Bugsy Siegel

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (; February 28, 1906 – June 20, 1947) was an American mobster who was a driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip. Along with his childhood friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky, Siegel was influential within the Jewish-American mob, the Italian-American Mafia, and the largely Italian-Jewish coalition known as the National Crime Syndicate. Described as "handsome" and "charismatic," Siegel became one of the first front-page celebrity gangsters. Siegel was one of the founders and leaders of Murder, Inc. and became a bootlegger during American Prohibition. After the Twenty-first Amendment was passed in 1933 repealing Prohibition, he turned to illegal gambling. In 1936, Siegel left New York and moved to California. His time as a mobster during this period was mainly as a hitman and muscle, as he was noted for his prowess with guns and violence. In 1941, Siegel was tried for the murder of friend and fellow mobster Harry Greenberg, who had turned informant; he was acquitted in 1942. Siegel traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he handled and financed some of the city's original casinos. He assisted developer William R. Wilkerson's Flamingo Hotel after Wilkerson ran out of funds. Siegel assumed control of the project and managed the final stages of construction. The Flamingo's casino opened on December 26, 1946, in a three-day event that was well received but without a hotel to accompany the casino, the Flamingo struggled and was closed from February 6, 1947 until the hotel was finished and reopened on March 1, 1947. Siegel’s mob partners were convinced that an estimated US$1 million of the construction budget overrun had been skimmed by Siegel, his girlfriend Virginia Hill or by both of them. On June 20, 1947, Siegel was murdered at the age of 41 by a sniper through the window of Hill's Linden Drive mansion in Beverly Hills, California.[edit]

On the evening of June 20, 1947, Benjamin Siegel sat in the living room of his Beverly Hills home at 365 Linden Drive, dining with his mistress Virginia Hill when a single bullet struck him through the window. The shot killed him instantly, ending the life of the man who had helped build the modern Las Vegas gambling industry while he oversaw the financially struggling opening of the Flamingo Hotel. Police and later grand jury investigators found no evidence to identify the shooter, leaving the murder officially unresolved despite widespread belief that it was a contract killing ordered by the National Crime Syndicate due to his mismanagement of funds. No one was ever arrested or charged for the homicide, and decades of speculation regarding figures like Mickey Cohen or Meyer Lansky never resulted in a legal ruling or trial.

Public reaction remained shock within the criminal underworld rather than mourning from the general populace, as memorials or tributes failed to emerge while the syndicate moved forward without his financial burdens. Following the assassination, the family kept a low profile and arranged a private cremation with ashes scattered at sea off the coast of Long Beach, avoiding any public funeral that might draw law enforcement attention. Posthumously, Siegel transformed into a mythic figure in organized crime history, becoming the subject of the 1991 film Bugsy starring Warren Beatty and appearing in Jerry Capeci's biography Bugsy: The Life and Times of Benjamin Siegel.[edit]