Bugsy Siegel | |
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.jpg) Siegel in 1944 | |
| Born | Benjamin Siegel[1] (1906-02-28)February 28, 1906 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | June 20, 1947(1947-06-20) (aged 41) Beverly Hills,California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Gunshot wounds |
| Resting place | Hollywood Forever Cemetery,Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Other names | Ben, Benny[2] |
| Spouse | |
| Partners |
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| Children | 2 |
| Signature | |
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Benjamin "Bugsy"Siegel (/ˈsiːɡəl/; February 28, 1906 – June 20, 1947) was aJewish-Americanmobster[3] who was a driving force behind the development of theLas Vegas Strip.[4] Siegel was influential within theJewish Mob, along with his childhood friend and fellow gangsterMeyer Lansky; theItalian-American Mafia; and the largely Italian-JewishNational Crime Syndicate. Described as "handsome" and "charismatic," Siegel became one of the first front-page celebrity gangsters.[5]
Siegel was one of the founders and leaders ofMurder, Inc.[6] and became abootlegger duringAmerican Prohibition. After theTwenty-first Amendment was passed in 1933 repealing Prohibition, he turned toillegal gambling. In 1936, Siegel leftNew York and moved toCalifornia.[7] His time as a mobster during this period was mainly as ahitman 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 mobsterHarry Greenberg, who had turned informant; he wasacquitted in 1942.
Siegel traveled toLas Vegas,Nevada, where he handled and financed some of the city's originalcasinos.[8] He assisted developerWilliam R. Wilkerson'sFlamingo Hotel after Wilkerson ran out of funds.[9] Siegel assumed control of the project and managed the final stages of construction. The Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946, in a three-day event that was well received. Without a hotel to accompany the casino, the Flamingo struggled and closed from February 6 until the hotel reopened March 1, 1947. Siegel’s mob partners were convinced that an estimated US$1 million of the construction budget overrun had beenskimmed by Siegel, his girlfriendVirginia Hill or by both of them. On June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot dead at the age of 41 by a sniper through the window of Hill's Linden Drive mansion inBeverly Hills, California.
Benjamin Siegel[1][10] was born on February 28, 1906, in theWilliamsburg neighborhood ofBrooklyn inNew York City, the second of five children of a poorAshkenazi Jewish family that had emigrated to the U.S. from theGalicia region of what was thenAustria-Hungary (now part of Poland and Ukraine).[1][11][12] His parents, Jennie (Riechenthal) and Max Siegel, constantly worked for meager wages.[13]
As a boy, Siegel dropped out of school and joined a gang onLafayette Street on theLower East Side ofManhattan, mainly committing acts of theft until he metMoe Sedway. Together with Sedway, Siegel developed aprotection racket in which he threatened to incinerate pushcart owners' merchandise unless they paid him a dollar.[14][15] He soon built up a lengthy criminal record, dating from his teenage years, that included armedrobbery,rape andmurder.[16]
During adolescence, Siegel befriendedMeyer Lansky, who applied a brilliant intellect to forming a small mob whose activities expanded toillegal gambling andcar theft. Lansky, who had already had a run-in withCharles "Lucky" Luciano, saw a need for the Jewish boys of his Brooklyn neighborhood to organize in the same manner as theItalians and theIrish. The first person he recruited for his gang was Siegel.[17]
Siegel became involved inbootlegging within several majorEast Coast cities. He also worked as ahitman whom Lansky hired out to othercrime families.[18] The two formed the Bugs and Meyer Mob, which handled hits for the various bootleg gangs operating in New York andNew Jersey, doing so almost a decade beforeMurder, Inc. was formed. The gang kept themselves busy byhijacking the liquor cargoes of rival outfits,[19] and were known to be responsible for the killing and removal of several rival gangland figures.[20] Siegel's gang-mates includedAbner "Longie" Zwillman,Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and Lansky's brother, Jake;Joseph "Doc" Stacher, another member of the Bugs and Meyer Mob, recalled to Lansky biographers that Siegel was fearless and saved his friends' lives as the mob moved into bootlegging:
"Bugsy never hesitated when danger threatened," Stacher told Uri Dan. "While we tried to figure out what the best move was, Bugsy was already shooting. When it came to action there was no one better. I've never known a man who had more guts."[21]
Siegel was also a boyhood friend toAl Capone; when there was a warrant for Capone's arrest on a murder charge, Siegel allowed him to hide out with an aunt.[22]
Siegel first smokedopium during his youth and was involved in thedrug trade.[23] By age 21, he was making enough money to purchase an apartment at theWaldorf Astoria Hotel and aTudor home inScarsdale, New York. He also wore flashy clothes and participated in New York City's night life.[12][24]
From May 13 to 16, 1929, Lansky and Siegel attended theAtlantic City Conference, representing the Bugs and Meyer Mob.[25] Luciano and formerChicago South Side Gang leaderJohnny Torrio held the conference at theRitz-Carlton Hotel inAtlantic City, New Jersey. At the conference, the two men discussed the future oforganized crime and the future structure of theMafia families: Siegel stated, "Theyids and thedagos will no longer fight each other."
On January 28, 1929, Siegel married Esta Krakower, his childhood sweetheart. They had two daughters, Millicent Siegel (later Millicent Rosen) and Barbara Siegel (later Barbara Saperstein).[4] Siegel had a reputation as a womanizer and the marriage ended in 1946.[26]
While married, Siegel womanized withKetti Gallian,[27][28]Wendy Barrie (1942–1943),Marie "The Body" MacDonald,[29] andVirginia Hill (1945–1947)
By the late 1920s, Lansky and Siegel had ties to Luciano andFrank Costello, future bosses of theGenovese crime family. Siegel,Albert Anastasia,Vito Genovese, andJoe Adonis allegedly were the four gunmen who shot New York mob bossJoe Masseria to death on Luciano's orders on April 15, 1931, ending theCastellammarese War.[30][31] On September 10 of that year, Luciano hired four gunmen from the Bugs and Meyer Mob (some sources identify Siegel as one of them)[32][33] to murderSalvatore Maranzano in his New York office, establishing Luciano's rise to the top of the Mafia and marking the beginning of modern American organized crime.[34]
Following Maranzano's death, Luciano and Lansky formed theNational Crime Syndicate, an organization of crime families that brought order to the underworld.[6][35]The Commission, the Mafia'sgoverning body, was established for dividing the families' territories and preventing futuregang wars.[6] With his associates, Siegel formed Murder, Inc. After he and Lansky moved on, control over Murder, Inc. was ceded to Buchalter and Anastasia,[19] although Siegel continued working as a hitman.[36] Siegel's only conviction was inMiami: on February 28, 1932, he was arrested for gambling andvagrancy, and, from a roll of bills, paid a $100 fine.[4]
During this period, Siegel got into a dispute with the Fabrizzo brothers, associates ofWaxey Gordon. Gordon had hired the brothers from prison after Lansky and Siegel gave theIRS information about Gordon'stax evasion, resulting in Gordon's imprisonment in 1933.[20] Siegel hunted down and killed the Fabrizzos after they made an assassination attempt on him and Lansky by penetrating Siegel's heavily fortified suite at the Waldorf Astoria with a bomb.[37] After the deaths of his two brothers, Tony Fabrizzo had begun to write amemoir and gave it to an attorney. One of the longest chapters was to be a section on the nationwide kill-for-hire squad led by Siegel. However, the mob discovered Tony's plans before he could carry them out.[38] In 1932, after checking into a hospital to establish analibi and later sneaking out, Siegel joined two accomplices in approaching Tony's house and, posing as detectives to lure him outside, gunned him down.[39][38] In 1935, Siegel assisted in Luciano's alliance withDutch Schultz and killed rivalloan shark brothersLouis "Pretty" Amberg andJoseph Amberg.[40][41]
Siegel had learned from his associates that he was in danger: his hospital alibi had become questionable and his enemies wanted him dead.[42] In response, the Mafia sent Siegel toCalifornia and assigned him with developing syndicate-sanctioned gamblingrackets withLos Angeles family bossJack Dragna.[43][44][45] Once inLos Angeles, Siegel recruited gangsterMickey Cohen as his chief lieutenant.[46] Knowing Siegel's reputation for violence, and that he was backed by Lansky and Luciano—who, from prison, sent word to Dragna that it was "in [his] best interest to cooperate"[36]—Dragna accepted a subordinate role.[47] On tax returns, Siegel claimed to earn his living through legal gambling atSanta Anita Park.[48] He soon took over Los Angeles'snumbers racket[49] and used money from the syndicate to help establish a drug trade route from Mexico and organized circuits with theChicago Outfit'swire services.[50][51]
By 1942, $500,000 a day was coming from the syndicate'sbookmaking wire operations.[49] In 1946, because of problems with Siegel, the Outfit took over the Continental Press and gave their percentage of the racing wire to Dragna, infuriating Siegel.[51][52] Despite his complications with the wire services, Siegel controlled several offshorecasinos[53] and a majorprostitution ring.[18] He also maintained relationships with politicians, businessmen, attorneys, accountants and lobbyists whofronted for him.[54]
InHollywood, Siegel was welcomed in the highest circles and befriended movie stars.[5] He was known to associate withGeorge Raft,Clark Gable,Gary Cooper andCary Grant,[55] as well as studio executivesLouis B. Mayer andJack L. Warner.[56] ActressJean Harlow was a friend of Siegel andgodmother to his daughter Millicent. Siegel purchased real estate and threw lavish parties at hisBeverly Hills home.[50] He gained admiration from young celebrities, includingTony Curtis,[57]Phil Silvers andFrank Sinatra.
Siegel had several relationships with prominent women, including socialite Countess Dorothydi Frasso. The alliance with the countess took Siegel to Italy in 1938,[58] where he metFascist dictatorBenito Mussolini, to whom Siegel tried to sell weapons. Siegel also metNazi leadersHermann Göring andJoseph Goebbels, to whom he took an instant dislike and later offered to kill.[59][60][61] He only relented because of the countess's anxious pleas.[55]
In Hollywood, Siegel worked with the syndicate to form illegal rackets.[47] He devised a plan ofextorting movie studios; he would take over localtrade unions and stagestrikes to force studios to pay him off so that the unions would start working again.[51] Siegel borrowed money from celebrities and did not pay them back, knowing that they would never ask him for the money.[62][63] During his first year in Hollywood, he received more than $400,000 in loans from movie stars.
According to Siegel's accounts, atomite was a new type of explosive substance that detonated without sound or flash,[64] and Siegel attracted the interest of Mussolini and theAxis powers to purchase it. Mussolini advanced $40,000 to have atomite scaled up, but Siegel failed to detonate the explosive in 1939 during a demonstration to Mussolini and Nazi leaders, including Göring and Goebbels; Mussolini demanded the return of his money.[65]
On November 22, 1939, Siegel,Whitey Krakow,Frankie Carbo andAlbert Tannenbaum killedHarry "Big Greenie" Greenberg outside hisHollywood Hills apartment. Greenberg had threatened to become a police informant,[66] and Buchalter ordered his killing.[67] Tannenbaum confessed to the murder[68] and agreed to testify against Siegel.[69] Siegel was implicated in the murder and put on trial in September 1941.[70]
The trial soon gained notoriety because of the preferential treatment that Siegel received in jail: he refused to eat prison food, was allowed female visitors and was granted leave for dental visits.[49][71] However, Siegel himself protested loudly about "the stories of his privileged incarceration"[72] and behavior during the trial, claiming that they were either untrue or grossly exaggerated. Some reporters wrote that Siegel had avalet in prison, that he had broken down in tears on the stand and that his eyes were brown. Siegel told them: "You can see for yourself that they're not brown" (they were in fact blue).[72]
Press reports also revealed information about Siegel's past and referred to him as "Bugsy." Siegel hated the nickname because it was based on the slang term "bugs," meaning "crazy," and used to describe his erratic behavior; he preferred to be called "Ben" or "Mr. Siegel".[73] Siegel allegedly threatened Hollywood reporterFlorabel Muir, "who knew [him] well"[74] and was covering the trial, saying, "You think because I'm locked up here a punk like you can write anything you please ... Maybe you won't be using that typewriter anymore. Maybe your fingers won't be on your hands. I have people outside who'll break your legs or drop you in a hole if I say the word." ... I'm not as bugs as you think. I'm going to beat this rap and then I won't ever have to speak to you newspaper punks."[72]
Siegel hired attorneyJerry Giesler for hisdefense. Two state witnesses died[49][75] and no additional witnesses came forward. Tannenbaum's testimony was dismissed.[76] In 1942, Siegel wasacquitted due to a lack of evidence,[76] but his reputation was damaged. On May 25, 1944, Siegel was arrested for bookmaking. Raft andMack Gray testified on his behalf, and he was acquitted again in late 1944.[77]
Problems with the Outfit's wire service had cleared up inNevada andArizona, but in California, Siegel refused to report business.[78] He later announced to his colleagues that he was running the California syndicate by himself and that he would return the loans in his "own good time." The mob bosses were initially patient with Siegel because he had proven to be a valuable asset.[79]
In 1946, Siegel found an opportunity to reinvent his personal image and diversify into legitimate business withWilliam R. Wilkerson'sFlamingo Hotel.[80] In the 1930s, Siegel and Sedway had traveled to southern Nevada to explore expanding operations there. He had found opportunities in providing illicit services to crews constructing theBoulder Dam. Lansky had handed over his operations in Nevada to Siegel, who in turn handed them over to Sedway and left for Hollywood.[81][82]
In the mid-1940s, Siegel was operating inLas Vegas while his lieutenants worked on a business policy to secure all gambling in Los Angeles.[78] In May 1946, he decided that his partnership agreement with Wilkerson had to be altered to give him control of the Flamingo.[83] Within the Flamingo, Siegel would supply the gambling, the best liquor and food and the biggest entertainers at reasonable prices. He believed that these attractions would lure thousands of vacationers willing to gamble $50 or $100, as well as "high rollers."[53] Wilkerson was eventually coerced into selling all stakes in the Flamingo under the threat of death, and he went into hiding inParis for a time.[84] From this point the Flamingo became syndicate-run.[85] By October 1946, the Flamingo's costs were above $4 million.[86] The following year, the costs were over $6 M (equivalent to $73 M in 2024).[87] By late November 1947, the work was nearly finished.[88]
According to later reports by local observers, Siegel's "maniacal chest-puffing" set the pattern for several generations of notable casino moguls.[18] He boasted one day that he had personally killed some men; he saw the panicked look on the face of head contractorDel Webb and reassured him, "Del, don't worry, we only kill each other."[89] Other associates portrayed Siegel in a different aspect; he was an intense character who was not without a charitable side, including his donations for theDamon Runyon Cancer Fund.[18] Siegel's Las Vegas attorney, Lou Weiner Jr., described him as "very well liked" and said that he was "good to people."[18]
The Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946, despite being unfinished.[90] Locals attended the opening, and some celebrities present included Raft,June Haver,Vivian Blaine,Sonny Tufts,Brian Donlevy andCharles Coburn. They were welcomed by construction noise and a lobby draped with drop cloths. When word made its way to Siegel during the evening that the casino was losing money, he became verbally abusive and threw out at least one family.[91]
After two weeks, the Flamingo's gaming tables were $275,000 in the red and the casino briefly shut down.[92] Siegel continued construction and hiredHank Greenspun as a publicist. The Flamingo reopened on March 1, 1947,[93] and began turning a profit.[94][95] However, by this point Siegel's superiors in the Outfit had lost their patience with him.[18]
On the night of June 20, 1947, Siegel sat on a sofa reading a copy of theLos Angeles Times, together with his associate Allen Smiley, in the living room of 810 North Linden Drive, theBeverly Hills mansion that he had leased for his girlfriend Virginia Hill. Also present in the residence were Hill's brother, Chick Hill; Chick's girlfriend; Jerry Mason; and Eung S. Lee, the residence's cook.
A little before 11:00 p.m., an unknown assailant fired into the living room through a window with a.30 caliberM1 carbine at a range of just fourteen feet from an archway in the driveway of the house, resting his weapon on atrellis just outside the window. The assailant could not be seen from the street due to an abundance of shrubbery. A total of nine rounds were fired, "four of which found their mark. One hit the bridge of [Siegel]'s nose and ripped out his left eye, a second entered his right cheek and exited at the back of his neck, and two hit him in the chest."[74] According to Muir, who was "one of the first reporters on the scene,"[96] and who had spoken to Siegel earlier that day,[74] the remaining shots "destroyed a white marble statue ofBacchus on a grand piano, and then lodged in the far wall."[97] Muir also stated that she noticed Siegel's left eyeball lying on the ground, and "picked up the sliver of flesh from which his long eyelashes extended."[96] Smiley's arm had been grazed by a bullet, but he was otherwise unharmed.
Clark Fogg, the senior forensic specialist in theBeverly Hills Police Department, concluded that Siegel was most likely slain by two shooters, claiming that "it would have been nearly impossible for just one gunman" to make such precise shots to his face because "the mobster's head would have turned upon impact from the first bullet."[74] No one was ever charged with killing Siegel, and the murder remains officially unsolved.[4]
One theory holds that Siegel's death was due to his excessive spending and possible theft of money from the mob.[98][99] In 1946, ameeting had been held with the "board of directors" of the National Crime Syndicate inHavana, so that Luciano, who by that time had been exiled inSicily, could attend. A contract on Siegel's life was the conclusion.[100] According to Stacher, Lansky reluctantly agreed to the decision.[101]
Another theory claims that Siegel was shot to death preemptively by Mathew "Moose" Pandza, the lover of Sedway's wife Bee, who went to Pandza after learning that Siegel was threatening to kill her husband. Siegel apparently had grown increasingly resentful of the control Sedway was exerting over his finances and planned to do away with him.[102] FormerPhiladelphia family bossRalph Natale claimed that Carbo was responsible for killing Siegel, at the behest of Lansky.[103] In 1987, former Dragna gopher Eddie Cannizzaro claimed that he killed Siegel under a contract issued by Lansky.[104]
Siegel's death certificate states the cause of death ashomicide and the immediate cause as "Cerebral Hemorrage [sic] due to Gunshot Wounds of the Head."[105]
The day after Siegel's death, theLos Angeles Herald-Express carried a photograph on its front page from themorgue of Siegel's bare right foot with atoe tag.[106] Although his murder occurred in Beverly Hills, his death thrust Las Vegas into the national spotlight as photographs of his lifeless body were published in newspapers throughout the country.[50] The day after Siegel's murder, Sedway and his Las Vegas associates,David Berman andGus Greenbaum, walked into the Flamingo and took over the resort's operation.[107]
In theBialystoker Synagogue on New York'sLower East Side, Siegel is memorialized by aYahrtzeit (remembrance) plaque that marks his death date so mourners can sayKaddish for the anniversary. Siegel's plaque is below that of Max Siegel, his father, who died just two months before his son. On the property at theFlamingo Las Vegas, between the pool and a wedding chapel, is a memorial plaque to Siegel.[108]
Benjamin Siegel, 41 years old, former New York gangster, was slain last midnight by afusillade of bullets fired through the living room window of aBeverly Hills house where he was staying.
In 1987, shortly before his death, former Dragna gopher Eddie Cannizzaro took the credit. The Cat Man of Agoura Hills, as his neighbors called him, explained that Siegel's childhood friend and business partner, Meyer Lansky, plotted with associate Joe Adonis. Because Siegel resided in Jack Dragna's territory, the local brugad was given the contract, and Cannizzaro claimed that he fulfilled it.
| Business positions | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Murder, Inc. Boss 1931 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Flamingo Hotel Owner 1946–1947 | Succeeded by |
