Bugsy Siegel

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was born on February 28, 1906, in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, the second of five children in a poor Ashkenazi Jewish family that had emigrated from the Galicia region of Austria-Hungary. His parents, Jennie and Max Siegel, worked constantly for low wages. As a boy, he quit school and joined a gang on Manhattan's Lower East Side, mostly stealing until he met Moe Sedway. Together, they ran a protection racket: Siegel threatened to burn pushcart owners' goods unless they paid him a dollar. By his teens, he had a long criminal record including armed robbery, rape, and murder.

During adolescence, Siegel befriended Meyer Lansky, who had a sharp mind for organizing crime. Lansky, already in conflict with Charles "Lucky" Luciano, saw that Jewish kids in Brooklyn needed to band together like the Italian and Irish gangs did. His first recruit was Siegel. The two formed the Bugs and Meyer Mob, which carried out hits for bootleg gangs in New York and New Jersey nearly a decade before Murder, Inc. existed. They hijacked rival liquor shipments and killed several gangland figures. Members included Abner "Longie" Zwillman, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, and Lansky's brother Jake. Joseph "Doc" Stacher recalled that Siegel was fearless: "Bugsy never hesitated when danger threatened. While we tried to figure out what the best move was, Bugsy was already shooting." Siegel was also a childhood friend of Al Capone, letting him hide with an aunt when Capone had a murder warrant.

Siegel first smoked opium as a youth and got involved in the drug trade. By age 21, he earned enough to buy an apartment at the Waldorf Astoria and a Tudor home in Scarsdale, New York. He wore flashy clothes and enjoyed New York nightlife. From May 13 to 16, 1929, he and Lansky attended the Atlantic City Conference, representing their mob. There, Luciano and Johnny Torrio discussed organized crime's future. Siegel said, "The yids and the dagos will no longer fight each other."

On January 28, 1929, Siegel married childhood sweetheart Esta Krakower. They had two daughters, Millicent and Barbara. He was known as a womanizer, and the marriage ended in 1946. While married, he had affairs with Ketti Gallian, Wendy Barrie, Marie "The Body" MacDonald, and Virginia Hill.

By the late 1920s, Siegel and Lansky had ties to Luciano and Frank Costello, future Genovese crime family bosses. Siegel, Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, and Joe Adonis were allegedly the four gunmen who killed mob boss Joe Masseria on Luciano's orders on April 15, 1931, ending the Castellammarese War. On September 10, 1931, Luciano hired four gunmen from the Bugs and Meyer Mob.

Siegel was a driving force behind the Las Vegas Strip. Described as "handsome" and "charismatic," he became one of the first front-page celebrity gangsters. He was a founder and leader of Murder, Inc. and bootlegged during Prohibition. After the Twenty-first Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, he turned to illegal gambling. In 1936, he moved from New York to California, working mainly as a hitman and muscle, noted for his gun skills and violence. In 1941, he was tried for murdering friend and fellow mobster Harry Greenberg, who had become an informant; he was acquitted in 1942.

Siegel went to Las Vegas, where he handled and financed some of the city's first casinos. He helped developer William R. Wilkerson with the Flamingo Hotel after Wilkerson ran out of money. Siegel took over and managed the final construction. The Flamingo's casino opened on December 26, 1946, with a three-day event that was well received, but without a hotel it struggled and closed from February 6, 1947, until the hotel finished and reopened on March 1, 1947. His mob partners believed about $1 million of the construction overrun had been skimmed by Siegel, his girlfriend Virginia Hill, or both. On June 20, 1947, at age 41, Siegel was murdered by a sniper through the window of Hill's Linden Drive mansion in Beverly Hills, California.