Robert Angleton

Robert Nicholas Angleton (born 1948) is an infamous bookmaker in Houston, Texas.

Robert Angleton's father was Nicholas Angleton. When he was called Nicholas Angletos, the Greek cabin boy jumped ship at Port Lavaca, Texas in the 1920s. He moved to the East Coast, married, and worked a construction job building barracks in World War II. After the war, Nicholas Angleton started building garden apartments.

Robert's brother Roger Nicholas Angleton was born in 1942, while Robert, or Bob, was born in 1948. They were born into a wealthy family, and Nicholas took the boys every once in a while to Greece, where they sailed a yacht. Bob shaped himself into an obedient, sophisticated, and controlling person. He majored in the arts and sciences at Syracuse University, and moved to Florida in the late 1970s with his brother. Robert married an airline stewardess named Lollie. The brothers had a restaurant which later went under.

In the late seventies, the brothers Angleton moved to Houston, Texas. Roger entered into real estate while Bob sold used cars. At first, Roger was more successful than his brother. Spurred by his rivalry with his brother, Robert became a bookmaker. The used car business went bankrupt and Bob became a full time bookmaker.

Sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, he found a woman named Doris McGowen Beck in a bar inside the West Loop. Robert was already married to Lollie, and Doris was already married to a man named William Beck, yet the two fell in love. Bob took Doris to dinner at Ruggles in 1982, and were married shortly after. They both divorced their previous spouses. On August 1, 1984, Doris gave birth to Nicole Angleton and Alessandra Angleton, their two twin girls. They had settled into Bellaire, Texas by the early 1980s.

Bob fired brother Roger Angleton from his betting operations in August 1990. That event had Roger committing extortion against Bob. He demanded for money that he felt that Bob owed him, and threatened many punishments, including having Bob ratted out.

Robert Angleton cornered the Houston sports betting market by ratting out his smaller rivals to the Houston Police Department, and in agreement, they never arrested him. Some estimates said that he brought in more than one million United States dollars per year. Robert eventually grew so rich that he moved his family to River Oaks. Doris and Robert had very different personalities; Doris was warm and sociable, thus winning her many friends.

His wife was murdered on April 16, 1997, which helped expose his bookmaking. His extortionist brother, Roger Angleton, committed the crime. Robert was 48 years old at the time his wife was murdered. The state of Texas believed that Robert and Roger had a blood contract. Since Doris was divorcing Robert, she would have taken a share of his profits, and she would have exposed his bookmaking scheme.

Either way, Robert was in a precarious situation. The state of Texas found him innocent on the charge that he murdered his wife, but the state fined him because of his bookmaking.

However, the United States Department of Justice decided to indict him on January 24, 2002, for conspiring to murder his wife, which is a different charge than the crime with which the Texas court charged him. He was supposed to keep an ankle bracelet on. However, he fled the country on June 12, 2003, with three false passports. He was supposed to be at the trial five days later, on June 17.

However, he had been arrested the same day for passport fraud in the Netherlands, and could have been sent back to the United States. He had carried $140,000 worth of cash and jewelry.

The Dutch had scheduled an extradition hearing in January 2004. He is also going to be charged on passport fraud and bail evasion. His $300,000 bail was withdrawn. A man named Lorenzo Sarinas was accused of obtaining the false passports for Robert Angleton.

He is currently being held at The Dome in the Netherlands. A Dutch court ruled that the Dutch extradition treaty forbids him from being sent to the U.S. to be tried for her murder, because of the Texas verdict.