The Backstory: Mafia murder in mid-century Las Vegas

You love gangster TV shows and movies like The Sopranos, The Godfather, and Goodfellas? You love Las Vegas? Bugsy Siegel was the mobster/visionary who created Las Vegas with his spectacular Flamingo Hotel and Casino in 1947. But it cost him his life.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, they may have lost a little bit of their
luster in the past few decades, but you gotta admit
the mafia still fascinates us. They dominated illegal booze, drugs, sex,
and gambling in the first half of the twentieth century.
I'm Patty Steele, the wise guys who built Las Vegas,
and the deadly outcome for one of them. Next on

(00:20):
the backstory, The backstory is back. Everybody's talking about the
twenty fifth anniversary of the huge HBO show The Sopranos. Right.
Show traces the evolution, or maybe the decline of the
mob in the late twentieth century. The mafia really had
its heyday back in the nineteen twenties on through to

(00:43):
the nineteen seventies. Now, early on names like al Capone,
John Dillinger, Lucky Luciano, Carlo Gambino and later the Genovies
and Gotti families not only terrified their enemies but fascinated
the public. But there were a couple of guys in
the nineteen five forties who didn't exactly fit the mold,
the Italian American mold. They were Meyer, Lanski and notably

(01:06):
Bugsy Siegel, and those guys focused on Las Vegas, that small, hot,
dusty town and helped turn it into a gambling, partying
and sex mecca. Bugsy saw it as a gold mine.
In nineteen thirty, Vegas had a population of about five thousand.
That's when the government began building the nearby Boulder Dam

(01:27):
we know it today as the Hoover Dam, and they
brought in around twenty five thousand workers to build it.
The mafia and a few local businessmen saw an opportunity
to entertain the mostly young male workers with casinos and showgirls,
of course, and Bugsy Siegel wanted to capitalize on that.
Bugsy and his childhood pow Meyer Lanski had grown up

(01:50):
in Brooklyn and they started their business during Prohibition in
the late nineteen twenties. They formed the Bugs and Meyer Mob,
making money off of legging, gambling, and even murder. They
hooked up with powerful mob figures like Lucky Luciano and
Frank Costello, but after a time they realized their Jewish
heritage meant they would always be outsiders to their mafia

(02:14):
cohorts who were Italian. So in the nineteen thirties, Bugsy
heads to Hollywood, where his handsome looks and his charm
make him a hit among movie stars, all kinds of celebrities,
even politicians. He makes money through gambling and narcotics. By
the early nineteen forties, Vegas grabs his attention. He partners

(02:38):
with the guy who owns the famed Hollywood Reporter newspaper,
Billy Wilkerson, but Bugsy pretty much muscles him out and
steals management of the project from Wilkerson. He's backed financially
by those old mafia pals like Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello,
and he begins a project that really redefines Las Vegas.

(02:58):
That project, the Flamingo, the town's first big luxury hotel
and casino where it is. Bugsy called it the Flamingo
in honor of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, known for her
very long legs. The Flamingo was going to be a luxurious,
sophisticated destination for people with money who liked to spend it.

(03:19):
But it's the aftermath of World War Two, and with
all the postwar building going on, the construction of the
Flamingo had a lot of challenges. The million dollar budget ballooned,
not just because supplies were tough to get, but also
because of Bugsy's extravagance, crummy management, and corruption. Now it
looked like the place would cost about six million to

(03:41):
open a fortune in those days close to one hundred
million today, and that really upset Buggsy's silent partners in
the Mob. On top of that, workers weren't getting paid
and Bugsy was threatening them to keep them on the job.
There was also talk that he and his girlfriend Virginia
were skimming cash. Okay, now, it's the Flamingo's opening night

(04:05):
December twenty sixth, nineteen forty six, and the place was
a mess. Bugsy invited more than two hundred VIPs, including
some big Hollywood stars. Now, the problem is the hotel
itself isn't finished, so all those high rollers had to
stay someplace else. There were a lot of people on
hand in the casino itself looked amazing, but with all

(04:27):
these folks staying in other hotels, the place was losing money.
In order to get on schedule with the hotel's grand
opening the following March, they had to shut down the
casino and that was financially disappointing to Bugsy's Mob investors
not people you want to disappoint right now. On the upside,
despite the disastrous December opening, Bugsy reopens the entire Flamingo

(04:51):
hotel included just three months later, in March of nineteen
forty seven. This time, it's a huge success for a time.
Reviews called it an adult fairyland, lush, plush, and fantastic.
One said that Flamingo was the most fantastic gambling casino
ever constructed. A junior taj mahal Well. Pretty quickly, Vegas's

(05:13):
first big luxury hotel in casino becomes a profitable business,
but Bugsy had already lost the backing of his mob friends,
now turned enemies. It's a really successful spring for the Flamingo.
The place starts to turn a profit almost immediately, but
Bugsy's threatening behavior and illicit business practices had taken an

(05:33):
irreversible toll on his reputation. And then, worst of all,
that early success slowed down and the crowds dwindled. Now
it's June twentieth, nineteen forty seven, just six months after
the disastrous first opening and three months after the initially
successful reopening. Bugsy is relaxing at his girlfriend, Virginia Hill's

(05:57):
home in Beverly Hills, California. A friend is there visiting
for the evening, Bugsy's reading the La times when suddenly
a shot is fired, and then more shots. Bugsy is
hit multiple times, including at least twice in the head
with a thirty caliber military M one carbine. No one
is ever charged, and the case is still considered unsolved

(06:21):
almost eighty years later. Now where did he go wrong?
Was it his crazy lavish spending him and his girlfriend
possibly stealing mob money or did he cross somebody else
along the way? And there's another twist involving Virginia. She
was a mob insider both before and after her relationship
with Bugsy. It seems a few days before the hit

(06:43):
on Bugsy she left on a last minute trip to Paris,
and some think she knew what was coming down and
simply got herself out of the way. Years later, Virginia
was living in Austria with her son. It was nineteen
sixty six when she committed suicide by taking an overdose
of sleeping pills. There was some suspicion that she was

(07:03):
murdered by the mob because she had too much inside
info on them. She was forty nine years old. As
for Bugsy Siegel, he has an interesting reputation as both
a cold blooded mobster, but also as a visionary in
the glitzy and kind of cutthroat world of entertainment. The
Flamingo he created became the model for the big, glitzy

(07:25):
hotels and casinos we see in Vegas. Now seems Bugsy
was a lot like Las Vegas itself, lots of bright
neon and plenty of darkness. Just a reminder, if you
have an idea for a backstory that you'd like me

(07:47):
to take a deeper dive into and share, you can
direct message me on Instagram at Real Patty Steele or
on Facebook at Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstore
is a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser, our

(08:08):
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't
know you needed to know