Benjamin Siegel’s story is a rags-to-riches story, albeit not a typical one. He was born to poor Jewish immigrants from the Galicia region of Austria-Hungary. Siegel dropped out of school and joined a gang on Lafayette Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. After he met Moe Sedway, the two budding criminals established a protection racket; they threatened to burn the merchandise of the pushcart owners unless they paid a dollar each week. After this auspicious beginning, he started to build a criminal record, which included armed robbery, rape and murder. The public came to know him by his nickname, Bugsy, while he was on trial in 1942. Newspapers reported on his past, including his nickname, Bugsy, which was said to based on the slang word, “bugs” meaning “crazy,” which was in reference to his behavior.
Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel with his attorney Jerry Giesler. (Credit: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)/Colorized.
As an adolescent, he teamed up with Meyer Lansky; Lansky had had a run-in with Charles “Lucky” Luciano, which led him to organize the Jewish boys in Brooklyn to organize just as the Italians and Irish had. Bugsy first got involved with bootlegging, as this was the time when prohibition was in full swing. Bugsy also started working as a hitman, and Lansky hired him out to other crime families. He developed a reputation for being fearless and somewhat reckless. Bugsy was also involved in the drug trade; he had started smoking opium at an early age.
He Quickly Embraced A Wealthy Lifestyle
Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel with his attorney Jerry Giesler. (Credit: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
As a gangster, he was making money by the time he was 21, and he didn’t hesitate to flaunt it, wearing flashy clothing, and living in expensive quarters: he had an apartment at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and a home in Scarsdale, New York.
Becoming Part Of A Conglomerate
Siegel and Lansky made connections to Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello, who would become bosses in the Genovese crime family in the late 1920s. Siegel allegedly was one of the gunmen who shot Joe Masseria to death on Luciano’s orders and may have been one of the gunmen who murdered Salvatore Maranzano. This allowed Luciano to move to the top of the Mafia. It also was the beginning of modern American organized crime, as Luciano and Lansky then formed the National Crime Syndicate, a multi-ethnic confederation of crime organizations. The media nicknamed the enforcement arm of the Syndicate “Murder Inc.”
After Siegel found out that his enemies wanted him dead, the East Coast mob sent him to California, where he took over Los Angeles’s numbers racket. Using money from the syndicate, he established a drug trade route from Mexico. He also started to control several offshore casinos and a prostitution ring.
Hanging Out With Celebrities
Source: (YouTube/Colorized).
Siegel managed to maintain relationships with politicians, businessmen, attorneys, accountants and lobbyists; they all fronted for him. He also bought real estate in Beverly Hills and entertained the celebrities. He was connected to Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and studio executives Louis B. Mayer and Jack L. Warner. These connections didn’t stop him from developing plans to extort movie studios using staged union strikes, and he asked the stars for loans, though he had no plans to pay them back. Although he had married his childhood sweetheart, Esta Krakower in 1929, this didn’t stop him from having women on the side, including socialite countess Dorothy di Frasso. Because of that relationship, he went to Italy in 1938. While there, he met Benito Mussolini; he tried to sell Mussolini weapons. He also met Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels, who he offered to kill.
Starting The Vegas Strip After His Acquittal
He, along with Whitey Krakower, Frankie Carbo, and Albert Tannenbaum killed Harry “Big Greenie” Greenberg, who had threatened to become a police informant, on November 22, 1939. Siegel went on trial in September 1941. He hired Jerry Giesler for his defense, and after two state witnesses died, no others came forward. He was acquitted in 1942 due to insufficient evidence.
In 1945, Siegel moved to Nevada, where he took over control of the Flamingo Hotel when he coerced the owner, William R. Wilkerson to sell all of his stakes in the hotel. He provided gambling, the best liquor, food, and entertainers to draw not only the high rollers, but also vacationers. Construction on part of the hotel finished, and it opened on December 26, 1946.
An Unsolved Murder
His mug shot. Source: (Wikipedia).
After a major financial loss, the Flamingo closed, and reopened on March 1, 1947, posting a profit after this reopening and becoming known as the first hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. However, his success was short-lived, as, on the night of June 20, 1947, while in Virginia Hills’ Beverly Hills home, he was fired at through the window with a .30 caliber M1 military carbine. He was hit multiple times, including twice in the head. His murderer was never found and the case remains unsolved, although there are multiple theories about who killed him. His childhood friend Moe Sedway and Vegas mob associate Gus Greenbaum took over operations at the Flamingo the day after Siegel was murdered.
