Benjamin Siegel (1906-1947)

Benjamin Siegel (1906-1947)

A poor Jewish boy who later rose to power through his involvement with theGenovese Crime Family, Bugsy Siegel was a brutal killer and a smart businessman. He headed several bootlegging and racketeering operations, and became a key participant in the development of Las Vegas. On June 20, 1947,Siegel was killed while at the Beverly Hills home of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill. He was shot through the window with a .30-caliber military M1 carbine. His killer was never positively identified and no one was charged with the murder.

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. 

Siegel was not only influential within the Jewish Mob, but along with his childhood friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky, also held significant influence within the Italian-American Mafia and the largely Italian-Jewish National Crime Syndicate...... Read story https://vwegbaworld.blogspot.com/2023/04/benjamin-siegel-1906-1947.html?m=1

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.[5] and became a bootlegger during Prohibition. After the Twenty-first Amendment was passed repealing Prohibition in 1933, he turned to gambling. In 1936, he left New York and moved to California.[6] 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 a poor reception and technical difficulties, and soon closed. It reopened in March 1947 with a finished hotel, but by then his mob partners were convinced an estimated $1 million of the construction budget overage had been skimmed by either girlfriend Virginia Hill, Siegel or both. On June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot dead by a sniper through the window of Hill's Linden Drive mansion in Beverly Hills, California.

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.

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 for dividing Mafia territories and preventing 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, penetrating Siegel's heavily fortified Waldorf Astoria suite with a bomb.

 After the deaths of his two brothers, Tony Fabrizzo had begun 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.

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.[90][91] 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 and participate. A contract on Siegel's life was the conclusion.[92] According to Stacher, Lansky reluctantly agreed to the decision.[93] 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.[94] 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 homicide and the immediate cause as "Cerebral Hemorrage due to Gunshot Wounds of the Head."[96] 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 operation of the hotel and casino.

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