Siegel, Bugsy (1906-1947) , was a notorious American gangster . His violent temper and volatile (unpredictable) nature earned him the nickname Bugsy, a name he hated. Bugsy was a slang term for someone who was not of sound mind. Siegel is well known for establishing Las Vegas , Nevada , as the gambling capital of the United States.
Benjamin Siegelbaum was born on Feb. 28, 1906, to poor Jewish immigrants in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn , in New York City . His family moved to the Lower East Side, one of the roughest sections of Manhattan. At a young age, Ben Siegel, as he called himself, established his criminal reputation by robbing pushcart peddlers.
As a youth, Siegel developed a close friendship with fellow hoodlum Meyer Lansky . The two battled their way to adulthood in a neighborhood known for crime and violence. They formed a street gang called the Bugs-Meyer Mob. The gang at first ran bootlegging and gambling operations, but soon moved on to a much more profitable stolen-car ring. Bootlegging involves the production, transportation, or sale of illegal alcoholic beverages .
Siegel and Lansky also established Murder, Inc., a band of killers that hired out its services to other criminal organizations. Before he was 30 years old, Siegel had gained a reputation as a ruthless hit man (hired killer). According to some estimates, he personally killed more than 30 men. Siegel was said to have been one of four hit men hired to kill the Sicilian gangster Giuseppe (Joe the Boss) Masseria, a powerful New York City crime boss, in 1931.
By the end of the 1920’s, Siegel and Lansky had joined with Charles (Lucky) Luciano and a number of other Italian and Jewish gangsters to form a national crime syndicate (criminal organization). The syndicate organized and controlled such criminal activities as drug smuggling, gambling, and prostitution on a large scale. It grew in power by killing off rival gangsters.
In the late 1930’s, Siegel moved his bootlegging and gambling operations to the West Coast. He bought a spacious house in Beverly Hills , California. Before long, he was associating with some of the most famous people in nearby Hollywood .
In 1945, Siegel moved to Las Vegas, then a small, little-known desert town in Nevada, where gambling had become legal in 1931. He built Las Vegas’s first legitimate gambling and hotel complex, the extravagant Flamingo Hotel and Casino. On June 20, 1947, Siegel was killed by bullets fired through a window into his girlfriend’s home in Beverly Hills.
