Bugsy Siegel (Feb. 28, 1906-June 20, 1947) was born in Brooklyn as Benjamin Siegel to Eastern European immigrants Max Siegel and his wife Jennie Riechenthal. As a boy, he joined a Lower East Side gang before developing a protection racket with Moe Sedway, threatening to burn pushcart owners’ merchandise unless they paid a dollar. Meyer Lansky, who felt Jews should organize their own mob like the Italians and Irish, recruited Siegel as a bootlegger and hitman whom he hired out to other crime families. Their gang, meanwhile grew with the recruitment of Abner “Longie” Zwillman, Jake Lansky, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, and Joseph “Doc” Stacher. As a boy, Siegel befriended Al Capone, even hiding him with an aunt from an arrest warrant for murder.
In 1929, Siegel and Lansky attended a conference in Atlantic City convened by Italian mobsters Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Johnny Torrio, after which Siegel stated, “The yids and the dagos will no longer fight each other.” Siegel reportedly was one of the Luciano-hired hitmen who helped murder New York mob bosses Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. Thereafter, Lansky and Luciano formed a National Crime Syndicate and a Commission distributing territories among Mafia families. Siegel formed Murder Incorporated which he later ceded to Buchalter and Albert Anastasia. Among Siegel’s murder victims were three Fabrizzo brothers, and brothers Louis “Pretty” Amberg and Joseph C. Amberg.
Siegel married childhood sweetheart Esta Krakower in 1928 and they had two daughters, Millicent and Barbara. The marriage ended in 1946 after Esta could no longer tolerate his extramarital affairs and moved with their daughters to New York.
After Siegel relocated to Los Angeles, he subordinated crime boss Jack Dragna and recruited Mickey Cohen as his chief lieutenant in a numbers racket and the creation of a drug trade route from Mexico. Siegel also controlled bookmaking, offshore casinos, and a major prostitution ring. His free-spending ways and high profile led to friendships with some of Hollywood’s best-known stars, among them George Raft, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Jean Harlow, Tony Curtis, Phil Silvers, and Frank Sinatra as well as with studio executives Louis B. Mayer and Jack L. Warner. Some celebrities loaned Siegel money knowing that they might never be repaid.
Notwithstanding his Jewish identity, Siegel met in Europe with Nazi leaders Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goring, whom he disliked and offered to kill, but was dissuaded by Countess Dorothy di Frasso, with whom he was having an affair. He also tried to sell to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini an explosive powder called atomite that he claimed would explode without sound or flash, but the bomb proved a dud when Siegel demonstrated it, prompting Mussolini to ask for his money back.
In 1939 Siegel and three accomplices murdered Harry “Big Greenie’ Greenberg after he threatened to become a police informant. One of Siegel’s accomplices, Albert Tannenbaum, agreed to testify against Siegel in a murder trial, but Siegel was acquitted after two other state witnesses died. It was during this trial that Siegel gained the nickname “Bugsy,” suggesting he was crazy. In 1944, he was acquitted on a charge of bookmaking after George Raft testified in his behalf.
In 1946, Siegel sought to diversify into a legitimate business as a partner with William R. Wilkerson in building the Flamingo Hotel on what would become the Las Vegas Strip. Eventually, he strong armed Wilkerson to surrender control of the hotel, which featured gambling, liquor, good food, and well-known entertainers. Cost overruns in the millions of dollars and delays in construction marred what was supposed to be a glitzy opening, aggravating Siegel’s mob associates back east. In June 1947, a sniper fatally shot Siegel through the window of a leased Beverly Hills home — a mob hit on a former hitman for the mob.
Tomorrow, January 29: Dinah Shore
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SDJW condensation of a Wikipedia article
Not much has changed.
The mob has morphed into the liberal media and democrat party