The Real L.A. Confidential by Noyes Pete

Author:Noyes, Pete [Noyes, Pete]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

23

THE ASSASSINATION OF

“BUGSY” SIEGEL

Five months after the “Black Dahlia,” murder, Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel, perhaps the most notorious gangster in the history of Hollywood, was assassinated by a rifleman as he sat on a sofa reading the Los Angeles Times in front of a picture window at his girlfriend’s rented home in upscale Beverly Hills.

Siegel was a killer but also a man of vision. He left his wife, Esther, and two children behind in the East and moved to L.A. when the opportunity arose to become a player in mob activities in Hollywood. But opportunity really knocked when he visited Las Vegas, a dusty, wide open town populated with street walkers, cow pokes and tin horns who gambled their money away at run down poker parlors and drank themselves into stupors at cheap saloons.

Bugsy liked what he saw in Nevada’s virtually unrestricted gambling policies and loose prostitution laws so he convinced the mob hierarchy to finance his plans to build a million dollar hotel, the Flamingo, which would cater to customers with loads of money. Handing out the start up dollars for the project was Meyer Lansky, the intellectual and financial leader of the so-called “Jewish Mafia.” Bugsy,” a name he bitterly resented that was hung on by his mob rivals, built himself a spacious two story apartment on the grounds of the Flamingo. Years later, before the building was torn down, I inspected it with a cameraman. There were escape hatches everywhere. As an example, all Siegel had to do was open his closet, flip up a floor board, then slip down a fire ladder to a basement hideaway.

Bugsy sensed someone might try to kill him and took every possible precaution including surrounding himself with heavily armed bodyguards in Las Vegas. That’s why his assassination in front of a picture window in Beverly Hills seemed so out of character.

It was a balmy evening in Beverly Hills on June 20, 1947 when Siegel met his fate. Bugsy’s girlfriend, Virginia Hill, supposedly a “bag lady” for the mob, was out of town, partying somewhere on the East Coast. In the living room with Siegel was hoodlum Allen Smiley, a mob underling who was an errand boy for Bugsy. Upstairs were Virginia Hill’s brother and his girlfriend. Siegel and the others had returned home following dinner in Santa Monica. Everyone seemed to have a good time at dinner and Bugsy decided to catch up on the news of the day in the Times evening edition. The house at 810 Linden Drive was illuminated with bright street lights. The exterior sparkled with a plush green lawn and lots of trees. The Beverly Hills cops patrolled the area every 30 minutes to protect the privacy of the rich and famous.

The killer apparently was well versed on the cops’ timetable. He set his rifle on a picket fence on the south side of the home, then unloaded a flurry of shots that killed Siegel instantly and shattered the Venus de Milo replica next to where Alan Smiley was standing, shaken but unharmed.

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