But facing antagonistic public officials who had knowledge of his extensive criminal background, he sold the El Cortez for a profit and began looking for other opportunities. When he first arrived, Siegel purchased the El Cortez hotel with the intent of expanding it and building his empire there.

In 1945, Siegel moved to Vegas with his girlfriend Virginia Hill, and set about building a new and improved gambling operation. In 1937, he set up bootlegging and gambling operations in California, and dabbled in prostitution and narcotics. Siegel had played a large part in killing off a number of New York's veteran gangsters. In Brooklyn, Siegel had, along with Meyer Lansky, established Murder, Inc., a syndicate of Jewish mobsters that ran a group of contract killers. Siegel was a notorious mobster who had built a criminal empire through bootlegging, gambling, and assassination in Brooklyn before moving to Vegas. So Siegel began supervising the construction of the casino. After running into budget problems, Wilkerson accepted one million dollars from a group of New York gangsters headed by Meyer Lansky, and granted them control over two-thirds of the casino.Īt this point, Lansky appointed Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel to run the hotel for him and to make him a profit. The hotel had been the brainchild of Billy Wilkerson, who envisioned a European-style hotel and casino, a far cry from the rustic, western-themed establishments that were already present in Vegas. The Flamingo Hotel, opened by Bugsy Siegel in 1946, where Esme spends her teenage years, was the third gambling establishment to open on the Strip.

This article relates to The Magnificent Esme Wells

The flamingo hotel