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Siegel was one of the founders and leaders of [[Murder, Inc.]]<ref name="Killer Ring"/> and became a [[Rum-running|bootlegger]] during [[Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|American Prohibition]]. The [[Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution|Twenty-first Amendment]] was passed in 1933 repealing Prohibition, and he turned to gambling. In 1936, he left [[New York (state)|New York]] and moved to [[California]].{{sfnp|Turkus|Feder|2003|p=268}} His time as a mobster during this period was mainly as a hitman and muscle, as he was noted for his prowess with guns and violence. In 1941, Siegel was tried for the murder of friend and fellow mobster [[Harry Greenberg]], who had turned informant. He was acquitted in 1942.
Siegel traveled to [[Las Vegas]], [[Nevada]], where he handled and financed some of the original casinos.{{sfnp|Turkus|Feder|2003|pp=284–285}} He assisted developer [[William R. Wilkerson]]'s [[Flamingo Las Vegas|Flamingo Hotel]] after Wilkerson ran out of funds.{{sfnp|Wilkerson|2000|p=141}} Siegel assumed control of the project and managed the final stages of construction. The Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946 in a driving rainstorm, resulting in a poor reception and technical difficulties, and it soon closed. It reopened in March 1947 with a finished hotel, but by then his mob partners were convinced that an estimated US$1 million of the construction budget overrun had been skimmed by Siegel's girlfriend [[Virginia Hill]] or by both of them. On June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot dead at the age of 41 by a sniper through the window of Hill's Linden Drive mansion in [[Beverly Hills, California]].
==Early life==
Benjamin Siegel<ref name='Gragg, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel'>{{cite book|first=Larry|last=Gragg|title=Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel: The Gangster, The Flamingo, and the Making of Modern Las Vegas|publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group|Praeger]]|location=Santa Barbara, California|year=2015|pages=1–2|isbn=9781440801853}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.biography.com/people/bugsy-siegel-9542063|title=Bugsy Siegel |website=Biography.com|publisher=A&E Television Networks|access-date=May 15, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180422174529/https://www.biography.com/people/bugsy-siegel-9542063 |archive-date=April 22, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> was born on February 28, 1906, in the [[Williamsburg, Brooklyn|Williamsburg]] neighborhood of [[Brooklyn]] in [[New York City, New York]], the second of five children of a poor [[Ashkenazi Jewish]] family that had emigrated to the U.S. from the [[Galicia (Eastern Europe)|Galicia]] region of what was then [[Austria-Hungary]].<ref name='Gragg, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel'/><ref>"Mobsters: Bugsy Siegel". 2 minutes in. Broadcast: April 3, 2007, [[The Biography Channel]].</ref><ref name="Biography of a Gangster">{{cite web|title=Biography of a Gangster|url=http://www.essortment.com/benjamin-bugsy-siegel-biography-gangster-20596.html|work=Essortment.com|access-date=May 31, 2012|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120705023658/http://www.essortment.com/benjamin-bugsy-siegel-biography-gangster-20596.html|archive-date=July 5, 2012}}</ref> His parents, Jennie (Riechenthal) and Max Siegel, constantly worked for meager wages.<ref>{{cite book|first=Paul|last=Donnelley|title=Assassination! |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HLCXAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA162 |publisher=Dataday|location=London |year=2012 |pages=162–165|isbn=9781908963031}}</ref> As a boy, Siegel left school and joined a gang on [[Lafayette Street]] on the [[Lower East Side]] of [[Manhattan]]. He committed mainly thefts until he met [[Moe Sedway]]. Together with Sedway, he developed a [[protection racket]] in which he threatened to incinerate pushcart owners' merchandise unless they paid him a dollar.<ref>{{cite news |first=Ed |last=Koch |date=May 15, 2008 |title='Bugsy' Siegel – The mob's man in Vegas |work=[[Las Vegas Sun]] |url=https://lasvegassun.com/news/2008/may/15/mobs-man-vega/ |access-date=May 20, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180721191857/https://lasvegassun.com/news/2008/may/15/mobs-man-vega/ |archive-date=July 21, 2018 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfnp|Jennings|1992|p=25}} He soon built up a lengthy criminal record, dating from his teenage years, that included armed [[robbery]], rape and murder.<ref>{{cite book |first=Alton |last=Pryor |title= Outlaws and Gunslingers |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=ty-j92yWtQ0C&q=bugsy%20siegel%20robbery%20rape&pg=PA29 |publisher= Stagecoach Publishing |location= Roseville, California |year=2001 |page=29 |isbn= 978-0966005363}}</ref>
===The Bugs and Meyer
{{Main|The Bugs and Meyer Mob}}
During adolescence, Siegel befriended [[Meyer Lansky]], who applied a brilliant intellect to forming a small mob whose activities expanded to gambling and [[Motor vehicle theft|car theft]]. Lansky, who had already had a run-in with [[Lucky Luciano|Charles "Lucky" Luciano]], saw a need for the Jewish boys of his Brooklyn neighborhood to organize in the same manner as the [[Italian diaspora|Italians]] and [[Irish diaspora|Irish]]. The first person he recruited for his gang was Siegel.{{sfnp|Eisenberg|Dan|Landau|1979|pp=55–56}}
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