Taj Mahal

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.

"If you want to tell us what to play, y'all got to come to rehearsal," quipped Taj Mahal at the Keswick Theater Tuesday night. Mahal was responding to persistent calls from the audience for the acoustic country blues on which he built his reputation. His remark was met with indulgent laughter - and walkouts. The 53-year-old bluesman used the evening to introduce his Phantom Blues Band, an eight-piece electric rhythm-and-blues and soul revue that was more Sam and Dave than Sleepy John Estes.

When the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort opened in 1990, it was the n'est plus ultra of Atlantic City casinos. Gaudy, with its multicolored Arabian turrets and flashy interior, it was the largest place around and what others thought they might aspire to in the 1990s. By the time the Borgata Casino Hotel & Spa opened a few years ago, though, the outlandishness of the Taj Mahal was pass?. Borgata spoke more in elegant terms, or at least what elegant is in Las Vegas, and even the affable gaudiness of the Taj was becoming withered.

Calling the unfinished Taj Mahal casino hotel "the eighth wonder of the world," real estate magnate Donald Trump said yesterday that full-scale construction on the $1 billion facility would resume this month. Work on the structure, Trump's third gambling hall in the city, was stalled a year ago while Trump and entertainer Merv Griffin worked out details of the sale of Resorts International Inc. Under the Resorts deal, Griffin obtained Resorts International Casino Hotel and most of the company's holdings from Trump, who was controlling shareholder.

If it's true, as it's said, that everybody gets the blues, it's a feeling many were willing to indulge as Charlie Musselwhite, Taj Mahal, and headliner Robert Cray delivered their interpretations of the blues Monday in an intimate Valley Forge Music Fair setting. Cray, supporting his Some Rainy Morning record, may be the youngster on the blues block, but his elegant playing and soulful voice belie his years. He opened with his biggest hit, "Smokin' Gun," from 1986's Strong Persuader, which set the evening's emotional pace.

The financially troubled Taj Mahal is setting itself up as the Boardwalk's biggest gambler. Although Atlantic City's most successful casinos, Caesars and Harrah's Marina, have slashed their headliner entertainment rosters in favor of revues, the Taj is still thinking big. Donald Trump's oversize gambling palace is bringing in the Whispers Jan. 18 to 20, the touring company of A Chorus Line for a run from Feb. 12 to 17, and Jackie Mason, for a one-man...

Vocalist Loretta Holloway has been making the most of her engagement as star of Jazz Hot, the new show in the Casbah lounge at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort. There's the matter of dealing with the floors of the house she purchased in Brigantine seven years ago to accommodate her frequent appearances in Atlantic City. Last winter's Big Freeze caused water pipes to burst, doing terminal damage to the carpeting. When the floor covering was pulled up, she discovered perfectly wonderful hardwood, which needed only to be sanded.

The winds of political change have been blowing here since officials went against what some believed was the best interest of taxpayers in 1990 and decided to build a grand new municipal complex that has been dubbed the local Taj Mahal. After the election in November, it's possible that no one who was on the Township Committee when it spent $2.58 million to build the expansive, marble- floored building will be in office. Republican Mayor Nelson Grovatt, who has been on the committee for 30 years, was ousted in the primary by newcomers Gail Read and Eileen Carlin.

The sign on the door said "Do Not Disturb. " So the maid at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort waited, and knocked, and knocked again, and didn't go in until late Monday afternoon. By then, authorities said yesterday, the man she found on the floor of Room 3706 had been dead for hours. Amine B. Issa, 40, of Pittsburgh, had been shot in the head and abdomen. He lay on the floor in his underwear, an unfired .38 revolver in his hand. A man identified as Issa's cousin, Azar Essa, 32, of suburban Pittsburgh, turned himself in to a state trooper in Virginia yesterday and was charged with murder.

BELTING OUT THE BLUES, Taj Mahal (left) and Sonny Rhodes perform at Penn's Landing during the RiverBlues festival. The pair played yesterday at the two- day event, which began Saturday and closed with a performance by B.B. King.

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.

An Atlantic City grifter with a history of fraud convictions was found guilty Thursday of the brutal stabbing death of a casino patron who was carjacked in May 2010 from the Trump Taj Mahal Casino-Hotel. Craig Arno, 46, faces a potential life sentence on murder charges following his conviction by an Atlantic County Superior Court jury on 27 of 28 criminal counts he faced in the death of Martin Caballero. The jury deliberated for five days after a two-week trial in Mays Landing.

MAYS LANDING, N.J. - Bonnie has turned on Clyde. And the horrific story she's telling could seal the fate of her former boyfriend and alleged partner in crime. Jessica Kisby, 26, who pleaded guilty Tuesday in a carjacking-murder case that began in the garage of Atlantic City's Trump Taj Mahal Hotel Casino, has moved from being a co-defendant to the star witness. Her testimony, part of a plea deal that includes a 30-year prison sentence, is expected to strenghten the prosecution's case against her alleged accomplice, Craig Arno, 46. The couple are accused of the May 2010 abduction and slaying of Martin Caballero, a North Jersey grocer who planned to spend a Friday night with family at the Taj Mahal and ended up stabbed to death, his body dumped along a dirt road.

ATLANTIC CITY - Ho-ho-whoa! Just in time for Christmas, New Jersey casino regulators ruled Friday that it would be all right to have a strip club inside the Taj Mahal Casino Resort. The so-called "gentlemen's club" would be the first in an Atlantic City casino since legalized gambling began here 33 years ago. The ruling by the Division of Gaming Enforcement would permit Scores to open a $3 million club at the Taj, provided the company can obtain a liquor license. The project "will give us additional entertainment, food, beverage, and retail amenities that will be great additions to the property," said Robert Griffin, chief executive officer of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. In a directive that bordered on an anatomy lesson, the division explicitly detailed what would need to stay covered.

MAYS LANDING, N.J. - A 20-year-old Camden man arrested in a deadly Atlantic City casino carjacking was ordered held on $1 million bail at a brief hearing Wednesday at which a list of charges - including murder and weapons offenses - was read. Shackled, handcuffed, and wearing orange jail garb, Phillip Byrd, 20, of the 1500 block of Wildwood Avenue, seemed to saunter into the courtroom and stood with his head slightly cocked as Atlantic County Chief Assistant Prosecutor John Maher read the charges against him. The carjacking began around 8 a.m. Sunday in a parking garage at Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort and ended about 20 minutes later in an alley several blocks away.

A UTHORITIES filed murder charges yesterday against three Camden men accused of carjacking two people in the parking lot of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort and shooting both, killing one. Phillip Byrd and Eric Darden, both 20, and Raheem Simmons, 18, were being sought in the weekend shooting death of Sunil Rattu, 28, of Old Bridge, N.J., and the wounding of his friend, Radha Ghetia, 24, of Sayreville, who is recovering in a hospital, Atlantic County...

Arrest warrants were issued Tuesday for three Camden men who law enforcement officials say carjacked two Atlantic City casino patrons Sunday morning in a parking garage and then shot them, killing one and injuring the other. Philip L. Byrd, 20; Eric S. Darden, 20; and Raheem D. Simmons, 18, have been charged with felony murder, murder, weapons offenses, carjacking, kidnapping, theft, and robbery, said Atlantic County Prosecutor Theodore Housel. At least eight law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service, FBI, and various Atlantic and Camden County police departments participated in a "full-court press" to identify three men captured in surveillance video moments before they allegedly accosted the victims near their parked vehicle at Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort around 8 a.m. Sunday, Housel said.

MAYS LANDING, N.J. - Sunday morning's deadly abduction of two Middlesex County residents from the garage of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort - the same place where a North Jersey man was carjacked and later murdered last year - was a "random crime of opportunity that could have happened anywhere," Atlantic County's top law official said Monday. Three men suspected in the latest killing "cased" several casino garages before choosing the Taj Mahal, Prosecutor Theodore Housel said during a Monday news conference.

IT'S HARDLY the biggest booking in Atlantic City history - after all, Madonna, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Rudy Vallee, Al Jolson and John Philip Sousa have all made the Boardwalk scene. But tomorrow night's appearance by one-man sideshow Charlie Sheen at Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort certainly is AyCee's biggest pop-culture event of the still-young year. As you might have heard, the former "Two and a Half Men" star and Olympic-grade partyer has been out on the road with his "Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not An Option" tour.