About Me
This is Dedicated to Benjamin Siegel who some say was a notorious gangster and the one that invented Las Vegas as we know it today. But Ben was just a victim of his times and a product of where he grew up.Benjamin Hymen Siegelbaum was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a poor Russian Jewish family, one of five children. As a boy, Siegel joined a street gang on Lafayette Street in the Lower East Side and committed first mainly thefts, until, with another youth named Moe Sedway, he devised his own protection racket; he forced pushcart merchants to pay him five dollars or he would incinerate their merchandise on the spot. During adolescence, Siegel befriended Meyer Lansky, forming a small gang with him that expanded to gambling and car theft. Siegel reputedly also worked as the gang's hitman whom Lansky would sometimes hire out to other gang bosses.The Name Bugsy:As a kid Ben, Meyer, and Charlie use to run craps games. One night during one of their games they had a visit from a Sergeant Hearn. When he opened the door to where they were running the game he was not to happy to see them gambling. So Meyer offered to let the Sergeant take a roll of the dice offering him great odd's. Well of course he won, and walked away with $10.00, telling the boys the game was over for the night, but asked to be informed should they move the game else where. Well Ben was ticked off that he let the Sergeant win. So Ben went after the Sergeant follwed him into an alley and hit Hearn with a lead pipe, rolling him for the money he took from them and his gun. The next day Ben asked Charlie and Meyer if they heard somebody wacked Hearn, they all said yeah and then he produced the money Hearn had got from them. They were surprised, Charlie said Ben was crazy as a bedbug but Meyer playfully pushing on his head said he had bugs in his head and continued with that then finally calling him Bugsy, they both laughed and he called him Bugsy Siegel. In 1937 the East Coast mob sent Siegel to California to try to develop Syndicate gambling rackets in the West alongside Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna. Siegel also recruited Jewish gang boss Mickey Cohen as his lieutenant. Siegel used Syndicate money to set up a national wire service to help the East Coast mob get their cut faster.Siegel married his childhood sweetheart Esta Krakow, sister of hitman Whitey Krakow, on January 28, 1929. He eventually moved her and their two daughters to the West Coast, after his bosses had sent him there, but kept them in the dark about his many extramarital affairs. Siegel had a number of mistresses, including actresses Ketti Gallian, Wendy Barrie and Marie "the Body" MacDonald, and Hollywood socialite Dorothy DiFrasso. With the aid of DiFrasso and actor friend George Raft, Siegel gained entry into Hollywood's inner circle. He is alleged to have used his contacts to extort movie studios. He lived in extravagant fashion, as befitting his reputation. On his tax returns, Siegel claimed to earn a living through legal gambling at the Santa Anita racetrack near Los Angeles.Siegel became enamored of a sharp-tongued moll and courier, Virginia Hill. They began a torrid affair. Hill helped Siegel establish contacts in Mexico. The Alabama-born Hill was wealthy in her own right and had bought a mansion in Beverly Hills from Metropolitan Opera baritone Lawrence Tibbett, where Siegel frequently stayed. Hill became Siegel's paramour. Later, there were rumors that they had secretly married in Mexico. Their affair, however, did not keep Siegel from continuing his compulsive womanizing. Hill's reaction to Siegel's infidelities is unknown, but the long-suffering Esta finally had had enough; she went to Reno and obtained a divorce in 1946.According to popular myth, Bugsy envisioned building a large casino and hotel to which gamblers would flock. His vision was fueled by the fact that Nevada had legalized gambling in 1931. In Las Vegas, gambling was concentrated in downtown casinos along Fremont Street, whose clientele largely consisted of members of the construction crew building the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River 48 km (30 miles) to the southeast.Back in the East, Siegel captivated his fellow mobsters with the idea of building a gambling mecca in the Nevada desert, complete with a casino, hotel and entertainment. Siegel returned to the West Coast and began working on his dream to construct a hotel-casino complex on what later would become known as the Las Vegas Strip. Siegel called the place the "Flamingo," his pet name for Virginia Hill.The reality is that the Mafia had had a presence in Las Vegas casinos dating back to at least 1941. The swank Flamingo was actually conceived and started by Los Angeles businessman and Hollywood Reporter publisher Billy Wilkerson, who turned the project over to Siegel after running short of funds. In return, Siegel permitted Wilkerson to retain a one-third ownership.Eventually, Siegel's business venture in Las Vegas failed. Hill stole the money Siegel owed the mob and fled to Paris, then Sweden. Even Siegel's boyhood friend Lansky now abandoned him. Hill was not at home on the night of June 20, 1947, when, at 10:45 p.m., a mob hitman, allegedly Eddie Cannizzaro, hid outside the couple's mansion at 810 N. Linden Drive in Beverly Hills and shot Siegel several times with an M1 carbine as he sat near a window reading the Los Angeles Times. The force of the gunfire blew Siegel's eye 4.5 meters (15 feet) from his body. The matinee-idol handsome 41-year-old gangster died instantly
