On the evening of June 20, 1947, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was reading the Los Angeles Times in the living room of his girlfriend’s Beverly Hills mansion. His associate Allen Smiley sat beside him. The curtains were open, the lights were on, and someone outside was watching.
At 10:46 p.m., nine rounds from a .30 caliber M1 military carbine tore through the window. The first bullet struck Siegel in the face. Four rounds hit him total, including shots that perforated both lungs. The force of the headshot blew his left eye from its socket, later found 15 feet away on the dining room floor.
The shooter had rested the weapon on a trellis just outside the window, no more than 14 feet from the couch. He vanished into the rose bushes and was never found. The gun was never recovered. The Beverly Hills Police Department still lists the case as open.
Siegel was not just another gangster. He was a co-founder of the Bugs and Meyer mob, a man who carried out murders for Murder Incorporated, and a figure who moved easily among Hollywood elites. He dined with Clark Gable, partied with Cary Grant, and had studio executives on call. He was also the man who built the Flamingo, the casino that transformed Las Vegas.
Twenty minutes after Siegel’s body hit the floor, three men walked into the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and announced they were taking over. They were not surprised by the news. They had been counting down the clock.
Siegel was born Benjamin Siegelbaum on February 28, 1906, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His parents were Jewish immigrants, and his father worked in a garment factory. Siegel dropped out of school as a teenager and joined a street gang on the Lower East Side, starting with petty theft and shakedowns of pushcart vendors.
He earned the nickname “Bugsy” for his unpredictable, violent temper. He hated the name his entire life, but he lived up to it. Then he met Meyer Lansky, a small, quiet, brilliant young man. Siegel had the nerve. Lansky had the brains. Together they formed the Bugs and Meyer mob in the early 1920s.
The crew ran bootlegging, hijacking, and contract killings across New York and New Jersey. When Lucky Luciano needed someone eliminated, he called Lansky, who called Siegel. By the early 1930s, Siegel and Lansky were founding members of the National Crime Syndicate, sitting at the same table as Luciano, Frank Costello, and Albert Anastasia.
In the mid-1930s, Lansky sent Siegel west to Los Angeles. The assignment was to take control of West Coast rackets, set up gambling operations, and manage the wire services that transmitted horse racing results to bookmakers. Whoever controlled the information controlled the bets.
Siegel transformed himself in Hollywood. He bought tailored suits, got a suntan, and befriended actor George Raft, another Brooklyn kid. Through Raft, Siegel gained access to studio executives, producers, and movie stars. He attended premieres and dinner parties and dated starlets. The Hollywood press loved him.
Within a few years, Siegel had the West Coast wire service locked down and was running gambling operations across Southern California. He was making enormous money. But he wanted more. He wanted to build something.
In 1945, publisher William Wilkerson had an idea for a luxury hotel and casino in Las Vegas, where gambling was legal. He called it the Flamingo. Construction began, money ran out, and Siegel stepped in. First as a partner, then as the boss. Wilkerson was squeezed out entirely.
Siegel brought in mob money from the syndicate. Lansky, Costello, Luciano, and Joe Adonis all invested. The original budget was $1.2 million. It would eventually exceed $6 million, the equivalent of over $73 million today.
Siegel’s girlfriend, Virginia Hill, was appointed as a project overseer. Hill was no ordinary girlfriend. She had been a Chicago Outfit courier since the mid-1930s, carrying messages and money between crime families. The FBI called her a central clearinghouse for organized crime intelligence.
But putting her in charge of construction oversight was a disaster. Contractors realized they were dealing with people who did not know building codes. They double billed for materials, ordered supplies and sold them on the black market, then ordered them again. Siegel did not notice or did not care.
The mob was furious. They suspected Siegel and Hill were skimming, with rumors that Hill had been wiring money to Swiss bank accounts. Approximately $1 million of the overrun, the bosses believed, had been stolen. In the mob, suspicion is enough.
On December 20, 1946, the most powerful crime figures in America gathered at the Hotel Nacional in Havana, Cuba. Lucky Luciano called the meeting. The official agenda covered narcotics and territories, but the real topic was the Siegel situation. The bosses wanted Siegel dead.
The contract was assigned to Chicago Outfit consigliere Charles “Trigger Happy” Fischetti. But Meyer Lansky, Siegel’s friend since childhood, stood up and argued for a delay. The Flamingo was scheduled to open December 26. Let it open, he said. If it makes money, the investment is saved. If not, do what you want.
The bosses agreed. Siegel had a reprieve, but it came with a clock.
The Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946. The three-night event drew large crowds. Columnist Walter Winchell reported 28,000 people attended. Jimmy Durante headlined. George Raft was there. Virginia Hill appeared all three nights, changing her hair color each evening.
But the hotel rooms were not ready. Big winners walked out and gambled elsewhere. The casino lost $300,000 in its first week. Nick the Greek Dandolos alone won nearly half a million in four nights in January. The losses mounted.
Siegel shut the casino down on February 6, 1947, and did not reopen until March 1, when the hotel rooms were finally completed. By May, the Flamingo turned a profit of $250,000. Lansky pointed to the number as proof Siegel’s vision was correct. It was too late.
The bosses had lost patience. $6 million invested, months of losses, and the persistent suspicion of theft. In the National Crime Syndicate, there is no appeals court.
Four days before the shooting, Virginia Hill boarded an unscheduled flight to Paris. She and Siegel had been fighting constantly. Some believe it was just another breakup. Others believe she was warned to get out of town. She was not in that house on June 20. That was no coincidence.
On the night of the murder, at 8:30 p.m., during the floor show at the Flamingo, eight men at a table suddenly stood up. They spread out to eight strategic positions. Two went to the front door. Two went to the hotel registration desk. Two went to the security desk. Two went to the cashier’s cage. They were securing the casino two hours before the trigger was pulled.
In Beverly Hills, Siegel had dinner with Allen Smiley, Virginia Hill’s brother Chick, and Chick’s girlfriend. They returned to the house around 10:30. Siegel sat down on the sofa and picked up the newspaper. At 10:46, nine rounds came through the window.
Within minutes, FBI agent Curtis Lynum received a phone call from a confidential informant calling from a payphone outside the Flamingo in Las Vegas. The informant told him, “Ben Siegel has been shot and killed in Beverly Hills.” Historian Larry Gragg is certain that informant was Moe Sedway, Siegel’s own former partner.
Minutes later, Moe Sedway walked into the Flamingo alongside Gus Greenbaum and Morris Rosen. They announced to the staff that Siegel was dead and that they were now in charge. The takeover was complete before police in Beverly Hills had finished processing the crime scene.
Who pulled the trigger remains an open question. Frankie Carbo, a Lucchese family soldier and boxing promoter, was the leading suspect for decades. Former Philadelphia boss Ralph Natali later claimed Carbo did it on orders from Meyer Lansky.
In 1987, Eddie Canizarro, a former associate of Los Angeles boss Jack Dragna, made a deathbed confession, claiming he was the shooter. The Beverly Hills police required substantiation, and the confession could not be corroborated.
Other theories point to Tony Brancato and Tony Trombino, the “two Tonys,” hired by Joe Adonis. There is even a theory involving a man named Matthew “Moose” Penza. The accounts vary. The case remains open.
After the murder, photographs of Siegel’s bullet-riddled body appeared in newspapers across the country. It was the most graphic crime scene photo most Americans had ever seen. It put Las Vegas on the front page of every paper in the nation.
In death, Bugsy Siegel did more to advertise Las Vegas than he ever could have alive. Under Gus Greenbaum’s management, the Flamingo became wildly profitable. It became the model for every luxury casino hotel that followed. The Sands, the Sahara, the Desert Inn. All followed the Flamingo blueprint.
Siegel’s vision of a gambling paradise in the desert was exactly right. He just did not live to see it.
The endings for those around him were brutal. Gus Greenbaum was found murdered alongside his wife on December 3, 1958. Both had their throats cut. Virginia Hill fled to Europe after being called to testify before the Kefauver Committee in 1951. She was indicted for tax evasion in 1954 and never returned to America.
On March 24, 1966, Virginia Hill was found dead near Salzburg, Austria. She was 49 years old. The official ruling was suicide by overdose of sleeping pills. Whether it truly was remains another open question.
Moe Sedway, the man who walked into the Flamingo that night and took control, died of natural causes in 1952. He was one of the few people connected to this story who died in his own bed.
Meyer Lansky never spoke publicly about Siegel’s murder. The man who had been Siegel’s friend since they were teenagers, the man who pleaded for his life at the Havana conference, and the man many believe ultimately gave final approval for the hit carried whatever he knew to his grave. He died on January 15, 1983, in Miami Beach. His official net worth was listed at about $300,000. Federal authorities believed his hidden fortune ran into the hundreds of millions.
The Flamingo still stands on the Las Vegas Strip today, though nothing of the original structure remains. It has been rebuilt, expanded, and renovated beyond recognition.
Benjamin Siegel spent his entire life chasing a version of greatness the legitimate world would never give him. He wanted to be a mogul, a builder, a man whose name meant something beyond fear. He was right about Las Vegas. He saw a city of lights in the middle of nothing, a place where the rules did not apply.
He just forgot the most important rule of all. In the mob, you do not get to keep what you build. You do not get to overspend and explain later. You do not get to skim from men who kill for a living.
Bugsy Siegel saw the future. He was right about everything except the one thing that mattered most. The men who funded his dream were not investors. They were executioners who had not decided on the date yet.