Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, the mobster widely credited as a driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip, was killed on the night of Friday, June 20, 1947. As Siegel sat reading the Los Angeles Times with his associate Allen Smiley at his Beverly Hills home, an unknown assailant fired a . 30-caliber military M1 carbine through the window, striking him multiple times, including twice in the head. Siegel was born on February 28, 1906, in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
He was the second of five children in a poor Ashkenazi Jewish family that had immigrated from the Galicia region of Austria-Hungary. His parents, Jenny and Max Siegel, worked for pitiful wages, and Siegel dropped out of school as a teenager to join a gang on Lafayette Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Before meeting Meyer Lansky, Siegel primarily committed thefts. He established a protection racket with a partner, threatening to burn the goods of pushcart proprietors unless they paid him a dollar.
His criminal record, which began in his teens, quickly expanded to include armed robbery and murder. As a teenager, Siegel became friends with Lansky, who used his sharp mind to build a small mob engaged in car theft and gambling. Lansky saw the need for Jewish youths in Brooklyn to organize in the same way the Italians and Irish had, particularly after his own encounters with Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Siegel was the first person Lansky brought into his gang.
Siegel soon moved into bootlegging across several major East Coast cities and worked as a hitman for the mob, with Lansky subcontracting his services to other crime organizations. Together, the two created the Bugs and Meyer Mob, which carried out hits for various bootleg gangs in New York and New Jersey. The gang also robbed rival gangs’ liquor shipments and was known for killing a number of rival gangland figures. Louis “Pretty” Buchalter and Lansky’s brother Jake were among the gang’s members.
According to Joseph Stacher, another member of the mob, Siegel was fearless and had saved his friends’ lives. As organized crime transitioned into bootlegging, Lansky and Siegel represented the Bugs and Meyer Mob at the Atlantic City Conference, held from May 13 to May 16, 1929, at the Ritz-Carlton. The conference was organized by Luciano and Johnny Torrio, a former leader of the Chicago South Side gang, to discuss the future of organized crime and the structure of Mafia crime families. It was during this conference that Luciano first took note of Bugsy Siegel.
On January 28, 1929, Siegel married his childhood sweetheart, Esther Krakower. The couple had two daughters, Millicent and Barbara. Siegel had a reputation as a womanizer, and the marriage ended in 1946. By the late 1920s, Lansky and Siegel had connections to Luciano and Frank Costello, who would later lead the Genovese crime family.
On April 15, 1931, Joe Masseria was fatally shot on Luciano’s orders, allegedly by four assassins: Siegel, Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, and Joe Adonis. That killing ended the Castellammarese War. On September 10, 1931, Luciano hired assassins from the Bugs and Meyer Mob to kill Salvatore Maranzano in his New York office. It is believed Siegel was one of the assassins.
Maranzano’s murder established Luciano’s rise to the top of the Mafia and marked the beginning of modern American organized crime. After Maranzano’s death, Luciano and Lansky established the National Crime Syndicate, a confederation of crime families. The Commission was created to divide Mafia territories and prevent further gang conflicts. Murder, Inc.
was founded by Siegel and his collaborators. Although Siegel continued to work as a hitman, Buchalter and Anastasia eventually took over control of Murder, Inc. after Siegel and Lansky left in 1933. Around that time, Siegel and Lansky gave the IRS information about Waxey Gordon’s tax evasion, leading to his imprisonment.
Gordon, a gangster specializing in bootlegging and illegal gambling, had hired the Fabrizzo brothers from prison to go after Siegel. After the brothers made an assassination attempt on Siegel and Lansky—penetrating Siegel’s heavily fortified Waldorf Astoria suite with a bomb—Siegel hunted them down and killed them. Tony Fabrizzo began writing a memoir after his two brothers’ deaths and gave it to a lawyer. The section on Murder, Inc.
was to be one of the longest chapters, but the mob learned of the plan in 1932. Siegel and two accomplices went to Fabrizzo’s house, checked into a hospital to create an alibi, then snuck out and shot him dead while pretending to be detectives. In 1935, Siegel assisted in Luciano’s alliance with Dutch Schultz and killed rival loan sharks Louis “Pretty” Amberg and Joseph C. Amberg.
His hospital alibi had become suspect, and his enemies wanted him dead after learning he was in danger. In the late 1930s, the East Coast mob sent Siegel to California. He had visited the West Coast several times since 1933, and his goal was to work with Los Angeles family boss Jack Dragna to establish gambling networks approved by the Syndicate. As soon as he arrived in Los Angeles, Siegel hired Mickey Cohen, a gang leader, as his chief lieutenant.
Dragna agreed to a subordinate position after learning of Siegel’s reputation for violence and the fact that Lansky and Luciano supported him. Luciano even sent Dragna a message from prison saying it was in his best interest to cooperate. Soon after taking over the Los Angeles numbers racket, Siegel used Syndicate money to help create a drug trade route from Mexico and set up circuits with the Chicago Outfit’s wire services. In Hollywood, Siegel was welcomed into the most prestigious circles and befriended celebrities.
He was linked to studio heads Louis B. Mayer and Jack L. Warner, as well as George Raft, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and Cary Grant. Siegel bought real estate and hosted extravagant events at his Beverly Hills residence.
Young celebrities like Tony Curtis, Phil Silvers, and Frank Sinatra admired him. Siegel also devised a scheme to extort movie studios. He would take control of local unions and organize strikes to pressure studios into paying him off so the unions could resume work, knowing they would never ask for the money back. During his first year in Hollywood, Siegel borrowed more than four hundred thousand dollars from movie stars and never repaid them.
On November 22, 1939, Harry “Big Greenie” Greenberg was murdered outside his apartment by Siegel, Whitey Krakower, Frankie Carbo, and Albert Tannenbaum. Buchalter ordered the killing because Greenberg had threatened to become a police informant. Tannenbaum admitted to the killing and agreed to testify against Siegel after being charged with murder. Siegel was tried in September 1941.
The trial quickly gained notoriety due to Siegel’s favored treatment while in jail: he was permitted female visitors, refused to eat prison food, and was given leave for dental appointments. Jerry Giesler was hired to represent him. After two state witnesses died, no more witnesses came forward. Tannenbaum’s testimony was rejected, and due to insufficient evidence, Siegel was acquitted in 1942.
By then, his reputation was already damaged. Newspapers revealed Siegel’s past and referred to him as “Bugsy,” a moniker he disliked; he preferred to be addressed as Ben or Mr. Siegel. He was arrested on May 25, 1944, for bookmaking.
In late 1944, after George Raft and Matt Gray testified in his favor, he was acquitted again. With William Wilkerson’s Flamingo Hotel, Siegel had the chance to diversify his career and reinvent his image in 1946. Siegel and Lansky had traveled to Southern Nevada in the 1930s to investigate expanding operations there, discovering opportunities in offering illegal services to Boulder Dam construction crews. Lansky had given Siegel control of that business, and Siegel passed it to Lansky before leaving for Hollywood.
In May 1946, Siegel decided the arrangement with Wilkerson needed to change to give him control over the Flamingo. With the Flamingo, Siegel planned to offer affordable gambling, the best alcohol and food, and the biggest performers. He believed these attractions would draw thousands of tourists willing to wager fifty or one hundred dollars, in addition to high rollers. After being threatened with death, Wilkerson was eventually forced to sell all his shares in the Flamingo and spent time hiding in Paris.
The Flamingo would now be run by the mob. Siegel began shopping, and amid postwar shortages, he demanded the best buildings money could buy. His checks started to bounce, and his expenses rose. The Flamingo cost more than four million dollars by October 1946.
Issues with the Outfit’s wire service had been resolved in Nevada and Arizona, but in California, Siegel refused to report to the business. He told his co-workers he was in charge of the California Syndicate alone and would repay loans in his own good time. The mob bosses were patient with Siegel despite his resistance because he had consistently proved himself a valuable asset. Only the casino, lounge, theater, and restaurant were complete when the Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946.
Few celebrities attended the opening, though several people arrived by car from Los Angeles despite the bad weather. Raft, June Haver, Vivian Blaine, Sonny Tufts, Brian Donlevy, and Charles Coburn were among the famous faces in attendance. Construction noise and a lobby covered in drop cloths greeted them. The first air conditioning system in the desert frequently failed, and the opulent rooms that would have enticed guests to stay and gamble were not ready.
The gambling tables operated throughout the evening, but as news of the losses reached Siegel, he became enraged and abusive. The Flamingo’s gaming tables lost $275,000 in two weeks, and the entire business closed down in late January 1947. Given another chance, Siegel buckled down and did everything in his power to make the Flamingo a success, renovating it and garnering positive press. He hired Hank Greenspun, a future newsman, as a publicist.
On March 1, 1947, the hotel reopened with Lansky in attendance, and business soon started to pick up. By the time profits began to rise, the crime bosses above him had grown tired. Siegel had established himself as an animal of organized crime and Las Vegas history at age 41, but his time was running out. On the night of June 20, 1947, as Siegel sat with Allen Smiley in his Beverly Hills home reading the Los Angeles Times, an unknown assailant fired through the window with a .
30-caliber military M1 carbine, hitting him multiple times, including twice in the head. The murder has never been officially solved.