Bugsy Siegel - Las Vegas

Las Vegas

Siegel desired to be a legitimate businessman, but the respectability he craved was beyond his reach. In spring 1946, he saw an opportunity to achieve legitimacy in William R. Wilkerson's Flamingo Hotel.

Las Vegas gave Siegel his second opportunity to reinvent himself. Siegel had traveled to Southern Nevada in 1934 with Meyer Lansky's lieutenant Moe Sedway, on Lansky's orders to explore expanding operations. There were opportunities in providing illicit services to the crews constructing the Hoover Dam. Lansky had turned the desert over to Siegel. But Siegel, wanting nothing to do with it, turned it over to Moe Sedway and fled for Hollywood.

Lansky pressured Siegel to represent them in Wilkerson's desert project. Someone had to watchdog their interests. Siegel, who knew Wilkerson and lived near him in Beverly Hills, was the obvious choice as a liaison, but Siegel was infuriated. He wanted no part in any operation that took him back to Nevada permanently. It meant forsaking Beverly Hills and his playboy life and enduring the heat of Nevada. At Lansky's insistence, however, Siegel consented.