Bugsy Siegel
Inventor of Las Vegas as the gambling capital
of the world
Bugsy Siegel was born February 28, 1906, in Brooklyn.
He was a gangster from the day he was born until his death
on June 20, 1947, killed because he didn't even hesitate to
cheat his own gangster friends. He began his career with gang
extortion of the small shop owners of Brooklyn, a gang that
quickly turned into America's first murder-for-hire operation.
Bugsy Siegel teamed up with Meyer Lansky, Charlie Luciano
and Dutch Schultz, and by around 1918 they controlled the
crime scene of the Lower East Side. In the twenties they ventured
into bootlegging, and it was in particular due to the business
skills of Meyer Lansky, that the Lansky-Siegel mob became
the money machine that is was.
One of Bugsy Seagel's prime 'accomplishments' was his leading
role in the assassination of Joe Masseria in 1931. Masseria
at the time was one of the leading gangsters in New York,
and his death served the Lansky-Siegel mob to become a nationwide
gangster syndicate.
In 1937, the syndicate decided to send Bugsy Siegel to California,
to develop their interests in this largely uncharted territory.
And this is the main reason why we are discussing the life
of Bugsy Siegel here. As it happens to be this violent gangster
was also the prime force behind turning Las Vegas into the
gambling Mecca it is today.
In 1945, Bugsy Siegel built the Flamingo Hotel and Casino
in Las Vegas, at the time a small town in the hot desert near
Los Angeles. The grand opening of the Flamingo was attended
by some of Hollywood's biggest stars, including Clark Gable
and Joan Crawford. But despite this the Flamingo wasn't the
success it was supposed to be, after overrunning the initial
building budget by a factor 4. Bugsy Siegel also made the
mistake of depositing large sums of the building budget into
his own Swiss bank accounts. Just around the time the Flamingo
began to turn in a profit, Bugsy Siegel was killed on June
20, 1947, in his Beverly Hills residence. It is not known
for certain who was behind the assassination, but it was probably
Meyer Lansky who ordered the killing, being fed up with Bugsy's
handling of syndicate funds.
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