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June 20: Bugsy Siegel
Bugsy Siegel (Benjamin Siegelbaum), a paranoid mobster with a violent temper who helped launch the gambling empire of Las Vegas, was gunned down on this date in 1947 as punishment for a series of miscalculations that cost his associates millions of dollars in losses at the Flamingo Hotel. Siegel was the childhood friend and adult hit-man for Meyer Lansky (see January 15’s Jewdayo); together they built ties to the Genovese crime family. In the mid-1940s, after his acquittal in a murder trial (for killing of Harry “Big Greenie” Greenberg, who had become a police informant), Siegel sought legitimacy by taking over the Flamingo and pouring $5 million of “Lucky” Luciano’s crime syndicate money into an extravagant renovation. He was a failure as a businessman, however, and after telling Luciano to “go to hell,” he met his death; his shooter was never identified. Siegel’s other “accomplishments” included narcotics trafficking from Mexico to the U.S., part-ownership of the largest prostitution ring in the western U.S., and at least thirty murders.
“We only kill each other.” —Bugsy Siegel
Lawrence Bush edited Jewish Currents from 2003 until 2018. He is the author of Bessie: A Novel of Love and Revolution and Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist, among other books. His new volume of illustrated Torah commentaries, American Torah Toons 2, is scheduled for publication this year.
