Burial Notes

Pisgah Church Cemetery

  Recorded Events in His Life

• Nickname: Chan. ³

• He was buried at the Pisgah Church Cemetery in Pisgah, Woodford County, Kentucky, USA in 1993. Joseph Daniel CHANDLER Jr. (1963 - 1993) - "Chan". Beloved son of Dan & Lynne. Beloved brother of Erin. Grandson of Gov. & Mrs A.B. Chandler, ? & Gene Bryant

• The Las Vegas Sun published a news article about Chan's death and his father's efforts to change the coroner's verdict on 9 April 2000 in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, USA.
  
  Father fights for son's dignity
  By Martin Kuz
  LAS VEGAS SUN
  
  Ted Binion. Dan Chandler.
  
  You've heard everything about one man, nothing about the other. But ask the Clark County district attorney and coroner which name has hounded them more in recent months. Then go further. Ask them which case has elicited more attention from Las Vegas power brokers than any they've ever handled.
  
  No contest. Dan Chandler.
  
  Coverage of the Binion slaying has oozed from every media pore since the casino heir's death Sept. 17, 1998.
  
  The story of Dan Chandler, meantime, offers its own addictive blend of intrigue yet remains unknown. To outsiders.
  
  From a family tragedy, from one father's pain and fury, evolves a tale that is part murky morality play and part generational soap opera. It involves a who's who of the city's elite, behind-the-scenes politicking, legal jousting and a fierce clash of wills.
  
  There is also the heritage of a Kentucky legend, Russian roulette, communing with the dead — and no clear ending.
  
  At the heart of the unfinished saga sits — smolders — a pure Vegas character in Dan Chandler, as compelling and flawed a protagonist as is depicted in any work of fiction.
  
  Only this isn't fiction.
  
  *
  
  These are the numbers that blew apart Dan Chandler's life. May 20, 1993. A 0.46 blood-alcohol content. A .357 caliber handgun. One bullet. One pull of the trigger.
  
  Seven years ago Chandler lost his best friend. His only son. Beer and vodka flooding his bloodstream, enough to induce coma and death, he picked up his father's revolver. In the manner of Russian roulette he emptied out five of its six cartridges. Spun the cylinder.
  
  One pull of the trigger.
  
  The police report describes the death of Joseph Daniel Chandler Jr. in blunt detail. It is the grim account of a 30-year-old man putting a hole in his head. The document betrays no anguish. No emptiness. No mention of the hole left in his father's breast.
  
  Nor is there final judgment on whether Chan, as family and friends knew him, wanted to die that night. Only the last two paragraphs of the eight-page report brush against the question of intent.
  
  "There are no direct indications that the victim wished to kill himself. However, based on ... the fact that he did place the pistol up against his head when pulling the trigger, it would indicate that the victim should have been aware that the consequences of these actions would be fatal."
  
  Chandler knows his son wanted to live. Seven years later he wakes up believing it, falls asleep swearing it. He tells anyone who asks. He tells everyone who doesn't. "He did not deliberately take his own life," Chandler said. "With a 0.46 blood-alcohol level, he couldn't deliberately get into bed, let alone take his own life."
  
  The county coroner found otherwise. Suicide.
  
  The ruling came within a week of Chan's death. His father's grief deepened. His son had been ripped from him. Now he felt his son had been stripped of lasting dignity.
  
  Chandler tried to rally. He would fight the ruling. Not for money or religious reasons. To set the record straight. To restore his boy's good name.
  
  But the shock of Chan's death numbed his will. Time passed. The two-year statute of limitations to challenge the coroner's decision expired. More time passed. Chandler finally went to court. A judge threw out the case, citing the lapsed deadline.
  
  Chandler clung to a final hope. The district attorney holds the authority to waive the statute. Lifting the restriction would allow Chandler to appear in court to plead his case. A judge would determine whether to uphold the coroner's finding or to rule Chan's death an accident.
  
  Even if the judge affirmed the coroner's position, Chandler reasoned he would gain peace of mind. He would have exhausted his options. So Chandler approached District Attorney Stewart Bell in the summer of 1998. Bell agreed to consider his request.
  
  Two weeks after the meeting Bell made up his mind. And slammed it shut. He told Chandler's attorney he would never help his client. Bell accused Chandler of lying about his motives. Case closed.
  
  Bell's reaction stunned Chandler. He insisted he didn't lie. Two friends who attended his meeting with Bell backed up Chandler's claim. Both men are also close to Bell.
  
  Chandler believed a remote chance still existed of persuading the district attorney to reconsider. But he realized confronting Bell would backfire. Instead he appealed to friends to aid his cause.
  
  These are not your average friends. County commissioners, university regents, casino executives, business magnates — dozens of them called Bell. Almost as many phoned county coroner Ron Flud. Bell refused to budge. The entreaties only bolstered his resolve.
  
  The rejection gnawed at Chandler. He drank too much, ate too much, slept too little. Friends worried he didn't care whether he lived or died.
  
  Six months ago they cornered him. Stop destroying yourself, they begged him. Don't give up.
  
  Chandler heeded their advice. He tamed his lifestyle, saw a doctor. He also chose to keep crusading for Chan. Now he's making an open plea on his son's behalf.
  
  Chandler admits to faltering as a son to his father, the late A.B. "Happy" Chandler, a genuine Kentucky icon and the second commissioner of Major League Baseball. He concedes he fell short as a father to his son. He condemns himself for waiting too long to dispute the coroner's ruling.
  
  Yet Chandler asks for no sympathy. He asks for his day in court to argue that Chan did not die willfully. Whether he receives that chance rests with Bell. Whether he deserves it is a matter of opinion.
  
  Living up to a name
  
  Just before Chan shot himself he delivered a rambling soliloquy. His girlfriend was an audience of one. He apologized for drinking too much. He promised to enter alcohol counseling the next day. He vowed to live clean.
  
  Then came the words that still shadow his father. "I want to carry on the Chandler name."
  
  Dan Chandler knows the burden.
  
  Albert Benjamin "Happy" Chandler crafted a legacy the size of his beloved Kentucky, the state he called "the promised land."
  
  A life of distinction took root in the humblest of settings, on a small farm and amid poverty in western Kentucky in 1898. Whatever Chandler lacked as a child — money, food, clothing — he never wanted for ambition.
  
  Politics satisfied his passion. Dripping with charisma, Chandler won election to the state Senate at the unripe age of 29. In time he scrambled up the public-office ladder to become lieutenant governor and a two-term governor. Between his nonconsecutive stints in the governor's mansion he squeezed in a partial term as U.S. senator.
  
  Chandler bolted the Senate in 1945 for the job of baseball commissioner, succeeding the iron-fisted Kenesaw Mountain Landis. If the move surprised political observers and the folks back home, it would beget Chandler's defining moment.
  
  Network television had yet to be invented when Chandler became commissioner, but already professional baseball at its highest level was seen in black and white: Whites were allowed to play, blacks were not. Jim Crow still clenched an ignorant nation by the throat.
  
  Branch Rickey, president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, sought to promote a black player to the big leagues in 1947. Chandler ignored the remonstrations of baseball's other 15 owners in sanctioning Rickey's plan. Jackie Robinson smashed through the game's 70-year-old color barrier that summer, changing forever the face of sports in the United States.
  
  Chandler's repudiation of the owners cost him his post four years later when they declined to extend his contract. His defiance also assured him a place in the annals of sports and American history. The National Baseball Hall of Fame inducted Chandler in 1982.
  
  In later years Chandler relished recounting what guided him in helping to integrate the national pastime. "I knew someday I would have to meet my Maker and have to answer about what I did with the black boys. I figured He might not have room for me if I didn't make room for them."
  
  The response captured the mix of homespun wit and candor that endeared Chandler to generations of Kentuckians. To be sure, as with any self-respecting politician, Chandler amassed his share of enemies and setbacks. But he died in 1991 at age 92 as "maybe the best-known Kentucky politician of the 20th century," according to Don Edwards, longtime columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader.
  
  Great expectations
  
  Happy Chandler's public exploits tended to obscure the private joy he and his wife, Mildred, shared as parents of two sons and two daughters. They welcomed the last of their children into the world in 1933.
  
  Joseph Daniel Chandler would learn that growing up the scion of a living legend has its privileges.
  
  As Dan Chandler, now 66, likes to say, "My 15 minutes of fame was extended to several hours because of my daddy. I'm him without the accomplishments."
  
  His surname helped young Dan earn a spot on the basketball squad at the University of Kentucky, where his father was a fixture on the board of trustees, and he warmed the bench for coach Adolph Rupp's 1954 NCAA title team.
  
  Belonging to Kentucky royalty boosted Chandler into a world of opportunity after finishing college. He dabbled in a string of nominally successful business ventures. He got married and had two children. He bought a house in Versailles, Ky., the Chandler family enclave. A comfortable future stretched out before him.
  
  At the same time public expectations to jump into politics mounted. Some observers pegged Dan, blessed with his father's gift of gab and sense of humor, as a natural to follow in his footsteps. Speculation swirled that Happy's youngest son would be the next Chandler to reside in the governor's mansion.
  
  Dan Chandler gave the hustings a shot in 1968 with a bid for Congress. The thrill of taking up the family political banner faded fast. A drubbing by his opponent in the Democratic primary sent Chandler back to the business world.
  
  Before he could seriously consider another campaign, life unraveled.
  
  Dan and Happy Chandler were named among the defendants in a $3 million damage suit filed in 1970 by stockholders in Daniel Boone Fried Chicken Inc., a Kentucky Fried Chicken knockoff that went belly-up. The case settled out of court.
  
  More legal troubles followed. In 1972 a federal judge sentenced Dan Chandler to 30 days in jail and fined him $1,500 for failing to file corporate income tax returns for a company he had co-owned. A week before authorities leveled the misdemeanor charges against Chandler the presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie dropped him as its national finance vice chairman.
  
  Chandler wound up serving 20 days of his term and discovering a prickly truth about the underside of minor celebrity. The same attribute that afforded him an edge — his last name — resulted in a relatively benign offense drawing statewide notice.
  
  "People thought Dan Chandler would be the next generation of the Chandler political dynasty and it just didn't work out," Edwards said. "His reputation had been damaged."
  
  The bad press convinced Chandler to abandon Kentucky. So, too, did the tacit pressure of great expectations. He needed to stake out his own life.
  
  "I caused maximum embarrassment," Chandler said. "I had dirtied up my family's name, even though it was an accident. I embarrassed my daddy, and it was more than I could take. I had to go."
  
  The tacit pressure of great expectations. The need to stake out his own life. A generation later, the struggle would swallow Chan.
  
  *
  
  Rare is the conversation that passes without Dan Chandler invoking one of his father's favorite witticisms, parables or pet phrases. His voice twanging along like a bluegrass banjo, Chandler interrupts himself midway through a recollection of leaving Kentucky 25 years ago.
  
  "This reminds me of something my daddy used to say," he said. "There was a son who told his daddy he was moving away. He asked his daddy for $200. The daddy said to the son, 'Here's $400 — go twice as far.' "
  
  A guffaw blasts out of Chandler, a sonic bang that seems to force the plain white walls of his tiny office to bend outward. His space inside the Las Vegas Hilton, where Chandler works as a casino host, wraps around him almost as tightly as the maroon polo shirt he wears. In these close quarters, the 5-foot-11, 250-pound Chandler brings to mind a bear in a phone booth.
  
  The laughter is the surest sign Chandler has forgiven himself for the mistakes that chased him out of Kentucky. He can recall business deals gone sour without a grimace creasing his ruddy, lined face. He can reflect on how he "dirtied up" the legacy of his late father without tugging at the tuft of off-white hair that reclines across his scalp.
  
  Then he mentions Chan. A hint of gray seeps into his pale blue eyes.
  
  "I miss him. Miss him like hell."
  
  Chan died in Las Vegas in what resembled a "game" of Russian roulette. He was 30, an alcoholic and a drug abuser.
  
  He was also funny, loyal, compassionate. Quick with a laugh and darkly handsome. One of the guys and an incurable ladies' man. He coupled the trademark Chandler charisma with a sincere desire to help those in need.
  
  One thing Chan was not, family and friends insist: suicidal.
  
  Chan shot himself in the head with his father's .357 caliber revolver. He squeezed the trigger after dumping out five of the gun's six cartridges and spinning the cylinder. His blood-alcohol level hovered at a near-fatal 0.46. Crack cocaine pulsed through his body.
  
  His loved ones can recite the somber details. They cannot accept the coroner's ruling of suicide — a ruling from which the term "Russian roulette" is absent. They contend the omission amounted to a false assumption that Chan wanted to die.
  
  Dan Chandler slams a meaty fist on his desk. Framed pictures of his son shimmy along the faded wood. He repeats what Chan said to his girlfriend minutes before he died: "I want to carry on the Chandler name." His voice pounds the walls.
  
  "He wanted to carry on the Chandler name. Does that sound like someone who's suicidal? It was Russian roulette, it was a stupid accident. It wasn't suicide. It couldn't have been suicide. He had too much alcohol in him to think straight."
  
  Chan's mother is ----- Knipping. Her marriage to Chandler ended amicably in 1974 about the time he bid goodbye to Kentucky. Following the divorce Knipping, with Chandler's consent, received primary custody of Chan and his younger sister, -----.
  
  Soon after, Chandler got into the gambling industry in Florida, graduating to Las Vegas a short time later. Knipping moved with the kids from Kentucky, first to Maine and then to Lubbock, Texas. There Chan drifted. In high school he fell into the grip of alcohol and drugs. He never really slipped free the rest of his life.
  
  Knipping now lives with her second husband in the small town of Southern Pines, N.C., and works as a psychologist. Mother and son remained close after Chan returned to Kentucky upon finishing high school. He visited her on occasion and they talked by phone every week — including the evening before he died.
  
  Knipping has counseled her share of troubled patients. When Chan called that night she sensed no anxiety, no despair in her son. She heard an upbeat young man excited about his new girlfriend.
  
  "I just know he was all right," Knipping said. "He didn't try to end his life. He just didn't. I think he was really, really screwed up, but not so much that he purposely shot himself."
  
  Final hours
  
  Chan counted Joe Markham among his best friends. During the 1980s they pursued a lifestyle of clockwork hedonism: Get out of bed at dusk. Light up the town till dawn. Repeat next day.
  
  Their endless drinking jags eventually landed the two men in Alcoholics Anonymous. The program helped Markham, 44, wrench out of alcohol's grasp, and he now owns a budding development company in Park City, Utah.
  
  Markham had lived clean and sober for a couple of years when he arrived in Las Vegas for a developers convention on May 19, 1993. He and Chan went to dinner that Wednesday night and met again the next day at a casino sports book.
  
  Two topics dominated the conversation Thursday afternoon. Chan's self-avowed need for alcohol counseling and his search for a career. Markham urged Chan to go back to AA and to think about working for him. Chan endorsed both ideas. Around 4 p.m. Markham left for the airport after saying so long to his friend.
  
  Five hours later Chan lay dead.
  
  "Was he reckless? Absolutely. Was he way over the line on the drinking and the drugs? Absolutely. Did he want to kill himself? Absolutely not," Markham said.
  
  As a recovering alcoholic Markham counters the theory that the amount of liquor Chan downed was its own kind of death wish. Binge drinking obliterates the senses, Markham said, not the desire to dry out. Or to live.
  
  "You have to remember alcoholism isn't just something where you wake up one day and you're cured," Markham said. "But he had no intention of continuing that lifestyle. At no time was there any indication that he had anything but hopes and dreams for a bright future."
  
  Lisa Carr was Chan's girlfriend and the last person to see him alive. Attempts by the Sun, Chandler and Markham to track down Carr were unsuccessful. But her comments to police and a sworn affidavit she gave two weeks after Chan's death provide a glimpse of his chaotic final hours.
  
  Chan and Carr had dated for about a month when he invited her to fly out from Kentucky to Las Vegas. After Markham departed on the afternoon of May 20 the couple drove to the condo of Dan Chandler, who was out of town on business.
  
  The night turned into a dismal blur for Chan. He chugged vodka and beer. He smoked crack cocaine that he had bought earlier in the evening from a dealer downtown. He sputtered about wanting kids and getting sober.
  
  In her affidavit Carr portrayed Chan as "really disoriented" but said "in no way did he think he was going to die in the next 10 minutes."
  
  Just before 9 p.m. Chan walked into the condo's master bedroom. He returned to the living room carrying his father's loaded handgun. Carr sat on a couch, staring.
  
  Chan had recently watched "Bugsy," a movie about the mobster and Las Vegas pioneer Bugsy Siegel. In one tense scene Siegel, played by Warren Beatty, survives Russian roulette.
  
  Chan stood in the middle of the room. Mumbled something about the film. Shook out five cartridges. Whirled the cylinder.
  
  "There was no way Chan was thinking that he was ever going to get the bullet," Carr said. "With the gun, he thought he was going to get away with it. (By) no means did he ever think that he was going to die."
  
  Later in the affidavit Carr questioned whether Chan even meant to leave a cartridge in the chamber.
  
  "(But) either way, he was just taking a chance and he did not have suicide in mind. We had just been talking about how he loved his family so much and everything was so future-oriented. For Chan, it was just like betting on a game."
  
  Physical evidence
  
  Coroner Ron Flud cuts to the point.
  
  "He cocks the gun, puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger. I ask you: Which one of these is an accident?"
  
  A Clark County deputy coroner signed out Chan's death as a suicide. But it is Flud who has run the department for 16 years. It is Flud who defends rulings on cause of death.
  
  The county coroner's office investigates some 275 suicides a year. Flud calls himself "very empathetic" to the families of victims. As a parent, he realizes no father or mother wants to believe their child intended to die.
  
  The agency does not keep record of challenges made to its rulings on cause of death. During his reign Flud remembers only two cases involving suicide — Chandler's and another — that wound up in court. Both were dismissed by a judge, according to Flud.
  
  Chandler believes his son died playing Russian roulette. The phrase appears nowhere in police and coroner's reports on Chan — despite the external similarities between what the dictionary calls "a deadly game of chance" and his manner of death.
  
  Flud explains. "The cause of death was a contact gunshot wound to the head — self-inflicted. He never said anything in the presence of the witness about playing Russian roulette ... I can't judge what was in his mind, whether he was playing a game. I can only judge his actions."
  
  The distinction matters little in one respect: The county coroner's office always classifies death by Russian roulette as suicide. Alcohol, drugs, state of mind — none matter. Neither does the disbelief of a victim's survivors.
  
  Yet by now Flud has grown used to justifying Chan's death as suicide in the context of Russian roulette. He has become wearily familiar with the argument put forth by Chandler, his attorney and others that Chan died playing "a deadly game of chance." That he killed himself by accident.
  
  Each time, the coroner repeats a refrain — bring me physical evidence. Not emotions and opinions. Hard facts that show Chan did not cock the handgun, did not put the muzzle to his head, did not pull the trigger.
  
  Flud puts little stock in the testimony of those who attest to a suicide victim's state of mind at the time of death. Or who insist that a loved one would never take his own life.
  
  "Hearsay and innuendo don't stand up in a court of law. Evidence does," he said.
  
  Flud also discounts the influence of drugs and alcohol on a suicide victim's judgment. He makes an analogy to people who commit a premeditated murder while drunk.
  
  "Are they going to be charged with murder three just because of alcohol? No. It's murder one. It's the same with suicide."
  
  Flud serves as vice president of the International Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners. The group regularly debates whether Russian roulette qualifies as suicide. There is no consensus — among members or in the medical community as a whole.
  
  The Clark and Washoe county coroner's offices, for example, consider every case of Russian roulette de facto suicide. The opinion is not uncommon among coroners and medical examiners nationwide.
  
  A survey by the nonprofit American Association of Suicidology in Washington, D.C., identifies the other end of the spectrum: Coroners who judge Russian roulette an accident even if the victim requires six pulls of the trigger for the gun to fire.
  
  A vast middle ground separates the two perspectives, said Dr. Lanny Berman, the association's executive director. Given a brief description of how Chan killed himself, Berman suggested his death shades closer to an inadvertent act than a willful one.
  
  "Typically with Russian roulette, it's ruled an accident unless there's overwhelming evidence that there was intent to die. That has to be evident," he said. "With his blood-alcohol (level) that high, without other evidence, you cannot form intent."
  
  Flud cites a pair of thick medical tomes to support the Russian roulette policy of his office. One, "Practical Forensic Pathology," terms the game "a suicidal act" based on the following:
  
  "The rationale is that, first, the decedent was in control of the environment. Second, he or she took deliberate steps to prepare for the event... Third, the chances of survival for the next moment were intentionally reduced from infinity to five out of six."
  
  The book notes that emotion and intoxication can diminish the degree of intent in any instance of suicide. "However, the acutely emotional or intoxicated state would have more likely lessened the inhibition of the person, thus making it easier to carry out the self-destructive act ...
  
  "Consequently, the manner of death would be regarded as suicide."
  
  It is not unusual for coroners perplexed by the ambiguity of Russian roulette to rule the cause of death "undetermined." Flud scoffs at their meekness, chiding them for bending to political pressure.
  
  "The chicken way out is to say 'undetermined.' But that's not the way we do business here."
  
  Second opinion
  
  Under Nevada law a ruling on cause of death can be disputed in court for two years past the date of a coroner's decision. Dan Chandler waited four years after his son's death just to hire an attorney.
  
  When asked why, words fail him. His cheeks puff out, then deflate as he exhales. His bulging, froglike eyes dart about. He pats his cluttered desktop as if groping for a response. For a rare moment silence inhabits Chandler's cramped office.
  
  At length he says, "It was my fault for being namby-pamby. I was slow. Now that I look back — definitely the smartest move would be to go to court right away. That would've been the best way to go. I blew it. I can't blame anyone else for that."
  
  Chandler retained Las Vegas attorney David Chesnoff in mid-1997 to fight the ruling of suicide in Chan's death. The two-year window to challenge the coroner's decision closed in late May 1995. Chandler directed Chesnoff to push on anyway.
  
  District Court Judge Jack Lehman tossed out Chandler's case in May 1998 on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired. No surprise there.
  
  But the legal action did yield a second expert opinion on cause of death — plus an odd bit of theatrics involving Flud and Dr. Ronald Maris, a nationally renowned authority on suicide.
  
  Maris' exploration of death and suicide spans more than three decades. A former deputy coroner in Baltimore, Maris is past president of the American Association of Suicidology. He has authored or edited 19 books on the subject of suicide and serves as director of the Center for Study of Suicide at the University of South Carolina. The research facility is one of only six of its kind in the country.
  
  Chesnoff brought Maris to Las Vegas for three days in the fall of 1997 to analyze Chan's death. As part of his investigation Maris met Flud in his county office. Maris' final report noted that at some point their conversation took a bizarre turn.
  
  "(Flud) took a loaded .357 Magnum revolver from his desk drawer, took out five cartridges, spun the cylinder, and said: 'If you think Russian roulette is not suicide then you pull the trigger with this gun to your head!"'
  
  Flud, while downplaying the histrionics, confirmed the incident. He added that Maris reacted to his offer by saying, "I don't feel lucky today."
  
  In an interview from his home in Columbia, S.C., Maris described Chan's death as a "clear and obvious" example of Russian roulette. In that regard he characterized Flud as "probably a little threatened by anyone questioning his authority."
  
  Maris views death by Russian roulette as inadvertent — a position reflected in his dissection of Flud's finding of suicide.
  
  Maris maintains that leaving one bullet in a six-chamber cylinder represents a 17 percent, or one-sixth, probability of death. That translates to an 83 percent, or five-sixths, intent to live, he wrote.
  
  Chan's 0.46 blood-alcohol content — a level of 0.50 generally triggers coma or death — made him virtually "unable to take voluntary action," Maris asserted. He also referred to various studies that show less than 10 percent of suicide victims commit the act with others present.
  
  The substantial doubts over intent and the almost lethal amount of alcohol warrant a ruling of accidental in Chan's death, Maris concluded.
  
  "I saw this basically as risk-taking," he said. "His behavior was somewhat suicidal, but it was not clear-cut suicidal. But the coroner was adamant. He never even opened the door a crack."
  
  Next Sunday: Dan Chandler hoped the district attorney would lend a hand in his case. Stewart Bell instead delivered a stiff-arm, along with charges that Chandler's motives may involve more than his son's dignity. His rejection of Chandler has fanned greater interest among Las Vegas' power elite than the made-for-tabloid murder trial of Ted Binion. How has one father's apparently innocuous plea kicked up so much behind-the-scenes attention?