The Gangster Who Stole From the Mob
Jewish New York criminal and gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (1906 – 1947) became a friend and associate of major mafia luminaries, such as Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and Meyer Lansky. In 1930, Siegel was a member of a hit team organized by Luciano that killed NYC’s then-top mobster, Joe “The Boss” Masseria. A feared hitman, Siegel was one of the original leaders of a contract-killing organization that came to be known as Murder Inc. He was also a bootlegger, and dabbled in gambling before he relocated to the West Coast to expand the mafia rackets there.
Out West, Siegel raised mafia eyebrows when he began to hobnob with Hollywood figures. That was overlooked – for a while – because he helped establish the mafia in Las Vegas when he built the Flamingo Hotel and Casino. However, Siegel got greedy and skimmed off huge amounts from East Coast mobsters who had invested in Las Vegas. When his perfidy was discovered, Siegel’s fate was sealed. On the evening of June 20th, 1947, as he relaxed in a palatial Beverly Hills mansion and perused the Los Angeles Times, a hitman riddled Siegel with rifle bullets fired through the window, including two shots to the head.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
A Blast From the Past – The Last Secret of the H.L. Hunley
Baptist Quarterly – Colonel Thomas Blood
Costanzo, Ezio – The Mafia and the Allies: Sicily, 1943, and the Return of the Mafia (2007)
Cracked – The Forty Elephants: The Victorian-Era Bling Ring
Culture Trip – The Story Behind London’s Notorious Girl Gang, the Forty Elephants
Daily Beast – The Long Rise and Fast Fall of New York’s Black Mafia
Encyclopedia Britannica – Jonathan Wild, English Criminal
Gambino, Richard – Vendetta: The True Story of the Largest Lynching in US History (2000)
Griffin, Dennis N. – The Battle for Las Vegas: The Law vs the Mob (2006)
Guardian, The, December 27th, 2010 – Girl Gang’s Grip on London Underworld Revealed
Historic UK – The Theft of the Crown Jewels
History Collection – These Roving Criminals Terrorized the Plains in the 1930s
History Network – The Grisly Story of America’s Largest Lynching
Howson, Gerlad – Thief-Taker General: The Rise and Fall of Jonathan Wild (1970)
Lupo, Salvatore – History of the Mafia (2009)
New York Herald, July 8th, 1849 – Arrest of the Confidence Man
Raab, Selwyn – The Five Families (2014)
Time Magazine, September 26th, 2019 – The True Story Behind ‘Godfather of Harlem’