Hollywood’s ‘Bugsy’ is entertaining but plays fast and loose with the facts

In the 1991 movie Bugsy, Warren Beatty, portraying mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, stands in the desert near Highway 91 south…


Separating fact from fiction on the Flamingo Hotel’s 75th anniversary

Much of what Americans know about Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel comes from watching the 1991 film Bugsy. That certainly applies to…


Hot Springs is soaked in Mob lore

Long before Las Vegas became the underworld’s casino playground, Hot Springs, Arkansas, was home away from home for the most…


Eighty years ago, Ciro ‘The Artichoke King’ Terranova ‘died of a broken heart’

Eighty years ago last month, one of Mob history’s oddball characters crossed into the great gangland netherworld. Ciro “The Artichoke…


Seventy years ago today, Bugsy Siegel’s storied Mob life came to an abrupt end

It is important to our Museum and to me as the resident historian that criminals and their criminal acts are…


Seventy years ago, Luciano’s Havana sojourn was cut short

Written February 2017 In 1946, Charles “Lucky” Luciano was persona non grata in America. Though he was granted a pardon…


Gangster-built Golden Nugget turns 70

By the late summer of 1946, Guy McAfee was the best-known big shot in Las Vegas. McAfee, 58, had spent…


Virginia Hill: ‘Queen of the Mob’ was no one’s pushover

Third in a series of profiles for Women’s History Month. On March 24, 1966, passersby walking on a footpath beside…