BUGSY SIEGEL Biography - Crimes, Laws and people

 
 

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BUGSY SIEGEL

Benjamin Siegel                                                                                               
Born February 28, 1906                                                                                         
Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York, USA                                                                           
Died June 20, 1947                                                                                             
Beverly Hills, California, USA                                                                                 
Murder                                                                                                         
Resting place Hollywood Forever Cemetery                                                                       
Hollywood, California, USA                                                                                     
Residence Beverly Hills, California, USA                                                                       
Nationality American                                                                                           
Other names Bugsy                                                                                             
Occupation Organized crime                                                                                     
Religious beliefs Jewish                                                                                       
Spouse Esta Krakower                                                                                           
Partner Virginia Hill                                                                                         
Parents Max Siegel,                                                                                           
Jennie Goldstein                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (February 28, 1906 - June 20, 1947) was an American gangster, who was behind large-scale
development of Las Vegas.                                                                                     
                                                                                                               
Siegel was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to a poor Jewish family from Letychiv,                               
Podolia Governorate of the Russian Empire (today's Ukraine). As a boy, Siegel                                 
joined a street gang on Lafayette Street on the Lower East Side and first                                     
committed mainly thefts, until, with another youth named Moe Sedway, he devised                               
his own protection racket: pushcart merchants were forced to pay him a dollar or                               
he would incinerate their merchandise on the spot.                                                             
                                                                                                               
During adolescence, Siegel befriended Meyer Lansky, who was forming a small crew                               
whose criminal activities expanded to include gambling and car theft. Siegel                                   
reputedly also worked as the crew's hit man whom Lansky would sometimes hire out                               
to other crime families.                                                                                       
                                                                                                               
In 1930, Lansky and Siegel built close ties to Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Frank                               
Costello, both future bosses of the Genovese crime family. Siegel became a                                     
bootlegger and was also associated with Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia. Siegel                                 
was also heavily involved in bootlegging operations in New York, New Jersey and                               
Philadelphia. During the so-called Castellammarese War in 1930-1931, they fought                               
the gang of Sal Maranzano; Siegel reputedly had a hand in Maranzano's murder and                               
later in the formation of Murder, Inc. In 1932, he was arrested for gambling and                               
bootlegging but got away with only a fine. Lansky and Siegel assisted with                                     
Luciano's brief alliance with Dutch Schultz and killed rival loan sharks Louis "Pretty"                       
Amberg and Joseph Amberg in 1935.                                                                             
                                                                                                               
Bugsy's memorial plaque in the Bialystoker Synagogue - On the plaques above see                               
the name Max Siegel, Siegel's father, whose Hebrew name is "Mordechai Dov "Bar"                               
(son of) Beirush HaLevi" (from the Hebraic tribe of the Levites) and the one for                               
Siegel, whose Hebrew name is "Bairush HaLevi "Bar" Mordechai Dov HaLevi";                                     
implying that Bugsy was named after his grandfather who predeceased his birth.                                 
                                                                                                               
On the night of June 20, 1947, as Siegel sat in Virginia Hill's Beverly Hills                                 
home reading the Los Angeles Times, an unknown gunman entered Siegel's backyard                               
and shot Siegel multiple times through the window, including two headshots, with                               
a M-1 carbine. No one was ever charged with the murder, and the crime remains                                 
unsolved.                                                                                                     
                                                                                                               
Though popular descriptions held that Siegel was shot in the eye, an autopsy                                   
revealed that the bullet actually entered the back of his skull, and exited                                   
through an eye socket; investigators found the eye across the room. The cause of                               
death was cerebral hemorrhage. According to Florabel Muir, "Four of the nine                                   
shots fired that night destroyed a white marble statue of Bacchus on a grand                                   
piano, and then lodged in the far wall".                                                                       
                                                                                                               
In the Bialystoker Synagogue on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Siegel is                                         
memorialized by a Yartzheit (remembrance) plaque that marks his death date so                                 
mourners can say Kaddish for the anniversary of his passing. Siegel's plaque is                               
just below that of his father, Max Siegel, who died two months prior to his son's                             
murder.