBS special Wednesday night: Big Gamble in Atlantic City. The tragic neglect of poor neighborhoods and inhabitants - hardly more than a dice-throw from the glitter of gaming halls - was accurate and perhaps even understated. There were some flaws in the show and it might have been better balanced, as Inquirer staff writer Lee Winfrey noted in a preview.

ATLANTIC CITY - Two sets of visitors to this seaside casino resort often mingle in the streets behind the glitter of the Boardwalk - tourists and homeless people from across the region - and something went dreadfully wrong in that uneasy mix Monday when a woman described as homeless and deranged plunged a 12-inch butcher knife into two tourists from Canada, killing both. Antoinette E. Pelzer, 44, who holds a Philadelphia driver's license but who a relative said had been homeless for five months and undergone treatment for schizophrenia, made a first appearance Tuesday afternoon in state Superior Court in Atlantic County.

Shots were reportedly fired at the Oceanside Charter School in Atlantic City this morning. Few details of the incident were known. However, the Breaking News Network, which monitors police scanner activity, first reported the incident about 12:25 p.m. today at the school on 1750 Bacharach Boulevard. There were no reports of injuries. A woman who answered the phone at the school said she had no information to release. Police told reporters that the incident occurred just before noon and that two 10-year-old boys have been detained for firing a handgun in a bathroom.

ATLANTIC CITY - With The Who's "My Generation" playing on his earphones, dressed in crocs and plaid pajama pants, Keith Stell, 57, was happy to tell how he got to Atlantic City two months ago, a paranoid schizophrenic off his meds, a long rap sheet of drug and other arrests, just out of a Gloucester County jail. "A cop car," he said, sitting on a bench in the yard of the Atlantic City Rescue Mission with several other men who all attend the Atlantic Behavioral Health program. He said he was now on Seroquel.

The two Canadian tourists stabbed to death with a 12-inch butcher knife by a deranged woman in Atlantic City were a mother and her daughter, officials said today. They were identified as Po Lin Wan, 80, and Alice Mei See Leung, 47, of Scarborough, Ontario. Antoinette E. Pelzer, 44, allegedly stabbed Leung in her upper body during a robbery around 10 a.m. outside the Bally's Atlantic City Casino and then stabbed Wan in her lower body, hand and shoulder as she tried to help her daughter, authorities said.

Dear Mr. Platt, In your salacious zeal to grab the attention of the masses, you clearly went above and beyond the pale with your latest headline — "TOURIST DEATH TRAP" — with the accompanying picture of Atlantic City on the front cover of your newspaper. The death of these two women is a horrific tragedy but it was an isolated incident. To classify Atlantic City as a lawless town is unconscionable and, quite simply, bad reporting. Your readers overwhelmingly come to the shore for vacations and weekend getaways, and to pander to unnecessary fears is the lowest form of journalism, which says more about your greed to sell a paper than it does about imparting the facts to the public.

MAYS LANDING, N.J. — Describing him as "cruel, depraved, and remorseless," a Superior Court judge sentenced Craig Arno to 120 years in prison Thursday for the brutal kidnapping and murder of an Atlantic City casino patron two years ago. During a highly charged sentencing hearing in Superior Court, Judge Michael Donio told the Atlantic City man he had to be "taken out of society for the rest of [his] natural life," noting that the sentence for murder, kidnapping, aggravating arson, and robbery would require Arno to serve 102 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.

ATLANTIC CITY — The stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists outside a casino hotel left tourism officials stunned and dismayed Monday, casting a shadow over the formal opening on Memorial Day weekend of the newest gambling palace and tripping up a $30 million-a-year campaign to rebrand and revive the sagging resort town. The two victims, women ages 80 and 47, were stabbed and killed during a robbery Monday morning outside Bally's Atlantic City casino hotel, just steps from where a police officer was sitting in a patrol car. Police declined to provide the names of the victims, or precisely where they were from, pending notification of family.

Pearl Jamand Philly-raised Santigold are among top artists who will perform along with Jay-Z at the Budweiser Made in America festival over Labor Day Weekend. Dirty Projectors, Skrillex, Afrojack, Odd Future and Mike Snow are also performing over the two-day event, Sept. 1 and 2, along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. We reported the lineup's biggest names Monday morning at PhillyGossip.com after noting that an apparent Ticketmaster goof had prematurely listed acts online Friday.

MAYS LANDING, N.J. - "Both?" Double murder suspect Antoinette Pelzer expressed surprise and swallowed hard in a court appearance Tuesday afternoon after learning that both the Canadian women she allegedly stabbed with a 12-inch butcher knife in an attack Monday in the tourism district of Atlantic City had died. According to charges read by Superior Court Judge Michael Donio, who set bail at $1.5 million for Pelzer, the older of the two victims, an 80-year-old, intervened as Pelzer attacked the younger, who was 47 and believed to be the older woman's daughter.