Who is Bugsy Siegel?
Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was an American gangster who contributed greatly to the development of Las Vegas in the 1940s. He is most known for the change in Las Vegas’s image as a mining town to a gambling Mecca. Bugsy Siegel was born on 28 February 1906 in Brooklyn to Jewish Russian immigrants. Affiliating with street gangs as a child, Siegel met future gangster Meyer Lansky in his teens. The two eventually formed the “Bug & Meyer Mob” which was involved in bootlegging activities in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. Siegel married his childhood sweetheart, Esta Krakower, in 1929, although he would have several mistresses throughout his life. In 1930, Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky met and became close with Charles “Lucky” Luciano. It was around this time that Bugsy began to work as a mob hitman. Between 1930 and 1931, during a war for mafia control known as the Castellammarese War, Bugsy Siegel murdered mobster Sal Maranzano, allowing Luciano to take control of the East Coast mafia.
