Bugsy Siegel

Benjamin Siegel (February 28, 1906 - June 20, 1947) was an American Jewish gangster, popularly thought to be a primary instigator of large-scale development of Las Vegas. He hated his nickname, Bugsy, and wouldn't allow anyone to call him that to his face.

The beginning of his career

Benjamin Siegel was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a poor Jewish family with five children. As a boy he joined a street gang on Lafayette Street in Lower East Side and committed first mainly thefts, until, with another boy called Moe Sedway, he devised his own protection racket; he forced pushcart merchants to pay him five dollars or he would incinerate their merchandize on the spot.

As a teenager, Siegel befriended Meyer Lansky, formed a small gang with him and expanded to gambling and car theft. Reputedly Siegel also worked as gang's hitman who Lansky sometimes hired out to other gang bosses. In 1926 Siegel was charged for rape but Lansky persuaded the victim not to testify.

In 1930 Lansky and Siegel joined forces with Lucky Luciano. Siegel became a bootlegger and was also associated with Albert Anastasia. Siegel was used for bootlegging operations in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia. During the so-called Castallammarese War in 1930-1931, they fought the gang of Joe Masseria and Seigel reputedly had a hand in Masseria's murder in Coney Island and later had a part in Murder, Inc. In 1932 he was arrested for gambling and bootlegging but got away with a fine. Lanskey and Siegel were briefly allied with Dutch Schultz and killed rival loan sharks Louis and Joseph Amberg in 1935.

To California

In 1937 East Coast mob sent Siegel to California to try to develop syndicate gambling rackets in the West alongside Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna. Siegel also recruited other Jewish gang boss Michey Cohen. Siegel used syndicate money to set up the national wire service so that East Coast mob would get their cut faster.

Seigel had married Esther Krakower, sister of a fellow hitman Whitey Krakower, and moved her and their two daughters to West Coast but kept them separate from his other affairs. Seigel had a number of mistresses, including Ketti Gallion, actresses Wendy Barrie and Marie MacDonald and Hollywood socialite Dorothy DiFrasso. With the aid of DiFrasso and actor friend George Raft, Siegel was acquainted with Hollywood movie stars. He is alleged to have used his contact later to extort movie studios. He lived in extravagant fashion, as befit to his reputation in Hollywood. In his income tax reports he claimed to earn a living by legal gambling in Santa Anita racetrack.

Seigel also became enamored with mob woman and courier Virginia Hill. They developed a torrid affair and Hill worked for Siegel to establish contacts in Mexico. Hill was wealthy in her own right and had bought a mansion in Beverly Hills where Siegel frequently stayed. Siegel called her his "bait" and she became his more regular mistress, alongside various others. Later there were rumors that they were secretly married in Mexico.

On November 22 1939 Siegel, with Whitey Krakower and two others, killed Harry Greenberg who had decided to become a police Nevada. Legend has it that, at the moment he had a vision of turning this city into a large gambling spot, he had stopped there to do a physical necessity.

His Las Vegas venture

According to popular myth. Bugsy had a vision where he would build large casinos and hotels where people could go and gamble. His vision was fueled by the fact Nevada had legalized gambling in 1931. Siegel returned to the East and convinced his fellow mobsters about the possibilities of building a major gambling mecca in Las Vegas. After convincing his gangmates, Siegel returned and began working on his dream, with the construction of a casino he would name The Flamingo, his pet name for Virginia Hill.

The reality is, the mafia had a presence in Las Vegas casinos going back to at least 1941. The swank Flamingo was conceived and started by Los Angeles businessman Billy Wilkerson, who handed the project over to Siegel only after running short of funds.

The Flamingo fiasco

However, Siegel knew little about construction; under his oversight, the construction costs ballooned from $1 million to $6 million. Allegedly, the Europe, they also worried that Siegel might be putting their money away into a Swiss bank account.

In 1946, several of his business and crime partners flew to Cuba for the Havana Conference meeting with Luciano, who had begun to operate Mafia operations from Italy after he was paroled from jail in the United States and deported to Europe. One of the main topics for discussion at the conference was whether they should order a hit on Siegel, who was kept in the dark about the meeting. Lansky, who remembered fondly how Siegel had saved his life on various occasions when they were young, took a stand against the hit, and he asked them to give Siegel a chance until the casino opened. Luciano, who believed that Siegel could still make a profit in Las Vegas and pay back what he owed the Mafia investors, decided to lay off the hit.

Siegel opened his casino on a star-studded night, though he did not have as many Hollywood stars with him as he had hoped. Soon the casino ran dry of stars and customers, and the gangsters met once again in Cuba to decide whether they would "liquidate" Siegel. But to Siegel's luck, he had turned a profit on the month that the gangsters met for the second time, and Lansky stood up to object Siegel's killing once again. So Luciano decided to give him some more time.