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Standing just a tad under six-feet tall, with a thick head of black hair and piercing blue eyes, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel seemed to be a gangster sent from central casting in Hollywood. He was charming with the ladies and a sharp dresser, athletically inclined and fearless. Not only did Ben talk the talk, he walked the walk of a prototypical racketeer. It seemed only inevitable that Siegel would end up hobnobbing with the glitterati in Hollywood. While his friend Meyer Lansky flitted back-and-forth between legitimate and illegal business opportunities all the while keeping a low profile, Siegel moved from the crime-ridden slums of Brooklyn to the backlots of Hollywood and along the way became one of the first page-one “celebrity” gangsters.
Bugsy was a textbook sociopath. He took what he wanted when he wanted it and the emotion of remorse was alien to him. In his mind, other people were there to be used by him, which was demonstrated by his long record of robbery, rape and murder dating back to his teenage years.
In gangster circles, the nickname “Bugsy” is often a term of endearment or honor. It is given out to those racketeers who show no fear in sticky situations or who are willing to step up to jobs that others are afraid to take. Bugsy Siegel earned the nickname early on in his criminal career because of his tendency to “go bugs” whenever he was angered or thwarted. It was an appellation that he strongly disliked and anyone who used the nickname to his face risked certain bodily harm. Siegel preferred that his friends call him Ben. If you weren’t his friend, “Mr. Siegel” would do just fine.
“When we were in a fight Benny would never hesitate,” Meyer Lansky once said. “He was even quicker to take action than those hot-blooded Sicilians, the first to start punching and shooting. Nobody reacted faster than Benny.”
Benjamin Siegel, with his Hollywood friends and flamboyant lifestyle, will go down in the annals of crime history as the man who brought the rackets to the West Coast and made Las Vegas into the gambling mecca of the United States.
This is the story of Bugsy Siegel — a man who rose from the depths of poverty to the pinnacle of mob life, but whose hubris would be his downfall.
The Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in the early part of the 20th Century was the proverbial melting pot of America. Within its tight confines lived thousands of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants all struggling to make a life for themselves in the New World. The streets were lined with tenements which teemed with poverty and disease. Push-cart vendors hawked their wares, yelling in Yiddish or Italian, ethnic tensions ran high, and the streets of Hell’s Kitchen were a perfect breeding ground for crime. This was the world to which Benjamin Siegelbaum was born in 1902. His poor immigrant parents raised five children, including Ben, on the meager wages that a day laborer could bring in. Ben saw how hard his Russian-born father worked for pennies and vowed that he would rise above this life. There would be no backbreaking garment industry job for him, he said. He was destined for bigger things.
As a youngster, Ben’s best friend was Moey Sedway, a diminutive lackey who was willing to go along with whatever plan Ben was hatching. Their favorite pastime was a two-bit extortion racket launched against the street vendors. Ben would go up and ask for a dollar. When the vendor would tell the kids to scram, Ben would have Moey splash the wares with kerosene and set a match to it. The next time the boys came around, the vendor was usually willing to pay up. From there, Ben and Moey moved into a protection scam, taking money from the vendors on Lafayette Street in return for making sure no one else pulled the same rip-off.
It was while Ben was running this protection racket that he met another immigrant teen outlaw with big plans. Together, these two youngsters would build up a gang of killers that became first the underworld’s murder-for-hire squad and later an integral part of the fledgling national crime Syndicate. There are several stories of how Bugsy Siegel met Meyer Lansky. The first, probably apocryphal, is that Bugsy had been enjoying the unpaid favors of a prostitute in the employ of a young Charlie Luciano and that Lucky was none too happy about her extracurricular activities. He began to beat the hooker and Siegel after catching them in the act and Meyer, then a tool-and-die apprentice, happened upon the scene. Lansky came to Siegel’s rescue by beating Lucky with one of his tools and the trio reportedly became friends.
Another version of how the two met, retold in Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life by Robert Lacey, claims that Lansky was watching a street corner craps game when a scuffle broke out and a gun fell to the pavement. Siegel picked up the piece and was preparing to shoot the gun’s owner when police whistles sounded. Lansky knocked the gun from Siegel’s hand and dragged him away from the ruckus. Although Siegel was not happy about losing the gun, a friendship blossomed. Uri Dan, an Israeli journalist who interviewed Lansky for his biography Meyer Lansky, Mogul of the Mob, also cites this story.
Lansky, who had already had a run-in with a young Salvatore Lucania, later known as Lucky Luciano, saw that the Jewish boys of his Brooklyn neighborhood needed to organize in the same manner as the Italians and Irish. The first person he recruited for his gang was Ben Siegel.
“I told little Benny that he could be my number two,” Lansky remembered years later. “He was young but very brave. His big problem was that he was always ready to rush in first and shoot – to act without thinking.”
Siegel’s gang mates included Abner “Longie” Zwillman, who later ran the rackets in New Jersey; Lepke Buchalter, the head of Murder, Inc. and the only top mobster to get the chair; Lansky’s brother, Jake; and a young boy named Arthur Flegenheimer, who would go make a name for himself as Dutch Schultz. Benny and Meyer Lansky were so close that the gang became known as the “Bugs and Meyer Mob.”
“Doc” Stacher, another member of the Bugs and Meyer Mob, recalled that Siegel was fearless and saved his friends’ lives many times over as the mob moved into bootlegging.
“Bugsy never hesitated when danger threatened,” Stacher told Uri Dan. “While we tried to figure out what the best move was, Bugsy was already shooting. When it came to action there was no one better. I’ve never known a man who had more guts.”
Lucky Luciano remembered a similar Ben Siegel in his biography, The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: “We was like analyzers,” he said of himself and Meyer. “We didn’t hustle ourselves into a decision before we had a chance to think it out. Siegel was just the opposite, and I guess that’s what made him good for us, because he would make his move on sheer guts and impulse.”
Murder One
Meyer Lansky had a knack for turning enemies into friends – his first meeting with Bugsy is evidence of that fact. Lansky, also the son of Russian immigrants, was also able to earn the respect of Charlie Luciano at an early age and served as the link between the Sicilian and Jewish mobs. Lansky’s friends were fiercely loyal, because Lansky was loyal to them.
Even after Charlie went to prison on a narcotics charge in 1915, Lansky remained close to the Sicilian. Because of Lansky’s friendship with Charlie, Bugsy was also tight with Luciano.
Emerging from prison after serving six months of a one-year sentence, Luciano was hot for revenge. He knew who had set him up for the drug charge: the son of an Irish cop. Luciano wanted the kid dead and was prepared to take quick action. Lansky, as always, was more thoughtful. Don’t act rashly, he told Luciano. Let it sit for awhile. This is something Ben and I can handle. By this time, the Bugs and Meyer mob was running street corner gambling games, protection rackets and a stolen car ring. But murder wasn’t something that they had tackled. Until now. luciano.gif (19192 bytes)
Lansky and Siegel waited a full year to exact revenge. Then, Lansky told Luciano to take a vacation – get out of town with a solid alibi. While Luciano established the precise and verifiable details of his alibi, Siegel and Lansky went to work. Soon afterward, there was a massive manhunt for a missing 19-year-old Irishman, the son of a Brooklyn cop. Charlie was hauled in for questioning, but his alibi held. The boy’s body was never found.
The killing would have repercussions for Siegel nearly a decade later. In the fallout of the killing, a local woman started to lean on the trio, saying unless they paid up, she would go to the police with information about the boy’s disappearance. Lansky, Luciano and Bugsy paid a visit to the woman’s apartment and savagely beat her as a warning to keep her mouth shut. They were caught in the act by police, who hauled them down to headquarters. The woman, who had apparently got the message they were trying to impart, failed to show up for the court date.
Eight years later, Siegel ran into the woman in a bar. Mocking Ben was never a wise move, but the woman apparently wasn’t that bright. She told him he had been wet behind the ears and “wouldn’t have known what to do with me anyway.”
Ben decided to show her that he had grown up and learned how to handle women. He followed her home, and as she approached an alley, Siegel pulled her into the dark and raped her. He was arrested, but Lansky had a few words with the woman and the charges were dropped.
In the years following the Irish boy’s disappearance, Siegel, Lansky and Luciano kept low profiles, working mostly on floating crap games, small-time union head-busting and robbery. The Bugs and Meyer mob was known as a stick-up and burglary operation, running gambling ventures in Brooklyn but roaming far from home – Harlem and other Manhattan areas – to commit their robberies. The gang was already known for its viciousness; they weren’t afraid to use knives or fists to beat up whoever got in their way.
By the end of World War I, the Bugs and Meyer mob was in full swing, operating closely with Lucky Luciano and his right-hand man, Frank Costello. Although the Sicilians and the Jews were separate gangs, there was more than a loose association between the two groups, something that was unusual at the time. Both Lansky and Luciano refused to be limited by the old rules that said Italians were Italians, Jews were Jews and never the twain shall meet.
While the rest of the world was occupied with the fighting over in Europe, the Bugs and Meyer mob and Luciano’s boys were busy terrorizing the people of New York. Pawnbrokers, moneylenders and immigrant businesses were most often their shakedown or robbery targets. While Bugs remained a hothead who liked to fight first and ask questions later, Lansky and Luciano were making plans to break into the big time.
Unlike other gangs who spent their swag as soon as they acquired it, Meyer and Charlie (who adopted the anglicized name because his Jewish friends had trouble pronouncing “Salvatore”) put aside their money in a special fund. As the war came to a close, neither man had a good idea as to what the bankroll would be used for, but they both knew that to hit the big time they had to have capital behind them.
Meyer, ever the businessman, was busy reading up on management practices and investment policies. He told Benny to case out a local bank to see if it was worth putting the funds in.
Benny returned from the visit unimpressed.
“I’m not putting any of my money in there,” he reported. “Anyone could bust in and steal every dime in the place.”
Two weeks later, the Bugs and Meyer mob returned to the bank – not to make a deposit, but to hold the place up. They overpowered the aged, half-blind security guard and escaped with eight grand.
Robbery, street corner craps and protection rackets were providing the gang with a quick infusion of funds, but Lansky, Siegel and Luciano were smart. They realized that it was only a matter of time before their luck ran out and one of them took a fall. They began to look for different ways to tap into the huge illegal gambling market in New York. The gang began to use its bankroll to buy into established bookmaking operations and to buy the protection of the police and politicians who ran the Lower East Side.
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For the first time, the Bugs and Meyer mob came to the attention of the real powers in New York City, Joe “The Boss” Masseria and the Big Man himself, Arnold Rothstein. The welcomes they got from the two men were decidedly different.
In early 1919, a crap game that was operating under the protection of Meyer was raided by a group of men who proceeded to beat up the game’s organizers, bodyguards and customers. The hoods told Lansky that this was a warning: unless tribute was paid, killings would follow.
Meyer and Bugs weren’t ready to cave in. They hunted down the Italian who led the raid and were prepared to exact revenge when the man told them that Joe the Boss would make them pay for their insolence with their lives. They backed off and regrouped. Masseria had decided to bring the Lower East Side under his control and the Bugs and Meyer mob was standing in the way. Masseria, an old-time gangster who was never interested in cooperation with non-Sicilians, was engaged in an effort to fill the void left by the imprisonment of the capo di tutti capo, Lupo the Wolf Saietta. He needed the money that a gambling operation in Brooklyn could provide to finance his move.
Bugs, as usual, was ready to go in shooting. It didn’t matter to him that Masseria had a 200-man army and that the Bugs and Meyer mob was at best a couple dozen strong. Siegel’s honor was at stake and he wouldn’t go down without a fight. This time, Lansky agreed with his boyhood friend. He knew that every other mobster in the city was gunning for Joe the Boss and that now was the time to go on the offensive.
Siegel and several other toughs from his gang returned to Masseria’s East Side lieutenant and this time they didn’t back down. A huge fight ensued and the Masseria boys were routed. By the time the battle was over, the cops arrived and Lansky, Siegel and some other Bugs and Meyer hoods were arrested. The charge was disorderly conduct and carried a two-dollar fine.
Misdemeanor charges aside, the fight sent a clear message to Masseria, one he took to heart – the Lower East Side belonged to the Bugs and Meyer mob.
Masseria took a different tack; he approached Luciano’s gang (his pig-headedness refused to allow him to work with the Jews) and lobbied hard to get Charlie to join his team. Luciano held out, negotiating for a good deal. Luciano wanted to keep his Eastside rackets to himself, while Masseria wanted them under his control. Masseria also wanted Luciano to sever his ties with the Bugs and Meyer mob, something Charlie would not do.
With the enactment of the Volstead Act in 1919, the manufacture and sale of alcohol became illegal in the United States. For gangsters like Bugsy Siegel, this was a license to steal.
Other than speed limits on Interstate highways, there have been few laws on the books in America that have been flouted with such abandon. Across the country, speakeasies, blind pigs and bathtub gin joints sprang up with amazing frequency. Bootleggers smuggled booze across every border, in trucks, boats and pipelines. Judges were reluctant to enforce the penalties of the Volstead Act and police would often look the other way for a price. Prohibition did little to curb the consumption of alcohol and only served to provide the underworld with access to easy money.
In New York, Arnold Rothstein knew a good thing when he saw it, and to him Prohibition was a very good thing. Rothstein, a.k.a. “The Brain”, was mostly a high-stakes gambler. It was Rothstein who brought floating craps down to earth and probably invented the “carpet joint” – an upscale casino where upper class gamblers could enjoy a quiet game of big money poker or blackjack and where the patrons could rest assured that the craps games weren’t fixed.
Rothstein wanted to make money during Prohibition, but he wanted to do it high class. To do this, he needed partners. He turned to Charlie Luciano and the Bugs and Meyer mob.
Summoned to Rothstein’s Central Park residence, Meyer Lansky and Charlie Luciano were offered their chance at the big time.
Over a six-hour conversation, Rothstein laid out his plans.
“There’s going to be a growing demand for good whiskey in the United States,” Rothstein said as the men enjoyed a pre-dinner libation. “And when I say good whiskey, that is exactly what I mean. I’m not talking about that rotgut rubbish your Italian friends are making right now on the Lower East Side.”
Rothstein proposed that under the direction of the Bugs and Meyer mob — specifically Lansky (he had no patience for a man of Bugs’ temperament) – Dutch Schultz would take over the New York bootlegging operation and Longy Zwillman, Lansky’s close friend and kindred intellectual spirit, would run North Jersey. Other men who were later brought into the operation included the dapper Guiseppe Doto, a.k.a. Joe Adonis, Carlo Gambino (the future head of the Gambino crime family), Vito Genovese, Gambino’s predecessor as godfather, and the sinister Albert Anastasia.
As cover for their rumrunning operation, Siegel and Lansky operated a car and truck rental operation through a garage on Cannon Street in Brooklyn. Ironically, Lansky’s skill as a businessman made the rental business almost as much of a success as the bootlegging.
While Lansky watched over the gang’s ever-increasing businesses, Bugsy was the point man for the rumrunning racket. Lansky was never shy about lending a hand when an extra gun was needed, but it was Siegel who craved the excitement of taking a shipment of illegal booze or highjacking another gang’s property.
One such hijacking took place after Bugsy got wind of a shipment coming in on the South Jersey Shore. “The stuff belongs to Joe Masseria,” Ben reported with glee.
Lansky and Siegel, still anxious for revenge for Masseria’s attempted power grab in Brooklyn, traveled down to Atlantic City and set up an ambush where they knew Masseria’s boys would be coming. They felled a tree and then hid in the nearby woods, waiting for the truck convoy to approach. Thanks to a two-grand bribe, Siegel knew exactly when and where the shipment would be coming.
The shipment of top-grade scotch whisky was on its way from Masseria’s boats to another Rothstein partner, Irving Wexler, a.k.a. Waxey Gordon. Waxey planned to mix the scotch with some of his homemade Philadelphia rotgut and sell it at a quick profit. The raid was dangerous for several reasons. First, Masseria was still a force to be reckoned with on the East Coast. He still controlled his 200-man force and had tentacles that could reach anywhere the boys tried to hide if the raid went bad. Second, Waxey Gordon was the boss of Philadelphia and would be out for blood when his investment failed to arrive. And finally, the Bugs and Meyer gang was going against Arnold Rothstein, who was Gordon’s Philadelphia partner. Rothstein had forbidden his minions from stealing from one another and the penalty for such insolence would probably be death.
Exactly on time, the trucks rumbled up the deserted road. Seeing the tree lying across the road, the driver of the first truck halted the convoy and jumped out to move it. As soon as the group approached the tree, a fusillade of bullets rained down on them and sent them scrambling for cover. A furious gun battle ensued, and three of Masseria’s men fell. As the battle turned in favor of Siegel and his men, they emerged from the woods and began clubbing and beating the remaining Italians who had surrendered.
In the course of this savagery, one of Masseria’s men recognized Meyer Lansky. Through Masseria, Waxey Gordon learned that the Bug and Meyer mob was responsible for his loss, but because he didn’t want Rothstein to know he was working with the Brain’s despised Sicilian adversary, he kept his mouth shut. But Gordon didn’t forget, and, like Masseria, who was still courting Luciano, he vowed to get revenge.
Bugsy and Scarface
About the time Lansky was meeting with Rothstein to set up the bootlegging operation, Bugsy was helping out an old friend in a jam. Alphonse Capone, a boyhood friend of Bugsy’s from his days in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, was working alongside Ben as a “schlammer,” a goon who, for a price, would intimidate scabs for striking labor unions, or, if the money was right, rough up union organizers as a “favor” for management. Capone wasn’t a member of the Bugs and Meyer mob. He worked for and idolized Johnny Torrio, the bantamweight killer who would one day help Luciano and Lepke Buchalter found the Syndicate.
Capone, like Siegel, wasn’t afraid to kill. In a career move that foreshadowed one that Bugsy would make two decades later, Capone was forced to move west to avoid the law. The identity of the victim varies depending on the source, but one thing is clear: Capone was wanted for a beating that turned into murder. Before he left town, Capone went to his friend Ben Siegel and asked for help. Ben arranged for Capone to hide out with one of Siegel’s aunts until things cooled down. It was clear, however, that even with friends like Bugsy, Al would have to leave New York.
“The heat really was on him,” Lansky recalled. Al went west to join his mentor Torrio but remained close to Siegel and Luciano. Ben’s success as a bootlegger would spur on the young Scarface, who was now part of the Big Jim Colosimo gang in Chicago. Like Masseria, Colosimo was a Mustache Pete who didn’t like to mix with the “Hebes,” as he called them. Big Jim badmouthed Siegel and Luciano and it was all Meyer could do to keep Bugsy from going to the Windy City to shut up Colosimo forever.
“I can’t understand why Charlie Lucania (he hadn’t changed his name to Luciano yet) mixes with them,” Big Jim told Johnny Torrio. “I sometimes have suspicions that he must have some Jewish blood in his veins, otherwise he wouldn’t mess with that scum.”
Big Jim was even more shortsighted than Masseria. He felt that the old rackets of prostitution and gambling were the way to go and forbid his gang from getting involved in rumrunning. The leaders of the Bug and Meyer mob were afraid that because of Big Jim’s reluctance to get into bootlegging some other gangs would get into Chicago and lock them out. They hired Frankie Yale to go west and take care of Big Jim.
Once Frankie put a bullet in Colosimo’s head, Johnny Torrio took over with Al as his lieutenant. They had no reluctance to get into the alcohol business and invited Siegel and Luciano into the city.
Siegel, Lansky and Luciano made sure that they treated their friends in Chicago well. They split the profits equally between the two cities and built up a loyalty that would serve them well into the future.
Bedrest
After the deaths of Joe Masseria and the mysterious killing of Arnold Rothstein, Waxey Gordon decided the time had come to even the score with Siegel and Lansky. From jail (where he had been sent by the IRS thanks to information leaked from the Bugs and Meyer mob), Waxey hired the Fabrazzo brothers to take out the Brooklyn boys once and for all. The Fabrazzos and Waxey’s lieutenant, Charlie “Chink” Sherman, broke into the Grand Street hideout of the Bugs and Meyer mob and managed to plant a bomb in a fireplace.
Bugsy and Meyer were in the building when Siegel spotted the bomb and managed to throw it out a window before it exploded. The blast hurt Siegel, but Meyer was unharmed. Ben, despite his injuries, hunted down the Frabrazzo brothers and made sure that they never took on another contract. Andy Frabrazzo was found stuffed in a sack in North Jersey and Louis was gunned down on a Manhattan street.
Tony Frabazzo was as crooked as his brothers, but he wasn’t involved in the attempt on Bugsy and Lansky. The deaths of his brothers opened his eyes to the dangers of Siegel, and Tony decided to make himself hit-proof. The lifelong mobster let it be known that he was “writing his memoirs” and was planning to give them to an attorney who would make sure the authorities got them if something happened to his client. One of the longest chapters of the book would be the section on the nationwide kill-for-hire squad lead by Benjamin Siegel. Unfortunately for Tony, the mob got wind of his plans before he had a chance to put pen to paper. Siegel decided to take care of Tony himself. He set about creating an airtight alibi.
“I’m awful sick,” he told his friends in the fall of 1932. “It must be my nerves, I guess. I need a some rest and quiet and a kind nurse to look after me.”
Bugsy checked himself into a local Catholic hospital to “rest up” and heal from the bombing. For two days or so, he rested in the hospital, just like anyone else who had been through such a traumatic experience. Then, one night, he told the nurse that he was very tired and was going to be early. He asked her to close the door and make sure that he was not disturbed.
As soon as the nurse left, Ben jumped out of bed, dressed and placed pillows under the sheets to make it look like a body was in the bed in case someone checked on him. He then scurried down the fire escape and met up with a couple of his gang at the corner.
They drove down through Brooklyn to a house near the Government Reservation off Fort Hamilton Parkway. It was Tony Frabrazzo’s home. Siegel knocked on the door and Frabrazzo’s elderly father answered.
“We’re detectives,” he told the old man. “Where’s Tony?”
Tony was in the kitchen, undoubtedly enjoying a friendly family dinner. When his father hurried into the kitchen to deliver the message, Tony swaggered to the front door, his family behind him. Tony should have recognized the trio (he probably did, after all he acted as backup when Ben gunned down Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll in a telephone booth) but when he saw them he didn’t react like a man who was a mob target. Frabrazzo presented an easy target to the killers and they took full advantage. Three shots rang out and Tony, in full view of his mother and father, fell dead to the floor of his boyhood home.
Bugsy returned to the hospital and was back in bed before anyone noticed anything amiss. He remained in his bed for two more days until he was visited by a couple of his gang members. Then, he quickly packed his things and checked himself out. Later, it was learned that his mob had been watching the hospital and had noticed a couple of Frabazzo’s friends circling the block looking for a place to park. The Bugs and Meyer mobsters figured they were out for revenge and that the healthiest place for Bugsy was as far away from the hospital as possible.
Ben Heads West
Frabazzo’s murder wasn’t one of Ben’s smartest moves. His victim knew him and Tony’s friends knew that Bugsy had been a centerpiece of Frabrazzo’s tell-all book. Over time Ben’s alibi, so carefully constructed, began to crumble and he was forced underground.
Other problems were also becoming apparent. Dewey was slowly turning his attention to the Bugs and Meyer mob and it was probably just a matter of time before he got Ben on something. Things weren’t completely copacetic between Lansky and Siegel, either. Ben and Meyer were as close as brothers, but Bugsy wasn’t happy standing in Meyer’s shadow. In normal gangster behavior, when number two gets tired of being an underling, he conspires to bump off the boss. But even in Bugsy’s twisted mind, killing Lansky wasn’t something he cared to contemplate.
“As time went on Bugsy became a little restless at always being second fiddle to Meyer,” recalled Doc Stacher. “I think that was one reason why Meyer set up the West Coast assignment specifically for Bugsy.”
It took about four years after Tony Fabrazzo was killed in his parents’ home, but eventually New York became too hot for Siegel. He would have to leave. The Syndicate board of directors met and conferred about Bugsy’s fate. It is a testament to the loyalty between Lansky and Siegel that the Syndicate allowed Bugsy to live. Ordinarily, gangsters who become hunted as voraciously as Ben become liabilities to the mob and they are taken out in classic mob style. Regardless of his skill and value to the mob, if Siegel hadn’t been a blood brother to Lansky, he probably would have ended up on the bottom of the East River rather than the top mobster on the West Coast. Still, there would come a time when even Lansky wouldn’t be able to protect Bugs. But that was almost a decade away.
In the late 1930s, the western United States was almost untapped in terms of organized crime. There were gangs here and there, but the national Syndicate had gotten about as far as Hot Springs, Arkansas (thanks to Owney Madden) and stopped.
The strongest gang in California was headed by Jack I. Dragna, president of the Italian Protective League. The IPL was organized as a benevolent society for Italian immigrants who had come to the Gold Coast. In reality, the League was little more than a Mafia muscle outfit preying on the same immigrants it purported to protect. Dragna and his number two, Joe Ardizzone, had their fingers in gambling, bootlegging, extortion, and smuggling and were still active in the old fashioned “Black Hand” operations that the East Coast Syndicate had abandoned in the days of Lupo the Wolf.
Moe Sedway went west with Bugsy
Dragna’s real name was Anthony Rizzoti, and like so many others in organized crime, he held Charlie Luciano in the highest regard. Whether that was out of respect, fear or genuine friendship isn’t known, but Luciano, uncomfortably ensconced in Dannemora State Penitentiary serving a 30- to 50-year sentence for prostitution, sent word to Dragna that the Syndicate was moving in and he could either take part or be taken apart.
“Ben is coming West for the good of his health and health of all of us,” Luciano told Dragna from his cell.
Dragna wisely decided to play ball. Still, Dragna resented the intrusion of the Jewish gangster from New York and bided his time looking to a chance to get rid of Bugsy.
Bugsy, his wife and their two daughters showed up in California and immediately rented a 35-room mansion owned by singer Lawrence Tibbet that was valued at the then-astronomical price of $200,000. The white brick palace in the upscale Hollywood suburb of Holmby Hills was complete with swimming pool and a private marble bath for Bugsy.
When he got to Hollywood, Siegel looked up an old friend from Williamsburg who had made it big in the movies: George Raft, who was known for his gangster portrayals. He and Bugsy had kept in contact with one another over the years and formed such a mutual admiration society that it wasn’t clear whether Raft’s screen persona emulated Siegel or whether Siegel was styling himself after what Raft portrayed in the movies. Together, Raft and Siegel became regulars at Santa Anita Racetrack, wagering huge sums of money on the ponies. Raft also opened the door to Siegel’s first West Coast racket. bugsandraft.png (29899 bytes)
Bugsy and George Raft, 1944
Taking a page out of the book written by Lansky and Lepke Buchalter, Siegel let Dragna handle the gambling operations while he went after the unions. His first target was the relatively easy-to-tackle extras union. Quickly, Bugsy and his old pal Moey Sedway, who had followed his boss west, infiltrated the union and began extorting money from movie moguls who needed the extras to make their films.
ketti.jpg (19030 bytes) Raft also provided entree into the high glamour world of the film stars. Starlets were taken with Ben’s suave demeanor and good looks, and the men were in awe of his machismo. He quickly became the toast of the town and no party was complete unless Bugsy Siegel was there. Siegel began a torrid romance with a wild French actress named Ketti Gallian. But Bugs was fickle and soon he was moving from starlet to starlet, including Jean Harlow, who was sent to seek her fame and fortune in Hollywood by her childhood friend Longy Zwillman.
Once Siegel and Sedway had control of the extras union, they began to lean on the stars. At one of those Hollywood parties, Ben would approach a highly paid actor and tell him that he was “putting him down for $10,000 for the extras.”
“What do you mean,” was probably the usual response.
Bugsy would point out that the star would be unable to work on his next picture if the producer couldn’t hire any extras.
“What happens if the extras walk out just like that?” Siegel would say, with a snap of his fingers. “You can’t get more ‘cause they’re all in my outfit, so no more pictures.”
In his first year in Hollywood, Bugsy received more than $400,000 in one-way “loans” from movie stars, the same people who were so desperate to have him at their parties.
A California First
If Bugsy was in town, murder couldn’t be far behind.
While Ben cavorted with the stars, Lepke Buchalter, Bugsy’s former boss in the Murder, Inc. operation, had become Tom Dewey’s latest target. With Kid Twist Reles singing in the D.A.’s office, Lepke had been forced underground and was waging a war of extermination in an effort to pare down Dewey’s witness list. One of the Syndicate gangsters who had lammed at the same time was Harry Schacter, a.k.a. Harry “Big Greenie” Greenberg.
Big Greenie first headed up to Montreal, but started to run low on funds. He wrote to his friends in Brooklyn, and in a thinly veiled threat, asked them to send him some cash.
“I hope you guys aren’t forgetting about me,” he wrote, intimating that he had information Dewey would find useful. “You better not.” In sending that letter, Big Greenie signed his own death warrant. From where he was hiding in Coney Island, Lepke, through his boss pro tempore, Mendy Weiss, ordered Harry “taken care of.”
“We all liked Big Greenie,” said Doc Stacher. “But this was disloyalty and Allie “Tick Tock” Tannenbaum was told to bump him off.”
Before “Tick-Tock”, the Murder, Inc. gunsel assigned to the hit, could get up to Canada, Big Greenie realized the silence that resulted after his letter probably meant he was on Lepke’s list. Harry fled to Detroit, where his old friends in the Purple Gang met him.
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Allie “Tick Tock” Tannenbaum
The Purples, led by Abe Bernstein, gave Harry a warm welcome. The hospitality was designed to keep Greenberg off-balance until Allie could get to the Motor City from New York. But as Burton Turkus, the Brooklyn D.A. who would later send Lepke to the chair, said, “Harry was no doorknob in the matter of brains.” Greenberg saw through Bernstein’s ruse and fled as far west as he could go – straight into the arms of Bugsy Siegel.
The long arm of Murder, Inc. reached out and tapped Bugsy, alerting him to Greenberg’s presence in Los Angeles and telling him to help Allie make the hit.
“It’s a contract,” Mendy told Ben – meaning failure wasn’t an option. “But we’re sending you help.”
Siegel was pleased that Lepke wanted him to take the job. To Bugsy, it meant that he was the boss in California, and that his operation was on the Syndicate’s A-list. Bugsy enlisted the help of his brother-in-law, Whitey Krakow, and a West Coast fight promoter named Frankie Carbo. Tick-Tock showed up from the East Coast and completed the crew, bringing weapons supplied by Longy Zwillman. Sholem Bernstein, a loner who did contract work for the various bosses around the country, happened to pay a visit to Bugsy about the same time. Sholem’s specialties included murder and car theft, and he was told to clip a car. Bernstein, who was on vacation at the time and had just dropped by to share a drink with his fellow New Yorker, reluctantly agreed.
By this time, Ben was too important to the Syndicate to get involved in a rubout. But killing for Bugsy was entertainment and he insisted in being part of the contract. His friends told him in no uncertain terms that this was a mistake, but he wouldn’t listen.
“We all begged Bugsy to keep out of the shooting,” Doc recalled years later. “He was too big a man by this time to become personally involved. But Bugsy wouldn’t listen. He said Greenberg was a menace to all of us and if the cops grabbed him he could tell the whole story of our outfit back to the 1920s.”
Bugsy found out that Big Greenie was living at 1094 W. Vista Del Mar in L.A. and in tried and true Murder, Inc. form, he set about stalking the lamster to determine the best way to make the hit.
Bad vibes surrounded this hit from the beginning. Bugsy wasn’t supposed to be involved and Sholem didn’t want to be, and the two began arguing from the start. Steal a car and put it in the parking lot down the street from the office, Ben told the car thief. Bernstein, who had stolen nearly a hundred cars for similar jobs across the country, disagreed. Usually, the cars were stolen and dropped in an out-of-the-way place like a rented garage. Leaving the car in the open was a serious breach of his code. But Sholem knew better than to argue with Bugsy and did what he was told. In short order, the owner of the car reported it stolen and the cops quickly recovered it.
This time, Sholem politely suggested to Ben that a different tack be tried. True-to-form, Bugsy exploded.
“Who the hell are you to tell me how to do a job!” he shouted. “Out here, it goes my way. And don’t you forget it!”
The hell with him, Sholem said to himself. “If Bugsy wants it done his way, he can do it himself.” The freelancer got into his car and headed east.
Sholem’s desertion was a serious violation of Syndicate ethics. Bugsy was forced to find someone else to heist a car, setting the hit back several days.
Meanwhile, Carbo and Whitey reported that Big Greenie was a creature of habit and the hit could be done at any time. Each evening, Greenberg went out for a drive, picked up the paper and returned to his apartment. On November 22, when he went out, the gunmen were waiting for him. As Big Greenie returned with his paper, Tick-Tock emerged from the shadows and pumped several slugs into his old friend. Harry Greenberg has the unlucky distinction of being Murder, Inc.’s first California rubout.
The Wire Service
Of course, Siegel wasn’t sent to Los Angeles just to be on call in case Murder, Inc. needed some killing done. The West Coast was a huge, untapped resource for the mob and Siegel’s primary duty was to extend a specific Syndicate business to California.
Bookmakers need a quick, confidential and reliable method of reporting the winners of the thousands of horse races that they take action on. These wire services operate over a nationwide network, reporting anything that might have an impact on betting or the outcome of a race. The information they supplied included track conditions, jockey changes, scratches, post times and, of course, results. In addition, the wire services provided bookies with up-to-the-minute betting odds, which could tip them to fixes or unusually heavy action on a particular horse.
Race results on the legal Western Union wire were restricted by law. Western Union was only allowed to send the results after the race was declared official, which in many cases, a photofinish or an objection by a jockey, can be delayed by several minutes. This delay allows certain unscrupulous (and very gutsy!) bettors with inside information to take advantage of bookmakers by doing something called “past posting:” getting the unofficial results of the race and placing a bet before the bookmakers get the official finish. No serious bookmaker could dare operate without access to an illegal wire.
At the beginning of the 1940s, two major nationwide wire services were in operation. The first, more established service was called the Continental Wire Service, operated by a Chicago gangster named James Ragan. Also operating out of the Windy City was the service that had the backing of the Syndicate. Trans America Wire was owned and operated by the Capone gang with the assistance of Syndicate-backed thugs at the nation’s horse tracks.
One of Ben’s major tasks in the pre-war 1940s was to get California bookmakers to subscribe to the Trans America wire and drop Ragan’s service. Siegel and his helpers from Chicago concentrated on setting up Trans America in Nevada and Arizona before moving into California where Continental had a near-monopoly. It took him nearly six years, but Bugsy was finally able to eliminate Continental – and James Ragan at the same time – through standard mob strong-arm methods.
When Ragan was gunned down in Chicago – cryptically, his last words were that “Dragna is the Capone of California,” Continental fell apart quickly and Trans America took over. Expressing its profound appreciation to Siegel, Dragna and Jack’s new lieutenant Mickey Cohen, the Syndicate back east told them it would now be handling the take from the wire services.
Bugsy balked at that. He was making $25,000 a month from the wire service’s operations in Las Vegas alone. In no uncertain terms, Siegel told the Syndicate to keep its mitts off the wire service; he would run it his way and keep the profits, thank you very much.
“I am gonna run the wire here,” he told his friends back east. “And it is all mine.”
Such defiance merited a death sentence; even Bugsy knew that. Siegel was virtually daring the Syndicate to come and get him.
To be continued – Originally posted in Crime Library
