Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was an American mobster who was a driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip.
55 Facts About Bugsy Siegel
2.
Bugsy Siegel was described as handsome and charismatic, and he became one of the first front-page celebrity gangsters.
3.
Bugsy Siegel was one of the founders and leaders of Murder, Inc and became a bootlegger during American Prohibition.
4.
In 1941, Bugsy Siegel was tried for the murder of friend and fellow mobster Harry Greenberg, who had turned informant.
5.
Bugsy Siegel traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada where he handled and financed some of the original casinos.
6.
Bugsy Siegel assisted developer William R Wilkerson's Flamingo Hotel after Wilkerson ran out of funds.
7.
Bugsy Siegel assumed control of the project and managed the final stages of construction.
8.
On June 20,1947, Bugsy Siegel was shot dead by a sniper through the window of Hill's Linden Drive mansion in Beverly Hills, California.
9.
Benjamin Bugsy 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 US from the Galicia region of what was then Austria-Hungary.
10.
Bugsy Siegel committed mainly thefts until he met Moe Sedway.
11.
Bugsy Siegel became involved in bootlegging within several major East Coast cities.
12.
Bugsy Siegel worked as the mob's hitman, whom Lansky hired out to other crime families.
13.
Bugsy Siegel was a boyhood friend to Al Capone; when there was a warrant for Capone's arrest on a murder charge, Bugsy Siegel allowed him to hide out with an aunt.
14.
Bugsy Siegel first smoked opium during his youth and was involved in the drug trade.
15.
Bugsy Siegel bought an apartment at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and a Tudor home in Scarsdale, New York.
16.
Bugsy Siegel wore flashy clothes and participated in New York City night life.
17.
From May 13 to 16,1929, Lansky and Bugsy Siegel attended the Atlantic City Conference, representing the Bugs and Meyer Mob.
18.
On January 28,1929, Bugsy Siegel married Esta Krakower, his childhood sweetheart.
19.
Bugsy Siegel had a reputation as a womanizer and the marriage ended in 1946.
20.
Bugsy Siegel's wife moved with their teenage daughters to New York.
21.
Gordon had hired the Fabrizzo brothers from prison after Lansky and Bugsy Siegel gave the IRS information about Gordon's tax evasion.
22.
Bugsy Siegel hunted down and killed the Fabrizzos after they made an assassination attempt on him and Lansky, penetrating Bugsy Siegel's heavily fortified Waldorf Astoria suite with a bomb.
23.
In 1932, after checking into a hospital to establish an alibi and later sneaking out, Bugsy Siegel joined two accomplices in approaching Fabrizzo's house and, posing as detectives to lure him outside, gunned him down.
24.
In 1935, Siegel assisted in Luciano's alliance with Dutch Schultz and killed rival loan sharks Louis "Pretty" Amberg and Joseph C Amberg.
25.
Bugsy Siegel had learned from his associates that he was in danger: his hospital alibi had become questionable and his enemies wanted him dead.
26.
Once in Los Angeles, Bugsy Siegel recruited gang boss Mickey Cohen as his chief lieutenant.
27.
On tax returns, Bugsy Siegel claimed to earn his living through legal gambling at Santa Anita Park.
28.
Bugsy Siegel 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.
29.
Bugsy Siegel maintained relationships with politicians, businessmen, attorneys, accountants, and lobbyists who fronted for him.
30.
In Hollywood, Bugsy Siegel was welcomed in the highest circles and befriended movie stars.
31.
Bugsy Siegel bought real estate and threw lavish parties at his Beverly Hills home.
32.
Bugsy Siegel gained admiration from young celebrities, including Tony Curtis, Phil Silvers, and Frank Sinatra.
33.
Bugsy Siegel had several relationships with prominent women, including socialite Countess Dorothy di Frasso.
34.
Bugsy Siegel met Nazi leaders Hermann Goring and Joseph Goebbels, to whom he took an instant dislike and later offered to kill.
35.
Bugsy Siegel only relented because of the countess's anxious pleas.
36.
In Hollywood, Bugsy Siegel worked with the syndicate to form illegal rackets.
37.
Bugsy Siegel devised a plan of extorting movie studios; he would take over local trade unions and stage strikes to force studios to pay him off so that unions would start working again.
38.
Bugsy Siegel borrowed money from celebrities and did not pay them back, knowing that they would never ask him for the money.
39.
Atomite, according to Bugsy Siegel's accounts, was a new type of explosive substance that detonated without sound or flash, and Bugsy Siegel attracted the interest of Benito Mussolini and the Axis powers to purchase it.
40.
Mussolini advanced $40,000 to have atomite scaled up, but Bugsy Siegel failed to detonate the explosive in 1939 during a demonstration to Mussolini and Nazi leaders, including Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goring, and Mussolini demanded the return of his money.
41.
Bugsy Siegel was implicated in the murder and put on trial in September 1941.
42.
The trial soon gained notoriety because of the preferential treatment that Bugsy Siegel received in jail; he refused to eat prison food, was allowed female visitors, and was granted leave for dental visits.
43.
In 1942, Bugsy Siegel was acquitted because of insufficient evidence but his reputation was damaged.
44.
Bugsy Siegel preferred to be called "Ben" or "Mr Siegel".
45.
In 1946, Siegel found an opportunity to reinvent his personal image and diversify into legitimate business with William R Wilkerson's Flamingo Hotel.
46.
Bugsy Siegel had found opportunities in providing illicit services to crews constructing the Boulder Dam.
47.
Lansky had handed over operations in Nevada to Bugsy Siegel, who turned it over to Sedway and left for Hollywood.
48.
Bugsy Siegel believed that these attractions would lure thousands of vacationers willing to gamble $50 or $100, as well as "high rollers".
49.
Bugsy Siegel demanded the finest building that money could buy at a time of postwar shortages.
50.
Problems with the Outfit's wire service had cleared up in Nevada and Arizona, but in California, Bugsy Siegel refused to report business.
51.
Bugsy Siegel did everything he could to turn the Flamingo into a success by making renovations and obtaining good press.
52.
However, by the time that profits began improving, the mob bosses above Bugsy Siegel were tired of waiting.
53.
One theory is that Bugsy Siegel's death was due to his excessive spending and possible theft of money from the mob.
54.
Bugsy Siegel apparently had grown increasingly resentful of the control Sedway, at mob behest, was exerting over Bugsy Siegel's finances and planned to do away with him.
55.
Bugsy Siegel's plaque is below that of Max Bugsy Siegel, his father, who died just two months before his son.