Las Vegas myth busted: Mafia boss Bugsy Siegel is the father of the Las Vegas Strip
Do you think Las Vegas was founded by gangsters? Think again.
That moment in the 1991 movie Bugsy when Warren Beatty walks into the barren desert and sees a vision? False news. Gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel didn't create the Las Vegas Strip. He didn't even find the Flamingo Hotel, which he had a close relationship with.
In fact, it wasn't until 1945 that Siegel and his co-conspirator Moe Sedway moved to Las Vegas to take over the Mafia's newly acquired downtown El Cortez Casino. Cortez Casino) business. By this time, the Las Vegas Strip was already in full swing, and for several years the Western-themed hotels Last Frontier and El Rancho Vegas operated along what was then Highway 91.
Siegel, Sedway and their underworld boss Meyer Lansky met while operating with a Jewish-Italian street gang in New York City in the early 1920s. A decade later, Siegel and Lansky were leading a murderous smuggling ring called the Bugs and Meyer Mob, and Sedway traveled to Las Vegas on Lansky's behalf to acquire the group's Pan American horse racing telecommunications services franchise.
Bugsy isn't even Flamingo's father. The resort is the brainchild of Billy Wilkerson, founder and publisher of The Hollywood Reporter. All Siegel did was take over it in 1946—under threat of force, according to some reports—when Wilkerson's dream was dashed before construction could be completed. Wilkerson reportedly gambled away all his money.
Bugsy’s Impact on Vegas
Siegel was not the father of the Las Vegas Strip, but he was influential in its development and growth. His high-profile death put Vegas on the map.
On June 20, 1947, a hail of bullets flew through the living room window of Virginia Hill's rental house in Beverly Hills. (She was reportedly in Paris, buying wine for Flamingo.) Siegel, 42, sat on the couch next to her friend Allen Smiley. Siegel was hit twice in the face and twice in the chest. He died on the spot. Smiley just had a bullet hole in his suit jacket.
A photo of Siegel's mutilated body was plastered on the front page of the newspaper. For the first time, all eyes across the country are on Las Vegas.
"His death brought a huge amount of attention to the Flamingos and Las Vegas," said Jeff Burbank, content development specialist for the Las Vegas Mob Museum. "After being sealed, The Flamingo soon turned a profit of $4 million. Siegel's reputation as an arrogant and stubborn project manager, and his spending on excessive exuberance, likely influenced future Las Vegas casino tycoons... Even if, like Siegel, they had to borrow money from gangsters to get the hidden benefits and skim it for them."
Thug attack?
How and why Siegel met his horrific end is part of America's enduring fascination with him. Officially, this remains an open police case.
The prevailing theory is that Siegel's stubbornness, crazy spending habits and rumors of disloyalty severely angered his Mafia bosses. (Segal built the Flamingo for more than six times his $1 million budget, equivalent to $92 million today.)
According to this theory, complaints from Siegel's criminal patrons from the East prompted him to meet with them in late 1946. Siegel was smug and clearly treated her badly and insulted her.
What is known: Under pressure to generate revenue, Siegel opened the Flamingo Hotel early, the day after Christmas 1946, even before the guest rooms were completed. However, he was not very lucky. Heavy rain grounded the planes of some of his celebrity guests, and then the casino's first players won a large sum of money from the casino. He had until March 1947 to close the building so more work could be completed.
“He told his Mafia lieutenants to give the business a chance so the place could be profitable — and he did that for several months in 1947,” Burbank said. "But that's okay. Looks like his gang handlers have decided he needs to be killed and replaced. Siegel has caused too many problems and can no longer be trusted with their money. Rumor has it that Siegel is flying by. Although He owed so many people so much money, but he was fundamentally a fraud."
Or a jealous husband?
In 2014, another theory of Bugsy's death emerged when Los Angeles Magazine published an interview with Mo Sedway's dying son. Robbie Sedway claimed that the perpetrator was not the Mafia but a truck driver named Matthew "Moose" Panza. Muth was in the midst of an open affair with Sedway's wife, Bee, when she learned that Siegel had threatened her husband's life. Siegel, fed up with Sedway's increasing oversight of the Flamingo's financial affairs on Lansky's behalf, threatened to shoot Sedway, dismember him and throw him into the Flamingo's trash can.
According to his son, Sedway, who was an FBI informant at the time, decided to go on the offensive rather than wait to be assassinated. He blamed Panza for the attack. (Although Panza and Sedway competed for Bee's affection, the two were close friends.) The avid hunter and firearms enthusiast purchased a .30-caliber military-style semi-automatic M-1 carbine for the occasion.
"There are things that cast doubt on the plausibility of this theory," Burbank said. "Why would Smiley risk being shot? If the FBI knew this, why was there no such thing in the file on Sedway, other than the implication that he was an informant? This kind of action would probably require a senior criminal Approval of ringleaders, who may include exiled mob boss Charles Luciano and Los Angeles kingpin Jack Dragna.Why would they entrust such an important task to Sedway's wife's lover? "
This constant speculation is why Bugsy Siegel's contribution to Las Vegas history is greater than it should be. The world doesn't get enough of this character.
“Ben Siegel didn’t invent luxury resort casinos,” biographer Robert Lacey wrote in his book “Meyer Lansky: The Thinking Man’s Gang.” "He couldn't find the Strip. He didn't buy the land and he wasn't the first to conceive of the Flamingo project. But his death made them all famous."
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Source: www.casino.org
