Oscar Goodman was born June 26, 1939 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He earned his undergraduate degree from Haverford College in 1961 and his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1964. That same year, he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada and in 1965 he was admitted to the Nevada State Bar. He served as Clark County’s chief deputy public defender from 1966 to 1967.

Jerome Countess was born on December 22, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. His mother raised him as a single mother, making ends meet with her job in a clothing factory. Countess's father rarely held a job, and his mother divorced him when Countess was three-years-old. Countess grew up in the borough's Jewish neighborhood, and he developed a reputation for being a skillful handball player and a great dancer.

Myra Berkovits (née Mosse) was born April 10, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois. Her father emigrated from Romania to Canada, later moving to Chicago, where he met Berkovits’s mother, a daughter of Russian immigrants. After graduating from Loyola University, Berkovits married and started her career as an educator teaching at an elementary school in inner city Chicago. She taught there for twelve years before moving with her husband, son and daughter to Las Vegas, Nevada.