Messers. Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and Meyer Lansky
Businessmen?

Las Vegas is a great place to visit once. They have a nice natural history museum, and of course you can't beat a visit to the Hoover Dam. And for a good laugh you can take a walk though the casinos.

There you'll see a remarkable phenomenon. People - adults, in fact - are playing all sorts of games. And part of playing the games is that you'll hand one of the employees some money. Then he'll take some of it and hand you back the rest. You keep doing this until the casino has it all.

That is essentially what casino games do. That's because casinos don't pay off at the proper odds. For instance, in roulette the house percentage is 5.26% on almost all bets. That means you get back an average of 94.74¢ for each dollar. The one exception is the five way bet. That is, you place your bet on the end of the line dividing the zero and double zero from the first row of numbers. That means you win if the ball lands on zero, double zero, 1, 2, or 3. This bet pays off 6:1 for a house percentage of 7.9%.

Now some people think well, if the house percentage is 5%, I'll come in with $100, and I'll go home with $95. Five bucks is small enough to pay for a night's entertainment. And I might be lucky.

Right?

Weeeeeellllllll, not quite.

The house percentage is not the average loss, it's the average rate of loss. For instance, suppose you go into a casino with $100 and decide to play roulette. So you bet $10 per spin.

Do that and on the average you'll get wiped out after about 190 spins. True, that seems like a lot of play, but it's probably no more than 5 or 6 hours. Still, about 40,000,000 visitors a year show up in Las Vegas for the pleasure of tossing their money to the dealers.

But if all you do is lose your money, how could Las Vegas go from a town of 2000 inhabitants in 1920 to a city with a metropolitan area of 2 million? Well, we know the general reasons, but the details are subject to good-natured debate. And for good reasons.

It's no real mystery that at least some of the ladies and gentlemen involved in creating the modern city were not the country's most stellar citizens. Certainly they were not known for speaking frankly and openly about their private lives nor did they leave voluminous correspondence that form the basis for historical research. So when you read about Las Vegas, you'll get a lot of "it is said ...", "one story is ...", and "some authors think ..."

Without doubt one of the most unreliable sources for the history of Las Vegas was Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. A writer once asked Benjamin why he built a casino in a desert. Benjamin said he had been driving in from Los Angeles and saw the empty area outside the town. Why not, he thought, build a luxury hotel and casino where people could gamble and it be legal? So emerged the Flamingo, the first luxury casino and hotel on the famous Las Vegas Strip and named, as we all know, from the nickname of Benjamin's girlfriend, Virginia Hill.

It is known - and in fact has always been known - that Benjamin's story is horse hockey, bullshine, and poppycock. He was not the first to build any luxury hotel in Las Vegas, much less the Fabulous Flamingo on the famous "Strip". And Las Vegas would have become the Playground for the World even if Benjamin had never existed. The truth is that modern Vegas came into being by a gradual and even quite slow process involving a number of people.

The first step was in 1910 when Nevada made gambling illegal. That's right. When Nevada made gambling illegal. The next year California followed suit, and now there were no legal casinos in the United States.

But in 1931, Nevada changed its mind again. With the lowest population of any state - 94,000 or 0.07% of the US population - the government decided the state needed to beef up its tax base. So for the next forty years Nevada was the only state where you could legally lay down a bet.

And yet. Students of Nevada gaming - the term preferred to (ptui) "gambling" - find that from 1929 to 1930 there were two casinos in downtown Las Vegas, the Boulder Club, and the 21 Club. But if gambling was legalized only in 1931, how could Nevada have casinos in 1929?

Actually we misspoke when we said you could not legally lay down a bet before 1931. On-track betting on horse races was legal in a number of states, and sometimes gambling was permitted in private clubs. But not in Nevada. So the reason there were casinos in Las Vegas before 1931 is simply that they were illegal.

Illegal casinos were and have always been around. One of the popular business models was to set up an illegal casino near a large city but across a nearby state line. People who visited the metropolitan areas could hop in a car and take a short drive to their game.

The most famous of these two-state combines was New York and New Jersey. A limo would pick you up at your hotel in New York City, and they'd drive across the George Washington Bridge to the casinos in North Bergen. The largest illegal casino was "The Barn", essentially a warehouse which housed a number of gambling games.

Even law abiding Midwesterners could cross the lines to find a game. You had Ohio and Kentucky (Cincinnati and Covington), and Nebraska and Iowa (Omaha and Council Bluffs). Few people complained. The mayors of the large cities didn't need to worry about gambling, and the small towns were happy for the income. The owners of the casinos, if they were smart, made generous donations to the various local charities. There are some casinos whose records have letters even from the local police departments and sheriff's offices thanking them for their generous donations.

You might think that the massive legalization of gambling starting in the 1970's made the illegal casino as passé as bootleg hooch. Nothing could be further from the truth.

To this day some states do not permit gambling of any kind. Not in casinos, private clubs, or the privacy of your own home. But what's even stranger is that there are states that have legalized casinos and yet still prohibit private and "social" games. So although you may live three miles from a lavish hotel-casino, when you sit down in your living room to a friendly poker game with your buddies, you very well may be breaking the law.

Much depends on the wording of the statutes. If a state outlaws "games of chance played for money or other items of values", then that means all gambling is illegal. But if the law says "casino or banking games of chance" are not permitted, then a home poker game might be OK. Some states have specific "social game" exemptions.

Here we need to note the distinction between "private" and "social". A private game is one which is not open to the public. But it need not be a game between friends, and any player may not have ever met the others. Also the host may take a "rake" - that is a percentage or fee - from the other players. The number of players can be large - 30 to 50 are not unusual - and the stakes can be easily tens of thousands of dollars. So the distinction between a private game and a floating casino - that is a casino that moves around - becomes blurred.

A social game, though, is when you have some of your friends over to pass the time. Social game exemptions, though, are often very specific. They may limit the size of the bets, and some states even require that the people must be friends outside of the game itself. And there remain quite a few states were even social games are illegal.

And yes, they can be raided. Police in Florida once showed up at a retirement home where a group of ladies in their 80's and 90's were playing Mah Jongg. Charitable games may also not be exempt, and there have even been raids on bingo games in churches.

So you can see that legal or not, it was easy enough to gamble in the comfort of your own hometown. So why go to Las Vegas? Travel was slow and onerous and a flight from New York took 18 hours. So having a vacation in a hard to reach town was not high on the priority of most families.

In fact, the gambling ventures might have fallen flat except that Las Vegas casinos ignored the one cardinal rule for their illegal counterparts: You never let the local citizens play. You don't want to drain money from the community.

Instead Nevada casinos relied on the townspeople and those from neighboring communities. So stakes were kept low - particularly downtown on Fremont Street where for years you could play 10-cent roulette.

It also helped that 1931 brought a massive influx of manpower to Las Vegas with the start of construction on the Hoover Dam. But the gambling was still pretty small scale, and the decor of the casinos was cowboy and Western. That was the situation when Benjamin Siegel moved to Los Angeles in 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, or 1941 depending on whose telling the story.

Benjamin Siegelbaum had been born in 1906 in Brooklyn. He and his boyhood friend Meyer Lansky had begun making money telling pushcart peddlers to give them a cut or they'd shove the carts over. As they grew up (if you want to call it that), the Bugsy-Meyer gang fell under the auspices of Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein who always denied but is usually credited with fixing the 1919 "Black Sox" World Series. Benjamin and Meyer became part of Arnold's organization, collecting bets and handling the rough stuff.

At some point during these early years, Benjamin and Meyer also met the young Salvatore Luciana. Again - so the story goes - in a street confrontation Meyer stood up to Salvatore and his hoodlum friends and so gained their respect.

The two gangs - Italian and Jewish - began to collaborate and their ventures soon blossomed into robbery, high jacking, loan sharking, bootlegging, and murder. Throughout his long life Meyer himself always denied he was personally involved in violence and maintained he never killed anyone. "But some of my associates," he added. "Benny Siegel, he knocked out plenty."

So why did Benjamin move to Los Angeles? Certainly the mob had been expanding its operations, and California's population was growing rapidly. But Benjamin's unpredictable and volatile personality - which gave him his famous nickname - may have been as much of a factor. Sending him 3000 miles away was a good way to get him out of the picture but still take advantage of his firm hand to bring the independent mobsters of the region under control.

Also in the 1930's the East was getting a bit hot. Salvatore, who replaced his final "a" with an "o" and had adopted the name "Charles", had risen to the top of the criminal pyramid. If anyone was in charge of Organized Crime in America it was Lucky Luciano.

Lucky is generally credited with setting up The Commission, that is, the group of bosses from the various crime "families" with himself as chairman. Today the Commission is often seen as the top of the criminal pyramid, where Lucky controlled all crime in the land.

But suddenly Lucky was out of the picture. New York City had just elected a horribly honest mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, who was not only the most popular mayor then (or since), but had also declared war on the mob. Also since there were psychopathic nutballs like Arthur Fleggenheimer - better known as Dutch Schultz - getting a lot of bad press, the New York governor, Herbert H. Lehman, had appointed a special prosecutor to target high level racketeers. So Thomas E. Dewey was soon famous as the country's top crime buster.

Tom not only wanted to send the crooks up the river, he wanted to destroy their mystique which even then had made gangster films among the most popular of the time. So he charged Lucky with the lucrative but lowlife crime of what was then called white slavery. Such crimes were not likely to be glossed over by a jury. Tom's gamble paid off and in 1936, Lucky got whacked hard - 30 to 50 years. He was sent to Sing Sing, and Benjamin was all too happy to "git" and settle in LA.

The inability to decide exactly when Benjamin showed up on the West Coast is simply because he had been making extended visits west before he settled there permanently. Benjamin was one of the few mobsters who didn't mind extensive travel which at the time was largely by train.

At this point we need to pause and point out that the nature of organized crime - which one acquaintance of Benjamin called "disorganized crime" - is often misunderstood. Over the years opinions have ranged from there being no "Mafia" at all - a belief held for years by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and gambling author and close-up magician, John Scarne - to there being a single Godfather (usually pictured as living in New York) whose iron hand ruled a massive organization with tentacles extending throughout the country and forming a subversive government within a government.

Even a casual look at the history shows that organized crime is and always has been composed of a number of individual criminal groups that are not connected in any official capacity. Al Capone shared Chicago with other gangs, particularly those of Dean O'Banion (usually called "Dion") and Adelard Cunin (better known as Bugs Moran). Both Dion and Bugs considered themselves completely independent of Al, a belief which caused both of them a lot of problems. And although Al himself maintained ties to New York mobs, he never considered himself subservient to any of them. In Detroit there was the notorious Purple Gang that, despite what you may think from reading the James Bond novels, didn't last past the 1930's. But it worked independently of any other mob.

That said, that there was a group of gangsters called the Commission can't be denied. Lucky, though, did not create this group of top mob bosses which was designed to direct activities of the various crime families. The heads of the mobs would meet and agree to operate in certain areas and discuss the latest crime de jour. The members usually agreed to let one of the members serve as chairman. If he had enough prestige (and power), then he was effectively in charge, a position that was formally agreed to by the others.

The point to remember, however, is the various bosses did not see themselves as subservient to the others. If they didn't want to abide by a ruling, they didn't feel they had to. So regardless of a decision made by the group, it's likely some might ignore it. Of course, decisions could occasionally be hazardous to your health as renegades like Dutch Schultz found out.

We also have to remember that many of the names used for the criminal groups and organizations are creations of the press and news media. The "Mafia" was first used to refer to the organized crime organizations of Italian Americans. But that was a popular name, not something the criminals used themselves.

One name that some of the Italian American mobsters did use was Cosa Nostra meaning literally "Our Thing". Cosa Nostra referred to what was itself a collection of mobs which originated in Sicily. Senate investigators and newspapers added the Italian article "La" to the name, thus producing La Cosa Nostra which tended to create the impression of a large unified organization. Today some of the Cos Nostra members themselves add the La.

Once out West, high on Benjamin's list of things to do was to set up what are called wire services. This was providing telephone and telegraph connections so the local bookmakers could receive nearly real time racing information. Their clients could then come to the offices and lay down their bets as if they were at the track. Off-track betting was legal in Nevada, but not in California. But that didn't bother Benjamin.

Nor did it bother mobster Ignazio "Jack" Dragna who already was running an LA wire service. But Jack was considered a local lightweight by the East Coast and Chicago mob bosses. Jack didn't like anyone muscling in his territory, but there wasn't much he could do. So he grudgingly agreed to go along and work together with Benjamin.

Los Angeles was also conducive to other gambling innovations. At that time there was a three mile limit to the government's jurisdiction of coastal waters. So all you had to do was anchor a ship three miles plus a bit offshore, and you'd be out of the country. Then you'd ferry people to the ships who would clamber on board to find a fully functional and quite opulent casino.

True, United States ships are subject to United States laws, but gambling, then and largely now, is state regulated. Since gambling was not - as the Rabbi told Perchik - actually forbidden, then gambling on US ships in international waters must be all right. The ships did a brisk business, but by a series of maneuvers - many themselves of questionable legality - California shut down the ships in time for the Second World War.

The war didn't hurt Las Vegas any. It was, in fact, the perfect place for the airbases where fight crews could be trained and also used for stopovers for troops on the way to the Pacific.

The GI's were notorious for looking for a game, and there were other - ah - "activities" that made Vegas a GI's paradise. Traditional businesses were also booming so local entrepreneurs, Robert Griffith and James Cashman, asked Los Angeles hotelier Tom Hull to scout out locations for new hotels.

The story is that Tom had a flat tire outside the city limits. While waiting for help to arrive, he noticed the diversity of the out of state license plates as the cars sped by. Tom realized a hotel at that point would catch the LA to Vegas traffic. And being outside the city meant the hotel would avoid city taxes.

So Tom built the first hotel on the famous Las Vegas Strip, El Rancho Vegas. It opened its doors in 1941 and stuck with the western motif that had become de rigueur of Nevada casinos.

But El Rancho was a luxury hotel. It had - and may we die the deaths of dogs if we lie - a whopping 63 rooms! Most rooms were actually bungalows for enhanced privacy.

And the casino? Believe it or not, at El Rancho there were four gaming tables! Two for blackjack, one roulette wheel, and a craps table. The casino remained at this scale for twenty years when the casino and hotel burned down.

Photographs of El Rancho look like a nice motel. But if not opening the floodgates, El Rancho started the trickle. The next year another hotel and casino opened on the Strip. This was the Last Frontier, and it also proved successful. As the name implied, it also had a Western and Cowboy decor.

By 1944 to free his time for other ventures, Tom had leased El Rancho to a Los Angeles businessman named William Wilkerson. Billy - as he was called - was the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, a magazine about (what else?) Hollywood and its celebrities. But he also invested his time and money into hotels and restaurants.

Billy soon got the idea for something different for Las Vegas. This would be another luxury hotel, but it would be more cosmopolitan. No more cowboy and Western themes. Instead he hoped to bring in not only the locals looking for something different but also the high rollers from Los Angeles. Like El Rancho and the Frontier, Billy would build the hotel, already dubbed the Flamingo, on the Strip.

Unfortunately, Billy ran into problems. Post-war costs were higher than he expected and the money began to run short. So Billy decided to see if his hobby - gambling - might supplement his business assets. Soon he was losing $50,000 a day.

Naturally banks didn't look too favorably on a business plan where deficits were recovered at your local casino. So by 1945, Billy found himself in the same predicament of Francisco "Pistols" Scaramanga in Ian Fleming's last James Bond novel, The Man With the Golden Gun. He was the owner of a half-built hotel and no money to move forward.

Then (sigh) as the story goes, Billy was standing at the construction site. He was wondering how to get the extra dough when up stepped two men from Los Angeles.

The men had been part-owners of the downtown hotel and casino, El Cortez. One of the fellows was Morris Sedway, called "Moe" even on his gravestone. The other, of course, was Benjamin Siegel. Moe and Benjamin shook hands with Billy and introduced themselves as his new partners.

Although we can't specifically deny the story - certainly Benjamin and Moe could have dropped by the site and introduced themselves - this doesn't appear to be exactly how Billy learned he had new partners. Instead, Harry Rothberg, who owned the American Distilling Company, had been looking for ways to invest his profits which had been quite substantial in the last few years. Harry agreed to put up $1,000,000 for Billy to finish the project if Harry and his backers could have ⅔ controlling interest. Billy and Harry agreed and construction resumed in early 1946. It was only later that Billy learned one of the partners was Benjamin Siegel.

Normally there would have been no problem. But for some reason, Benjamin wanted to supervise the actual construction. That was a problem.

Why would Benjamin want to take over something for which he didn't know Jack Robinson? Well, we see here that Benjamin, like most mobsters, had a rather strange compulsion to appear to the world - and to himself - as honest and respectable. Not just in business but also in his private life.

In 1929 Benjamin had married Esta Krakower (also called Esther) whom he had known since they were kids. They had two daughters and when he moved West for good, Benjamin bought a nice house in Beverly Hills. And we mean nice. There he gave the appearance of being the perfect family man. We even have home movies of Benjamin swimming with the girls. Benjamin, by the way, looks in tip-top shape and to protect his stylish hair, he made sure to wear a bathing cap.

But as far as his business, Benjamin kept that to himself. Again this was typical of many mobsters. Family was family, business was business, and never the twain should meet. But it wasn't always easy.

The parents tried to shield the girls from the news stories about their dad. More of a problem, though, was their classmates. Once Edward G. Robinson, Jr. (yes, the son of Edward G. Robinson, the famous actor of gangster films) razzed one of the girls that her dad was not away on an extended business trip as she had thought. He was in jail and about to go on trial - for murder.

We must point out that historians and district attorneys have different rules to live by. Historians can sift through evidence and decide what they think happened and write it up. So historians are sure that Benjamin was guilty of multiple and serious crimes including murder.

District attorneys, on the other hand, have to have evidence that something is true beyond a reasonable doubt. And it was a difficult task to prove that Benjamin was guilty of the murder of Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg.

Harry, it seems, had been turning state's evidence on a number of mob activities. There was only one thing to do, Benjamin thought, and Harry was gunned down in Los Angeles.

And yes, the stories are contradictory. Some historians think Benjamin personally was one of the triggermen. Others say he wasn't and that the actual dirty work was undertaken by Albert "Allie" Tannenbaum and Whitey Krakower. To play it safe, the district attorney indicted all three men.

The evidence against Benjamin, though, was weak. About the only thing the prosecutors offered was that when they went to Beverly Hills to arrest Benjamin, he had hidden in his attic. The case was dismissed.

Immediately there was a hue and cry that the prosecutors were soft on gangsters. So they had Benjamin and Albert re-indicted. Albert then agreed to turn state's evidence, not only on this case, but a number of other crimes as well.

Although people sometimes go into spittle flinging diatribes about how crooks get off on "technicalities", in a democracy you do have to go by those pesky little things called rules of law. In California no one could be convicted on the testimony of an accomplice without additional corroborating evidence. A confession of a crook was not corroboration.

You'll hear or read in some places that the prosecutors in New York refused to let Albert out of the state, and so the case had to be dismissed. Actually Albert took the stand in Los Angeles where he faced Benjamin's attorney, famed criminal lawyer, Jerry Giesler.

Jerry produced another problem for the prosecutors. He was not a - quote - "mob lawyer" - unquote - and he couldn't be trashed as such. Instead, Jerry was one of the most respected members of the bar and had represented a number of famous people when they had gotten into difficulty. These included Charlie Chaplin, Robert Mitchum, and Errol Flynn. One of his last cases was when the mother of George Reeves hired him to investigate whether her son, who had been the star of the Adventures of Superman television series, had been murdered. Eventually Jerry decided that George's death had, in fact, been a suicide.

Jerry was also a celebrity in his own right and during his lifetime had a fame equivalent to Clarence Darrow. So with Jerry defending Benjamin, the prosecutors were not only up against a formidable opponent, but also one who felt he could win.

Jerry had fun with Albert. He questioned him politely, avoiding any discussion of criminal activities. Then at one point he slipped in a simple question.

"Do you shoot with your right or left hand?" Jerry asked.

"I can shoot with either hand," Albert said proudly.

The case was dismissed.

[Note: If the prosecutor had objected to the question, it would probably have been sustained as Jerry's question assumed facts that had not been established. That is, the question fell under the "Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife" genre.]

Whitey, by the way, wasn't around to testify in anyone's behalf. He had been gunned down before the trial. You'll also hear that Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, another hitman turned government witness, was going to testify against Benjamin. However, the prosecutors did keep him in New York. But that didn't matter since Abe ended up going out a ten story window.

So in the end the only serious crime for which Benjamin was brought to trial ended without even going to the jury. And although the law and order crowd may disagree - except those who ironically also admire gangsters and crooks - we have to say that based on the evidence presented and the law, this was the correct decision.

At that point Benjamin was free to continue his activities and he - as the FBI noted - was increasingly focused on legitimate businesses. And his real focus was on luxury gambling in Las Vegas.

That doesn't mean Benjamin was all hale-fellow-well-met. He wanted Billy's interest in the Flamingo and told Billy to hand over his shares. If he did, Benjamin might let Billy live.

Instead of handing over his shares, Billy escaped to Europe. Eventually he got a friend to handle the transaction who - amazingly - got Benjamin to pay Billy $600,000 for his interest. But Benjamin did so with poor grace and told Billy's partner that if Billy was there he'd have blown his head off.

So Benjamin took charge of construction of the Flamingo. With no experience in running a real business, much less constructing a hotel, he adopted the executive model believing that since 1) managers manage people, not the business, therefore 2) the manager doesn't need to know the business. Sadly, this model may work if you distribute toilet paper from a regional warehouse run by your brother-in-law, but it's not so great when you're trying to handle a major construction project costing millions of dollars. Alas, Benjamin found his error too late.

Under Benjamin's management the costs ballooned from $1,000,000 to $6,000,000 in less than a year. Yes, costs of materials were high, but remember that Benjamin had no idea of what he was doing. He was a rotten planner for one thing. He would change his mind repeatedly and so what had been built had to be torn down and built again. He even had to redesign his own personal suite because a roof beam was so low he couldn't get from one end of the room to the other without stooping over. He also had the kitchen redesigned because he once bent over and burned his rear end.

Another popular story is that Benjamin himself was taken to the cleaners. He would buy palm trees by day, and the sellers would sneak them off the property by night. Then they'd return and sell them back the next day. This is a nice story for people who like to see Benjamin as a bumbling fathead. But we do question that Benjamin wouldn't notice trees that he had bought on one day kept disappearing.

One thing is certain. A good chunk of the money came from Benjamin's old friends. Although Lucky Luciano remained in prison until 1945 (and was then promptly deported to Italy), Meyer Lansky made sure they gave Benjamin the money he needed. But they were not pleased when the costs kept shooting up. At that time $6,000,000 was a massive amount to spend for a low rise hotel even if it had a casino and theater. So naturally Lucky and Meyer were wondering where the money went.

The official Flamingo opening was on December 26, 1946. It was well publicized with Jimmy Durante and Rose Marie headlining the entertainment (yes, the Rose Marie of the Dick Van Dyke Show and Hollywood Squares).

Almost everyone agrees the opening was a fiasco. Not only is the day after Christmas a rotten time for a gala opening, but heavy rains had grounded most of the planes from Las Angeles. Also none of the rooms were ready and many of the guests stayed at El Rancho down the road. Although there was a decent crowd the first couple of nights and the critics (and Benjamin) loved the show, later Rose Marie said they ended up playing to audiences of nine people.

Worse, even the casino lost money. The number $300,000 is bandied about. Benjamin just told his backers that this was just the luck of the draw. Gambling games even with a favorable house percentage could go through losing streaks. But Benjamin's backers began to suspect Benjamin was skimming money from the top with Virginia taking the dough to Switzerland and its mysterious bank accounts.

There were a number of meetings between Benjamin and his backers including one (supposedly) in Havana because as a condition of Lucky's parole he was banned from entering the US. Benjamin again argued that you had to have time for a casino to make money. Reportedly Meyer agreed to give Benjamin more time, but we hear that Lucky and Benjamin exchanged sharp words. And of course some people doubt the meetings happened at all.

Soon the Flamingo began to turn a profit. But Virginia said Benjamin was still a nervous wreck. She was only able to provide him temporary comfort.

Everyone knows that Benjamin rubbed elbows with the Hollywood crowd and that one of his friends was actor George Raft. George, like Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, gained his fame portraying gangsters, and some think that George modeled his coin-flipping fancy dressing characters after Benjamin's flashy clothes and mannerisms. This, though, isn't likely since the Hollywood character of the high-living gangster was already ingrained into the national mentality when Benjamin was still breaking heads in Brooklyn. Instead people who knew them said it was the gangsters who were trying to ape the movie stars.

Although many people may not remember George Raft, there were a lot of other stars who at one time or another were friendly with Benjamin. Cary Grant would sometimes stop at the home, and Lauren Bacall remarked how she and her husband, Humphrey Bogart, always found Benjamin quiet and polite. Pianist Liberace was also a friendly acquaintance and at least on one occasion Benjamin invited him to dinner.

It wasn't George, though, that introduced Benjamin to the Hollywood set. That was Dorothy Di Frasso, née Taylor, an American who had married an Italian count. Dorothy was a rich girl whose dad had made millions, and so she had nothing to do but be a rich girl.

Benjamin met Dorothy in a most improbable - but evidently true - way. In 1938, Dorothy and Marino Bello, the step father of Hollywood star Jean Harlow, had chartered an old Hollywood movie ship, the Metha Nelson, to take a cruse so they could - get this - look for pirate treasure. The records list one of the crew members as none other than Benjamin Siegel. Certainly Benjamin wasn't serving drinks and we can safely assume he was putting up some of the cash.

What happened is a bit fuzzy. They found no gold although they went down to Mexico and tried blasting some hillsides. The boat - which was old and not the best of shape - ended up breaking down and had to be towed to land. Then at some point two cruise members were charged with mutiny.

The mutiny charges were referred to a grand jury and here we get the first connection with Dorothy and Benjamin. In reporting the testimony the newspapers said that either the Countess was - quote - "interested in Benjamin" - unquote - or she was afraid he would kidnap her. The former is most likely since they soon became quite friendly.

And we mean quite friendly. Benjamin even visited Dorothy at her home outside Rome. They were (yes, as the story goes) trying to sell Italy's then-leader Benito Mussolini a new explosive called "atomite". We don't know what the explosive was but it was supposed to pack quite a bang.

Everything went well until Dorothy and Benjamin staged a demonstration for Il Duce himself. The amazing explosive was a dud and gave off a few puffs of smoke. Il Duce - who reportedly advanced Dorothy $40,000 to finance the demo - was not pleased.

It was from this trip that we have the famous story that when Benjamin got to the Di Frasso estate he was surprised to see that two of the visitors were none other than Hitler's henchman, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels and Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering. Benjamin, who was Jewish, said he would kill them both. But Dorothy said they were visiting Mussolini and if the two of the top three Nazi's got bumped off in her home, the Count would be in trouble. This story is usually told as one not to be doubted, and one historian who has looked into the matter believes it might indeed be true. Others, though, question if Josef was even in Rome at the time.

So with trips around the country and abroad and the hiatus in the Los Angeles jail, we can see that Benjamin wasn't home very often. So after fifteen years, Esta was feeling increasingly burdened with raising two teenage daughters by herself - not to mention reading about Benjamin hobnobbing with Hollywood starlets and rich Italian countesses. In 1946 Esta and Benjamin split for good.

Aside: The sharp-eyed reader will note that Esta and Whitey Krakower, the man who Benjamin (allegedly) rubbed out, shared a common surname. In fact the almost universally told story is that Whitey was the brother of Esta. So did Benjamin actually knocked off his own brother-in-law? After all, this is something crooks do if you saw Al Pacino in the movie Godfather II.

The family connection of Whitey and Esta is told not only on the Internet but also in a lot of books. However, a member of the extended family of Whitey became dubious about the connection. So he checked with Whitey's sister, who at the time was still alive. She said, yes, she remembered Esta, and she had been a neighbor. But although they shared a common surname, she said they were not related.

Esta got custody of the kids and moved back to New York. She also got what was for the time hefty alimony of $600 a month. But that was a pittance compared to what Benjamin spent on Virginia Hill.

Virginia had been born in Alabama in 1916 and went to Chicago as a young woman. Starting as a waitress, she attracted the eyes of underworld heavies, particularly the Chicago mobster Joe Epstein. Virginia quickly went beyond being the usual gangster's girlfriend to taking an active role in the business. In particular, she served as a conduit for moving money around and passing messages back and forth between the mobs in different parts of the country. She continued to work for Joe even after they quit being a pair.

Virginia lived very well by generous donations of her male acquaintances. Why men would turn over such large sums to her was obvious and even Virginia testified truthfully to the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce headed by Senator Estes Kefauver. In a private session, New Hampshire Senator Charles Tobey asked Virginia why so many men paid her the money they had. Virginia said she'd prefer not to be specific. But Senator Tobey continued on, asking Virginia to be frank with the Committee. The exact words Virginia used in her famous reply vary slightly depending on the report, but the gist is she was an admirable companion who ministered to her friends' comfort.

Virginia's sources of income were indeed formidable. Even Benjamin - who supplied a good part of it - was perplexed. He once asked where she was getting all her dough and was miffed when she gave him an evasive answer.

Benjamin and Virginia's relationship was tempestuous, loud, and violent. Disagreements could escalate quickly to public shouting matches with both of them pounding the other with severity. Virginia's usual tact following a blowout was to take an overdose of sleeping pills, be rushed to the hospital, and then be revived to find a remorseful Benjamin wanting to make amends. Over the course of her life there were more than a dozen of these suicide attempts, only one of which was successful.

Virginia had continued to live well even after Ben was no more. In late 1949 (eins mehr as the story goes), she was staying at Sun Valley where her ski instructor, Hans Hauser, noted she received mysterious and anonymous parcels. Then one morning when the weather was too poor to hit the slopes, Virginia called the desk asking about the lessons.

"But Miss Hill," the clerk said. "It's snowing and the instructor says a lesson today is out of the question.

"Then send the SOB up here," she said, "and I'll teach him a thing or two."

Soon it was evident that Hans was completely smitten. One of his friends sat down with him and begged him to break off the relationship. Virginia's mysterious money showed that she was still connected to the mob and that's the last thing Hans - who was not a US citizen - wanted to do was get involved even tangentially with organized crime. Hans listened and agreed. The next morning his friend woke up to learn Hans and Virginia had gotten married.

It was a few years later in 1954 that Virginia was called to the Kefauver Committee investigating organized crime. Some of her more sanitized testimony was televised. She denied that the men who gave her money, jewelry, clothes, and houses were gangsters. She then left the country one step ahead of an income tax indictment and Hans, who was from Austria, left the country one step ahead of deportation.

On March 24, 1966, Virginia, filled with sleeping pills, was found in a snow drift in Salzburg, Austria. The ruling was suicide but there are some who think it was the mob making sure she kept her silence. Probably not. Her husband, Hans, lived until 1974 when he hanged himself, and their son Peter - a decorated US Vietnam veteran - was killed in a car crash in France in 1994. All three are buried together in Austria.

By then Benjamin was long gone. He met his own demise on June 20, 1947 in the house that Virginia had been renting from Rudolph Valentino's former manager.

We have to state that some accounts tend to give more details than can really be justified. Cinematic depictions are particularly creative.

Let's get it right. Benjamin was not watching his screen test as in the movie with Warren Beatty. Nor was he hit with individual shots fired leisurely and deliberately as he stood still all the better to serve as a convenient target.

Then in a popular television show, Benjamin is filmed in slow motion as he is hit with about 20-odd bullets, but fired from the front. His killer, a completely fictitious character named Joe, who Benjamin had previously beaten up, stands about 100 feet away on a nice convenient pathway and with a perfect view of anyone in the room. After the carnage the killer stares back and delivers his line before walking calmly away.

Actually nine shots were fired and the police determined the weapon had been steadied on a trellis only a few feet from the window. The total distance from barrel to Benjamin was about 14 feet. The killer also made a tire-squealing escape and so likely had a getaway driver.

But what will surprise most people is that despite the film and television depictions and statements on the Fount of All Knowledge, Benjamin was shot neither from the back - as in the movie - nor - as in the television show - from the front. Instead the coroner's report and morgue photographs make it clear he was hit from the right side, and the window was a side window to the right of the couch. Within a few days of the killing, an artist's reconstruction was published showing the gunman taking aim at Benjamin's profile.

One bullet hit Benjamin at the corner of his right eye. The trajectory sent the bullet under the bridge of the nose and into the left eye producing what forensic pathologists call an explosive exit wound. Another bullet hit his right cheek and exited out the left side of his neck.

And the killer did not take his time. In the accounts of those present - and also from some neighborhood residents within earshot - the bullets were fired so rapidly that people weren't even sure they were gunshots. Allen Smiley, who was sitting on the couch next to Benjamin, said at first he thought it was someone shooting firecrackers as a gag.

In fact the rate of fire was so rapid that early reports were that Benjamin was hit with a .45 calibre machine gun. However, the recovered cartridges proved the weapon was a .30 calibre military carbine. Today you'll find stories that the gun was an M-1 carbine which is a semi-automatic. But the actual police reports mention no specific weapon other than the 0.30 carbine. At the time there was the new M-2 and this could be set for automatic fire. So maybe that's the gun that killed Benjamin.

OK. So we known how. The question is who?

Although there is not yet a History Channel documentary that Benjamin was killed by aliens, we are still peppered with stories that NOW THE TRUTH IS KNOWN about WHO REALLY KILLED BUGSY SIEGEL. Actually there are a number of plausible theories that involve two questions. 1) Who ordered Benjamin to be killed and 2) who was the actual hands-on gentleman.

Within a few weeks of the murder, the Police Chief of Beverly Hills, Clinton Anderson, told the press he knew who killed Benjamin. He kept repeating the story and when reporters asked who it was, Chief Anderson just smiled and said to be patient, hinting he had information from someone involved in the crime. So before proceeding they needed additional corroboration.

Actually Chief Anderson had no real idea who had shot Benjamin. When he continued to bob and weave with cryptic hints, a grand jury called on him to tell them what he knew. After listening to his testimony, the grand jury decided 99% what he said was useless. We also know the other 1%, whatever it was, was also useless as it never led anywhere.

After many years, we finally learned what Chief Anderson was thinking. He felt Moe Sedway, one of Benjamin's partners, was involved.

So why did Chief Anderson think Moe was the man? Well, for one thing, Moe and Benjamin had had a falling out where Benjamin more or less banished Moe from the Flamingo. Although Moe still remained a shareholder, he was certainly miffed particularly since there was no reason for Benjamin to act like he did.

Then right after Benjamin was killed, Chief Anderson told Moe he wanted to talk to him. Conveniently Moe developed a heart condition that immediately landed him in the hospital. After visiting Moe's bedside, Chief Anderson said he'd be back the next day. But when he returned he found Moe had miraculously recovered. He had left the hospital and had gone to Las Vegas where - according to Chief Clinton - he died "a short time later" Yes, about five years later. So if Chief Anderson wanted to, he could have questioned Moe.

But to be fair, we need to say that Chief Anderson wasn't the only one who was suspicious of Moe. How else could Moe have walked into the Flamingo only five minutes after Benjamin was killed and announced he was taking over?

Well, maybe it was ten minutes. Or was it fifteen? Well, some people say it was twenty minutes or even thirty. And we also read it was an hour. The stories not only can't agree how long it took for the men to show up, but they don't even agree on who or how many men there were. Some say two, others three. Some accounts don't mention Moe at all.

The disparate tellings and timings of Moe (or whoever) - quote - "taking over" - unquote - leaves us with a valid question. Is the story even true?

Well, of course, you would expect someone to show up at the Flamingo, if for no other reason than to inform everyone what happened. And it wouldn't have taken very long. It was 10:45 when Benjamin was killed, and there were other people in the house. Not only only was there Allen, but also Chick Hill, Virginia's brother, and Chick's girlfriend and soon to be wife and ex-wife, Jerri Mason. We also know Allen called a friend before he called the cops (which he did a couple of minutes before 11:00). So the word would easily get to Benjamin's (ex-)partners as fast as you could make a couple of phone calls. As far as saying they were in charge, maybe they did. But it certainly wasn't necessary. After all, they were in charge.

Still, that doesn't rule out that Benjamin's Las Vegas partners had gotten fed up with Benjamin's bumbling. He had made a hash out of what should have been a simple hotel construction and he showed no indication he was changing his ways. Knowing Benjamin would not agree to stepping aside and just remaining as a shareholder, they may have decided to take the only effective action they knew.

If you believe the movie with Warren Beatty, Virginia was shocked! shocked! when two men walked into the Flamingo and told her that they were taking over and Benjamin was dead. But once more we are seeing the limits of Hollywood verisimilitude.

Virginia was not at the casino. In fact, she was not even in the country. Some time before, she had flown to Paris.

Other students of Benjamin and his life think it was the big money backers - the mob bosses like Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky who insisted Benjamin be removed. It was less the cost overruns than the belief that Benjamin was just stealing the money. But Meyer maintained he never agreed to any such thing, and Lucky once sarcastically told reporters, yeah, sure, blame me if you want and on that and anything else. Frank, in his usual non-communicative way, never mentioned the matter.

Was Benjamin skimming? After all, this was a well established practice for the mobsters. But skimming from a casino's nightly take was OK as long as everyone got a share. Skimming money supplied by your friends to build a hotel was something else.

The money was certainly disappearing somewhere. Benjamin couldn't even pay his bills. A check drawn to pay contractor, Del Webb, - for $50,000 - bounced. Now that was a good chunk of money in 1947, but it should have been covered if you had been handed $6,000,000. But don't worry about Del. In addition to being a major construction magnate he was co-owner of the New York Yankees,

It was also Del who was the source of the famous Benjamin quote, "We only kill each other". True, this is pithy enough to seem like another fabricated saying, but in later years we have newspaper accounts where Del told the story himself. He said that Benjamin had told him once how he had killed twelve people. Del looked nervous and Benjamin added, "Don't worry, Del. There's no chance you'll get killed. We only kill each other."

Chief Anderson also felt Allen Smiley knew something, and he isn't the only one. Some authors even believe it was Allen who set the whole thing up. He arranged to have Benjamin sit on the couch and made sure the curtains were open. Then the killer had a clear shot.

However, you would think that planning a hit where you were in the same room with .30 calibre bullets spraying around would preclude such participation. Allen was even sitting on the couch with Benjamin and almost in the direct line of fire. One of the bullets even ripped the sleeve of his jacket.

Of course, the oldest trick in the world is for the criminals to look like they were almost a victim and only survived by good luck. The story of who sat where and the bullet tearing his sleeve came from Allen himself. Officially, Allen - like everyone else - knew nothing.

Another account - also sometimes presented as not to be doubted - is that Jack Dragna was behind the crime. Here at least the motive is clear. Jack wanted his wire services back. So he had one of his hitmen - a cat loving murderer named Eddie Cannizzaro - do the deed.

Naturally, others don't buy it. Jack was not known for being particularly astute or effective. That he could have pulled off such a complicated and well-performed crime is unthinkable. But then sometimes even bumblers can be lucky, and maybe, just maybe, Jack was smarter than a lot of people thought.

As for who pulled the trigger, in a newspaper story published in 1974, Eddie denied he was the killer. But this was also the year when he showed up at a crime writer's home and asked if he wanted to write a book how he, Eddie, had been the hitman. Eddie shelved the book plan on being told there was no statute of limitations on murder.

Another theory is Virginia Hill was the primary mover although of course, not the actually triggerperson. After all, Benjamin had given her a royal beating shortly before and she may have just had enough. One acquaintance of Benjamin remembers he was at dinner with him and someone delivered a note which upon Benjamin seemed decidedly nervous afterwards. Benjamin's friend later learned it was a note from the Chicago boys telling Benjamin to be nice to Virginia.

An alternate variation of the same theme is that Virginia's brother Chick had decided to pay Benjamin back for the treatment of his sister. Chick also made sure that he and Jerri were upstairs getting ready to go to Florida when the bullets started flying. But Chick, though, seems never to have been really part of the mob and not many people consider him a real suspect. Another theory is that Benjamin's former foe but later his body guard, Mickey Cohen, was responsible.

The trouble was there were a lot of people who in their old age - "dotage" might be a better term - confessed to the crime. Even now you read news stories that the hitman has finally been identified. But people were confessing to the crime almost as soon as Benjamin was hauled out of Virginia's living room.

It's not well known, but one thing cops have to do particularly when investigating high-profile murders is to weed out the bogus confessions. The police had to put up with multiple calls from people confessing they had killed Benjamin or were accomplices. One phone call was from someone they could barely understand. It later turned out this was the same guy who called up regularly and claimed he had information on all sorts of unsolved crimes including the infamous Black Dahlia murder.

As an example of what the police had to put up with is that shortly after the investigation began, Chief Anderson got a call from the police chief of Waurika, Oklahoma. A crazy nutball ex-convict named Virgil Manning had gone to the sheriff of the county, William Allen, and said 1) he was involved in the killing, 2) he was afraid the killers of Benjamin would kill him, 3) he was paid to watch the house where Benjamin was killed, 4) he stood by the killer when he shot Benjamin, 5), he was the killer who shot Benjamin with a carbine, 6) he was the killer who shot Benjamin with a revolver, 7) he drove the getaway car, or 8) all of the above. Although the investigators quickly dismissed Virgil as a suspect, these and other calls had to be checked and filed.

Finally we hear variant tellings that the murder was the result of a love triangle between Benjamin and two other people. This was considered as a possibility from the beginning and shortly before she died, Bee Sedway, Moe's widow, said that her boyfriend - no, not Moe - had bumped off Benjamin. But there were other variations on the triangle theory and one involved Virginia Hill, Benjamin, and other of Virginia's boyfriends.

Why would so many people claim to be behind the crime? Well, that's an easy answer. Money. Despite the picture of the mob "family" taking care of its older members and their families, the truth is once a mobster outlives his usefulness, the mob pretty much drops him. Those who plan for their retirement do so carefully, putting their money in various hidden bank accounts (Switzerland is still a great place). However, if they're suddenly out of the picture, their families may find themselves in straightened circumstances. Writing a book about what it's like to live with a real live mobster is a pathway that some people try to achieve financial success. But this doesn't always work.

Mobsters sometimes find their later years far from the Life of Riley. The increasingly forgotten mobster Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno - who had been put on the witness protection program (and then removed) - claimed when Bugsy was killed, he, Jimmy, had driven the car and that Frankie Carbo, another member of the West Coast mob, had pulled the trigger. Jimmy, though, was strapped for cash and rather bitter about the injustices of the world. When he authored - with a ghost writer - two books about his days with the mob, they sold so poorly that he got no money. Still, Jimmy's involvement is possible since both he and Frankie had been part of Jack Dragna's outfit.

Today, a number of historians consider the crime to be as mysterious as ever and doubt it will really be solved. In fact, the real answer can be, like a doctor's prescription, a combination of ingredients. For instance, Benjamin's backers may have been wondering how to handle him when they learned that someone else was wanting to bump Benjamin off - like Jack Dragna wanting his wire services back. They may have passed the word for Jack to go ahead.

In the 1960's the Federal government - fortified with new laws directly targeting organized crime - began to break the mob up and splinter the national networks. One of the business areas where the mob maintained control was in nightclubs where it wasn't until the 1980's that the corporations began to buy them out. Feelings are mixed as to who was harder to work for. Rose Marie said at least the mobsters were generally nice to the performers and would at least buy you a few drinks. But it wasn't all congenial camaraderie. Both Richard Pryor and former Tonight Show host Jay Leno told how in their early years as stand-up comedians they had to deal nightclub managers that were true psychopaths.

And Jay may have even met one of Benjamin's killers. He was once being driven to a club by some of the managers who were clearly "the boys". Jay jokingly whispered to his wife that if he went into New York he'd need a gun.

One of the men sitting in the front, overhearing the quip, handed Jay a revolver. Here, he said, take this. When you're done, just throw it in the trash. There's no serial number or other ID.

Jay tried to refuse but acquiesced when the man - none other than Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno - insisted.

After the funeral, Benjamin's brother, physician Maurice Siegel, was granted control of the estate. The total was listed as $18,940. After taking out the $16,425 that Benjamin owned on income tax, the family was left with $2,515. There must have been some additional funds, however, because the two daughters, Barbara and Millicent would be paid $250 a month for one year.

And finally, we have to touch on Benjamin's famous - and hated - nickname. The newspapers referred to him as "Bugsy" and this infuriated him. And mob boss Frank Costello even commented on the story where someone walked up to Benjamin and said "Hi, Bugsy" and the unfortunate found himself on the floor with blood streaming from his nose and being kicked in the ribs.

"The name is Ben," Benjamin said, "B-E-N."

Frank didn't approve of such behavior.

"He shouldn't have kicked him," he said.

References

Surprisingly there are not a lot of biographies of Benjamin. Although the basics of his life are known, it's still difficult to verify any specific event.

We Only Kill Each Other: The Life and Bad Times of Bugsy Siegel, Dean Jennings, Prentice Hall, 1967. This was probably the first real biography of Bugsy and written at a time when a lot of Bugsy's friends (and enemies) were still alive and (some) willing to talk. The sources included George Raft, Allen Smiley, Chick Hill, Mickey Cohen, and others. The book was quite popular when published and the author and illustrator of CooperToons remembers reading excerpts of the book were in True Magazine in the 1960's.

As was typical for the time and genre, this book has a lot of "reconstructed" dialog and you also wonder how candid the sources really were. This was a time when the mob was still quite active and people who blabbed too much could find themselves - as the Sheriff of Boone County said - in a heap of trouble.

Although we don't doubt that Dean is writing what he was told, there are some things that conflict with later research. We get the story of Ben driving Moe Sedway to the empty spot in the desert and telling Moe he's going to build the hotel. Also we read the Virginia got her nickname "Flamingo" from people who saw her on a visit to Mexico. Since we know Billy Wilkerson had started building the Flamingo under that name, neither of these stories can be accepted. And we naturally wonder how many tales have similar problems with accuracy.

That said, this book is a good starting place to learn about Ben and it gives an intelligible chronology of the events in Ben's life and clearly Dean makes an honest effort to sort the wheat from the chaff. He doubts that Ben actually went down to Cuba to meet Lucky Luciano since people who were with Ben and other documentation cast doubt Ben had the time to travel to and stay in Cuba even briefly.

The book is readily available and you can find used copies on line. Truth to tell, the author and illustrator of CooperToons found them a bit pricey and what seems strange is that a lot of the copies are found in bookstores out of the United States. By "pricey" we mean just a bit more than you'd expect but not something most people can't easily afford. So you might pay $1 for a paperback edition but spend $6 to have it shipped from England.

Sotto voce: Psst. You can read an electronic copy on the Open Library if it isn't checked out. You have to register but it's free.

Benjamin Bugsy Siegel: The Gangster, the Flamingo, and the Making of Modern Las Vegas, Larry Gragg, Praeger, 2015. An honest CooperToons opinion is the book, although an academic look at Benjamin's life, is overpriced (even the electronic version is running at nearly $40).

Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life, Robert Lacey, Little Brown, 1991. Recently re-issued electronically as Meyer Lansky: The Thinking Man's Gangster at a price all of us can afford. Knowledge should be - if not free - then at least cheap.

The Odds Against Me, John Scarne, Simon and Schuster, 1966. John tells about his meeting with Benjamin, details of which differ somewhat from a latter telling in Scarne's Complete Guide to Gambling.

"The Anti-Nazi Gangster", Larry Gragg, History Today, Vol. 65, No. 6, p. 49-54, July 1, 2015.

Bugsy's Baby: The Secret Life of Mob Queen Virginia Hill, Andy Edmonds, Birch Lane Press, 1993.

"Gangland Figure Turns to Protection of Animals.", The Milwaukee Journal Greensheet, June 29, 1974. Interview with Eddie Cannizzaro where, if not explicitly denying he was the triggerman, essentially does so.

"Bugsy Siegel", Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1997.

The Weekend Gambler's Handbook,, Major Riddle, Random House, New York, 1963. Although this is an interesting and amusing book, you must approach Major's advice with caution. For instance, he has a betting strategy which says you should bet more heavily when winning and lower your bets when losing. Such a strategy is not only vague, but is is based on the concept of the maturity of chances - that is the "gambler's fallacy" - which assumes there is no independence in individual play.

Major, by the way, is said by some authors to have been one of Virginia's boyfriends.

"Major Riddle, Casino Tycoon, Dies at 73", Chicago Tribune, Section 4, Page 12, July 10, 1980.

"Hotel El Rancho Vegas: The Strip's First Resort", Center for Gaming Research, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A number of links on this site are not active, including - an ironical comment of our times - the one for Responsible Gambling.

"El Rancho Vegas, Online Nevada Encyclopedia.

Bugsy Siegel, FBI Vault. A massive file which would be much reduced if you could just cut out the blacked out parts of the memos. You'll get a memo saying something like

[Two lines blacked out]

while furnishing a complaint to the office relative to an impersonation case, volunteered the following

[Twenty-eight lines blacked out]

Since it appears that this shooting could possibly refer to the murder of BENJAMIN "BUGSY" SIEGEL or some other unsolved murder in Beverly Hills and since the possibility exists that at some future date might state that he had furnished this information to the officer

[Four lines blacked out]

Copies of this letter are being furnished to the New Orleans and San Diego Offices for their information, Very Truly yours, R. B. HOOD, SAG

The pdf files are not exactly in chronological order. Still there are a number of files with contemporary newspaper accounts of the investigations, although the FBI itself was officially staying out of the murder case which was a state, not federal, crime.

You have to be careful and realize that in the reports the agents are reporting information gathered at the time and are not necessarily passing judgement on the veracity itself. In the earliest memos we read that Benjamin was shot but a .45 calibre machine gun (it was a .30 carbine), and that Virginia Hill was in the house at the time (she was in Paris).

There is also a wiretap of Benjamin speaking with Jack Dragna which doesn't tell us much except Jack didn't talk a lot. At the end of the files are some handwritten notes of a bug in San Francisco's opulent St. Francis Hotel.

George Raft, Lewis Yablonsky, Mcgraw-Hill, 1974.

Good Evening, Everybody: From Cripple Creek to Samarkand, Lowell Thomas, William Morrow and Company, 1976.

So Long Until Tomorrow: From Quaker Hill to Kathmandu, Lowell Thomas, William Morrow and Company, 1977.

Lowell's two volume biography is well written, interesting, and entertaining. Lowell, an avid skier, mentions his friendship with Hans Hauser, Virginia's last husband, but evidently Lowell never met Virginia.

Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund, Arnie Bernstein, St. Martin's Press, 2013

"I Defend a Mobster", Jerry Giesler, Saturday Evening Post, December 26, 1959.

"How We Were Almost Related to Bugsy Siegel", Richie Brustman, The Brustman House, Spring 2008.

"California Police Go Outside Three Mile Limit to Fight 'Battle of Santa Monica' Against Four Gambling Ships, One of Which Refuses to Surrender", Life Magazine, August 14, 1939, pp. 18-19. This article briefly describes the raid on the gambling ship, Rex, an action which effectively ended California's off-shore gambling. The ships, we should point out, were flying the United States flag and so you could claim were bound by United States laws. Of course, the gambling laws were state or local and so you can also argue that if the ships were in international waters they were only subject to federal laws.

"Riveting Rose", Stephen Shearer, Miss Rose Marie.

"How Swiss Bank Accounts Work", Lee Ann Obringer, How Stuff Works.

"The Cowboy and the Countess", Milwaukee Sentinel, May 20, 1951.

"Sailors Freed in 'Ship's Mutiny'", Pittsburgh Press, January 19, 1939.

"Downtown Las Vegas History", In Old Last Vegas.

"Gambling in California", Roger Dunstan, California Research Bureau, California State Library, CRB-97-003, 1997

"Interview with Jay Leno", That New News, Joe Rogan.

"Oklahoma City Among World's Best Hideouts", Jim Standard, The Daily Oklahoman, September 26, 1993.

"Jewish Grandmas Busted In Florida For Illegal Mah Jongg Games", Ann Brenoff, Huffington Post, November 24, 2015. Actually, it turns out the game was not illegal. The ladies limited their daily losses to $4 and social games with $10 losses were permitted.

"Bingo Game at Catholic Church Raided by Cops", Ellensburg Daily Record, May 17, 1947

Google News Newspapers. A good source for contemporary news stories. Many of the stories even in smaller papers are from the press associations or were picked up from larger papers and so cover national events - like stories about Benjamin Siegel.

Rogues Gallery, Susan Walker and Rob Gorbeaux, 1997. This film has a lot of interviews with people who knew Benjamin but were not themselves involved in criminal activities. Two were the famous - even iconic - scriptwriters Edward Anhalt (who wrote the screenplay for the film version of Jean Anouilh's Becket which starred Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole) and Larry Gelbart (co-creator of Mash and scriptwriter of Tootsie). Larry was the son of Benjamin's barber who was comfortable and friendly enough with Benjamin to prevent Benjamin from pounding another customer who said "Hi, Bugsy."

Strangely, this film is not listed among the credits of any of the producers or those interviewed on the various websites.