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Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (February 28, 1906 – June 20, 1947) sometimes known as Ben Siegel, was an American mobster who was a driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip. Siegel was influential within the Jewish Mob, along with his childhood friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky, and he also held significant influence within the Italian-American Mafia and the largely Italian-Jewish National Crime Syndicate. Described as handsome and charismatic, he 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. The Twenty-first Amendment was passed in
1933 repealing Prohibition, and he
turned to gambling. In 1936, he 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 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 opened on December 26,
1946, in a driving rainstorm, resulting in poor reception and technical
difficulties, and it soon closed. It reopened in March 1947 with a finished
hotel, but by then his mob partners were convinced that an estimated $1 million
of the construction budget overrun had been skimmed by Siegel's girlfriend Virginia Hill or by both of them. On
June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot dead by a sniper through the window of Hill's
Linden Drive mansion in Beverly Hills, California.
Early life
Benjamin Siegel
was born on February 28, 1906, in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn in
New York City, New York, the second of five children of a poor Ashkenazi Jewish family that emigrated
to the U.S. from the Galicia region of what was then Austria-Hungary. His
parents, Jennie (Riechenthal) and Max Siegel, constantly worked for
meager wages. As a boy, Siegel left school and joined a gang on Lafayette
Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He committed mainly thefts until he
met Moe Sedway. Together with
Sedway, he developed a protection racket in which he threatened to incinerate
pushcart owners' merchandise unless they paid him a dollar. He soon built up a
lengthy criminal record, dating from his teenage years, that included armed
robbery, r***, and murder.
The Bugs and Meyer
mob
During adolescence, Siegel befriended Meyer Lansky, who applied a brilliant intellect to forming a small
mob whose activities expanded to gambling and car theft. Lansky, who had
already had a run-in with Charles "Lucky" Luciano, saw a
need for the Jewish boys of his Brooklyn neighborhood to organize in the same
manner as the Italians and Irish. The first person he recruited for his gang
was Siegel.
"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."
Siegel was also a boyhood friend to Al Capone; when there
was a warrant for Capone's arrest on a murder charge, Siegel allowed him to
hide out with an aunt.
He first smoked opium during his youth and was involved in
the drug trade. By age 21, he was making money and flaunted it. He bought an
apartment at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and a Tudor home in Scarsdale, New York.
He wore flashy clothes and participated in New York City nightlife.
From May 13 to 16, 1929, Lansky and Siegel attended the Atlantic
City Conference, representing the Bugs and Meyer Mob. Luciano and former Chicago South Side Gang leader Johnny
Torrio held the conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Atlantic City, New
Jersey. At the conference, the two men discussed the future of organized crime
and the future structure of the Mafia crime families; Siegel stated, "The yids and the dagos will no longer
fight each other."
Marriage and family
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). He had a
reputation as a womanizer and the marriage ended in 1946. His wife moved with
their teenage daughters to New York.
Murder, Incorporated
By the late 1920s, Lansky and Siegel had ties to Luciano and
Frank Costello, future bosses of the
Genovese crime family. Siegel, Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, and Joe Adonis allegedly were the four
gunmen who shot New York mob boss Joe
Masseria to death on Luciano's orders on April 15, 1931, ending the Castellammarese War. On September 10 of
that year, Luciano hired four gunmen from the Bugs and Meyer Mob (some sources
identify Siegel as being one of the gunmen) to murder Salvatore 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.
Bugsy Siegel
Following Maranzano's death, Luciano and Lansky formed the National Crime Syndicate, an
organization of crime families that brought power to the underworld. The
Commission was established to divide Mafia territories and prevent future
gang wars. With his associates, Siegel formed Murder, Inc. After he and Lansky moved on, control over Murder, Inc. was ceded to Buchalter and
Anastasia, although Siegel continued working as a hitman. Siegel's only
conviction was in Miami; on February 28, 1932, he was arrested for gambling and
vagrancy, and, from a roll of bills, paid a $100 fine.
During this period, Siegel had a disagreement with the
Fabrizzo brothers, associates of Waxey
Gordon. Gordon had hired the Fabrizzo brothers from prison after Lansky and
Siegel gave the IRS information about Gordon's tax evasion. It led to Gordon's
imprisonment in 1933. Siegel hunted down and killed the Fabrizzos after they
made an assassination attempt on him and Lansky by penetrating Siegel's heavily
fortified Waldorf Astoria suite with a bomb. After the deaths of his two
brothers, Tony Fabrizzo began to
write a memoir 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 Fabrizzo's plans before he could execute them. In 1932, after
checking into a hospital to establish an alibi and later sneaking out, Siegel
joined two accomplices in approaching Fabrizzo's house and, posing as
detectives to lure him outside, gunned him down. In 1935, Siegel assisted in Luciano's
alliance with Dutch Schultz and
killed rival loan sharks Louis "Pretty" Amberg and Joseph C. Amberg.
California
Siegel had learned from his associates that he was in
danger: his hospital alibi had become questionable and his enemies wanted him
dead. In the late 1930s, the East Coast mob sent Siegel to California. Since
1933, he had traveled to the West Coast several times, and in California his
mission was to develop syndicate-sanctioned gambling rackets with Los Angeles
family boss Jack Dragna. Once in Los
Angeles, Siegel recruited gang boss Mickey
Cohen as his chief lieutenant. 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" – Dragna accepted a subordinate role. On tax
returns, Siegel claimed to earn his living through legal gambling at Santa
Anita Park. He soon took over Los Angeles's numbers racket and used money from
the syndicate to help establish a drug trade route from Mexico and organized
circuits with the Chicago Outfit's wire services.
By 1942, US$500,000 a day was coming from the syndicate's bookmaking
wire operations. In 1946, because of problems with Siegel, the Outfit took over
the Continental Press and gave the percentage of the racing wire to Dragna,
infuriating Siegel. Despite his complications with the wire services, Siegel
controlled several offshore casinos and a major prostitution ring. He also
maintained relationships with politicians, businessmen, attorneys, accountants,
and lobbyists who fronted for him.
Hollywood
In Hollywood, Siegel was welcomed in the highest circles and
befriended movie stars. He was known to associate with George Raft, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and Cary Grant, as well as studio executives Louis B. Mayer and Jack L. Warner.
Actress Jean Harlow was a friend of Siegel and godmother to his daughter
Millicent. Siegel bought real estate and threw lavish parties at his Beverly
Hills home. He gained admiration from young celebrities, including Tony Curtis, Phil Silvers, and Frank Sinatra.
Siegel had several relationships with prominent women,
including socialite Countess Dorothy di
Frasso. The alliance with the countess took Siegel to Italy in 1938, where
he met Benito Mussolini, to whom
Siegel tried to sell weapons. Siegel also met Nazi leaders Hermann Göring and
Joseph Goebbels, to whom he took an instant dislike and later offered to kill.
He only relented because of the countess's anxious pleas.
In Hollywood, Siegel worked with the syndicate to form
illegal rackets. He devised a plan of extorting movie studios; he would take
over local trade unions (such as the Screen
Extras Guild and the Los Angeles
Teamsters) and stage strikes to force studios to pay him off so that unions
would start working again. Siegel borrowed money from celebrities and did not
pay them back, knowing that they would never ask him for the money. During his
first year in Hollywood, he received more than US$400,000 in loans from movie
stars.
Selling Atomite to
Mussolini
Atomite, according to Siegel's accounts, was a new type of
explosive substance that detonated without sound or flash, and Siegel attracted
the interest of Benito Mussolini and
the Axis 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 Joseph Goebbels and Hermann
Göring, and Mussolini demanded the return of his money.
Greenberg murder and
trial
On November 22, 1939, Siegel, Whitey Krakow, Frankie Carbo, and Albert Tannenbaum killed
Harry "Big Greenie"
Greenberg outside his apartment. Greenberg had threatened to become a
police informant, and Buchalter ordered his killing. Tannenbaum confessed to
the murder and agreed to testify against Siegel. Siegel was implicated in the
murder and put on trial in September 1941. 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. Siegel hired attorney Jerry
Giesler for his defense. Two state witnesses died and no additional
witnesses came forward. Tannenbaum's testimony was dismissed. In 1942, Siegel
was acquitted because of insufficient evidence but his reputation was damaged.
During the trial, newspapers revealed 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". On May 25, 1944, Siegel was arrested for bookmaking. Raft and
Mack Gray testified on his behalf,
and he was acquitted again in late 1944.
Las Vegas
In 1946, Siegel found an opportunity to reinvent his
personal image and diversify into a legitimate business with William R. Wilkerson's Flamingo Hotel. In the 1930s, Siegel had
traveled to southern Nevada with Sedway to explore expanding operations there.
He had found opportunities to provide illicit services to crews constructing
the Boulder Dam. Lansky had handed over operations in Nevada to Siegel, who
turned it over to Sedway and left for Hollywood.
In the mid-1940s, Siegel was lining things up in Las Vegas
while his lieutenants worked on a business policy to secure all gambling in Los
Angeles. In May 1946, he decided that the agreement with Wilkerson had to be
altered to give him control of the Flamingo. With 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". Wilkerson was eventually coerced into
selling all stakes in the Flamingo under the threat of death, and he went into
hiding in Paris for a time. From this point the Flamingo became syndicate-run.
Las Vegas beginning
Siegel began a spending spree. He demanded the finest
building that money could buy at a time of postwar shortages. As costs soared,
his checks began bouncing. By October 1946, the Flamingo's costs were above $4
million. By 1947, the costs were over $6 million (equivalent to $64 million in
2021). By late November of that year, the work was nearly finished.
According to later reports by local observers, Siegel's "maniacal chest-puffing" set
the pattern for several generations of notable casino moguls. His violent
reputation did not help his situation. He boasted one day that he had
personally killed some men; he saw the panicked look on the face of head
contractor Del Webb and reassured him: "Del,
don't worry, we only kill each other." Other associates portrayed
Siegel in a different aspect; he was an intense character who was not without a
charitable side, including his donations to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund. Siegel's Las Vegas attorney Lou Weiner Jr. described him as "very well liked" and said that
he was "good to people."
Defiance and
devastation
Problems with the Outfit's wire service had cleared up in
Nevada and Arizona, but in California, Siegel refused to report business. 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 patient with him
because he had always proven to be a valuable man.
The Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946, even though only
the casino, lounge, theater, and restaurant were finished. Local people
attended the opening, but few celebrities did. A handful drove in from Los
Angeles, despite bad weather. Some celebrities present were Raft, June Haver, Vivian Blaine, Sonny Tufts,
Brian Donlevy, and Charles Coburn.
They were welcomed by construction noise and a lobby draped with drop cloths.
The desert's first air conditioning system broke down regularly. Gambling
tables were operating, but the luxury rooms were not ready which would have
served as a lure for people to stay and gamble. Word made its way to Siegel
during the evening that the casino was losing money, and he became irate and
verbally abusive, throwing out at least one family. After two weeks, the
Flamingo's gaming tables were $275,000 in the red and the entire operation shut
down in late January 1947.
Siegel did everything he could to turn the Flamingo into a
success by making renovations and obtaining good press. He hired Hank Greenspun as a publicist. The
hotel reopened on March 1, 1947, with Lansky present, and began turning a
profit. However, by the time that profits began improving, the mob bosses above
Siegel were tired of waiting.
Death
On the night of June 20, 1947, as Siegel sat with his
associate Allen Smiley in Virginia
Hill's Beverly Hills home reading the Los Angeles Times, an unknown assailant
fired at him through the window with a .30 caliber military M1 carbine, hitting
him many times, including twice in the head. Some looked upon it as a cowardly
approach, bushwhacking the formidable and weapons-proficient Siegel from a
distance. No one was charged with killing Siegel, and the crime remains
officially unsolved.
One theory is that Siegel's death was due to his excessive
spending and possible theft of money from the mob. In 1946, a meeting was held
with the "board of directors"
of the syndicate in Havana, Cuba so that Luciano, exiled in Sicily, could
attend. A contract on Siegel's life was the conclusion. According to Stacher,
Lansky reluctantly agreed to the decision. Another theory is 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, at mob behest, was exerting over Siegel's
finances and planned to do away with him. Former Philadelphia family boss Ralph Natale claimed that Carbo was
responsible for killing Siegel, at the behest of Lansky.
Siegel's death certificate states the cause of death as a homicide and the immediate cause as "Cerebral
Hemorrage due to Gunshot Wounds of the Head." Siegel was hit by
several other bullets, including shots through his lungs. According to Florabel
Muir, "Four of the nine shots fired
that night destroyed a white marble statue of Bacchus on a grand piano, and
then lodged in the far wall".
The day after Siegel's death, the Los Angeles Herald-Express
carried a photograph on its front page from the morgue of Siegel's bare right
foot with a toe tag. Although Siegel's homicide 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. The day
after Siegel's murder, David Berman
and his Las Vegas mob associates, Sedway and Gus Greenbaum, walked into the Flamingo and took over the operation of
the hotel and casino.
Memorial
In the Bialystoker Synagogue on New York's Lower East Side,
Siegel is memorialized by a Yahrtzeit (remembrance) plaque that marks his death
date so mourners can say Kaddish 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 the Flamingo Las Vegas,
between the pool and a wedding chapel, is a memorial plaque to Siegel.
Media portrayals
Morris "Moe" Greene is a
fictional character appearing in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather and the
1972 film of the same name. Both Greene's character and personality are based
on Bugsy Siegel.
The 1991 motion picture drama Mobsters, depicting the rise
of The Commission, focused on the empire built by enterprising young criminals
Lucky Luciano (Christian Slater),
Meyer Lansky (Patrick Dempsey), and
Bugsy Siegel (Richard Grieco).
A character going by the same name, portrayed by Edwin Richfield, appears in the sixth
episode of the second series of the 1960s cult British spy-fi TV series The
Avengers.
Bugsy (1991) is a highly fictionalized movie biography of
Siegel, featuring Warren Beatty in
the title role.
The Marrying Man (1991) has Armand Assante playing the role of Siegel.
Tim Powers
imagined Siegel as a modern-day Fisher King in his novel Last Call (1992).
A biography of Siegel (a 1995 program from the television
series Biography) was released on DVD in 2005. 50 minutes, color with B&W
sequences. ISBN 9780767081917
He is portrayed by Michael
Zegen in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire.
He is a central character in Frank Darabont's television
series Mob City, portrayed by Edward
Burns.
He is portrayed by Jonathan
Stewart in the AMC series The Making of the Mob: New York, a docudrama
focusing on the history of the mob with the first season about Charlie "Lucky" Luciano's life story.
Joe Mantegna
portrayed Siegel in the 2015 film Kill Me, Deadly.
Siegel was mentioned in the song titled 2 of Amerikaz Most
Wanted by Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg in the album All Eyez on Me.
He was mentioned by Snoop Dogg in
the fourth verse.
Jonathan Sadowski
portrayed a heavily fictionalized Siegel in the DC's Legends of Tomorrow
episode "Miss Me, Kiss Me, Love Me"; a science fiction series with
supernatural overtones, it featured Siegel being resurrected after his
assassination, although he is finally terminated in Hell by the character John
Constantine.
David Cade
portrays Siegel in the 2021 film Lansky.
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