June 20, 1947: Bugsy Siegel Is Killed

June 20, 1947: Bugsy Siegel is murdered at the home of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, in Beverly Hills, California, outside Los Angeles. He was 41 years old.

Benjamin Siegel (no middle name) was born on February 28, 1906 in Brooklyn, and didn't mind being called "Ben," but he hated being called "Bugsy," a nickname he got for being "bugs," or crazy. He became a bootlegger during Prohibition, and, along with childhood friend Meyer Lansky, founded the Brooklyn-based Jewish organized crime group Murder, Inc.

Siegel, Lansky, and another friend of Lansky's, Charles "Lucky" Luciano were the gangsters who picked up the pieces after Prohibition ended, filling the vacuum left in American organized crime by the conviction of Al Capone.

In 1946, after 10 years running organized crime in Los Angeles, Siegel had the idea to turn Las Vegas, in the State of Nevada where gambling was legal, into a casino capital, to make money (mostly) legitimately. Lansky put him in charge of its development. The immediate result was the Flamingo Hotel, still in operation today. (I stayed there on my visit to Vegas in 1991. It's gaudy as hell, even by Vegas standards, but it was well run, by whoever was running it at the time.)

But when it first opened on December 26, 1946, it lost money. A month later, Siegel shut it down, made significant improvements, and reopened it on March 1, 1947, with Lansky present. It began making money.

Too late for Siegel's backers, as it turned out. They were impatient, and, apparently, they talked a reluctant Lansky into allowing the hit. On June 20, 1947, Siegel was in Hill's house, reading the Los Angeles Times, with Aaron Smehoff, a.k.a. Allen Smiley, who was running several gambling operations and was helping Siegel out in Vegas. Someone fired a .30 caliber Military M1 carbine, firing 9 shots. Two shots hit Siegel in the head, and he never had a chance.

No one was ever charged with the murder, and it remains officially unsolved. (Smiley was not hit, was never considered to have been involved in the shooting, and lived until 1982.) It may simply have been that the police were glad to be rid of him, and didn't care enough to try to go after someone who did something of which they approved -- perhaps the only thing they ever had in common with Lansky.

Siegel has been played by Joe Penny in the 1981 TV miniseries The Gangster Chronicles. The year 1991 saw 3 portrayals of him: Richard Grieco as a young Siegel in Mobsters, Warren Beatty in Bugsy, and Armand Assante in The Marrying Man. He was played in the 2015 film Kill Me, Deadly by Joe Mantegna, and David Cade in the 2021 film Lansky.

On TV, he's been played by Edward Burns in Mob City, Jonathan Stewart in The Making of the Mob, Michael Zegen in Boardwalk Empire, and Jonathan Sadowski on the CW time-travel/superhero series DC's Legends of Tomorrow.

Most notably, in the 1972 film The Godfather, the character of Moe Greene, played by Alex Rocco, is based on Siegel. Although, in the 1974 sequel The Godfather Part II, the character based on Lansky, Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg), targets Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) for having had Greene, his close friend, killed. In that version, the Lansky analogue had nothing to do with it, and truly wanted the Siegel analogue avenged.

The murder site is 810 North Linden Drive. It is literally around the corner from 810 Whittier Drive, where Howard Hughes nearly killed himself in a plane crash a year earlier; and both are half a mile south of Maltz Park, where Sunset Boulevard makes what became known as "Dead Man's Curve," a drag-racing song by rock duo Jan & Dean -- and, for Jan Berry, art would imitate life, and he would nearly die in a crash there.

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June 20, 1947 was a Friday. These baseball games were played on the day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-3 at Yankee Stadium. Eddie Mayo hit 2 home runs for the Tigers, but Tommy Henrich aided rookie pitcher Frank "Spec" Shea with a home run off Tiger Hall-of-Famer Hal Newhouser. Joe DiMaggio went 1-for-3 with a walk.

* The New York Giants lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Red Sox, 3-2 at Fenway Park in Boston. Not only did Ted Williams go 0-for-4, but his batting average dropped to .294, uncharacteristically low for him. He finished the season with a .343 batting average, 32 home runs and 114 RBIs, all leading the American League, for the Triple Crown. But DiMaggio was named the AL's Most Valuable Player, and rightly so, because he led the Yankees to the Pennant, and Williams only led the Red Sox to 2nd place.

* The Washington Senators beat the St. Louis Browns, 3-0 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Walt Masterson pitched a 2-hit shutout.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-0 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Former Yankee pitcher Ernest "Tiny" Bonham pitched a 5-hit shutout. Hank Greenberg, in his last major league season, and his protege, Ralph Kiner, in his 1st season, both went 1-for-4.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Boston Braves, 6-5 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Philadelphia Athletics were supposed to host the Chicago White Sox at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, but the game was rained out. It was rescheduled for September 11, and the White Sox won, 7-3.

* And the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds were not scheduled.