Everybody knows that Vegas and the mob went hand in hand from around the 1940s to the 1980s, but do we all know why that was the case, and who was responsible for it?
If you have read our page on the History of Las Vegas, you will have come across the name Bugsy Siegel already – he’s a fairly famous name in any case thanks to his dramatic end – but you are much less likely to have heard of Guy McAfee.
Both men had underworld connections, and both men had a dramatic impact on Las Vegas we know and love today, but their impact wasn’t always positive.
Indeed, while it is true that without their input Vegas would be unlikely to have grown in the way it did, it is also because of them that the City of Sin had the reputation it had for such a long time, a reputation it is still struggling to shake off completely.
So who were these men? Arguably the most important people in the history of Vegas, but at what cost to others, and to themselves?
Who Was Guy McAfee?
He joined the LAPD in 1913 and even ended up being the head of the vice squad there eventually, which is pretty funny when you learn that he was also making money on the other side of the law, running illegal casinos and brothels – the very venues his team was tasked with shutting down.
No wonder corruption was such a big problem back then.
He was a brilliant cop when he wanted to be though by all accounts, once chasing down 3 opium smugglers and apprehending them all while unarmed, and on another occasion reportedly swinging on a rope and smashing through a skylight to break up a fan tan game. James Bond stuff.
Nevertheless, his service was littered with suspensions and accusations of corruption, and he was finally dismissed in 1917 after being caught running a dice game in the police station!
After a brief hiatus in France volunteering with the engineers during WW1, he was actually reinstated to the LAPD if you can believe it, before once more being suspended, getting his badge back, then resigning a week later, in 1920.
He remarried soon after, to a woman who was known to be a madam at a brothel (or a house offering ‘furnished rooms’ as they were called at the time), and while this marriage was more successful than the first, he become a widower in 1932.
During the decades since his time with the LAPD, McAfee continued to run illegal clubs and casinos, including a very famous private venue called The Clover Club, which was popular with Hollywood stars and local people of importance.
He was also alleged to have been connected to a number of murders, although he was never charged with any of them. But things were getting more and more difficult, and the arrival of Bugsy Siegel in 1935 – the New York mob’s ‘man on the West coast’ – did nothing to calm McAfee’s nerves.
Moving to Vegas
By 1939, with increasing pressure from local government to clean up LA, other firms breathing down his neck, and a reputation as the Al Capone of Los Angeles, Guy McAfee saw an opportunity to take his business legitimate in Las Vegas, which had legalised gambling in 1931.
That said, he is still thought to have run a prostitution syndicate in LA from afar, with 31 illegal brothels operating under him.
In Vegas though, McAfee got his hands on his first legitimate gambling business, the Pair O’Dice Club (later changed to the 91 Club) on Highway 91, and now known as Las Vegas Boulevard.
In the space of a few short years, he either owned or was co-managing:
- The 91 Club (1939)
- The Frontier Club (1939)
- El Rancho (1941)
- Pioneer Club (1942)
- The Golden Nugget (1946)
Five casinos in 7 years, and all during the disruption of WW2. On top of these, he also owned bars and hotels in the same area.
It was around this time that McAfee is said to have started referring to the area as the Las Vegas strip, and he is still credited with naming the area that people call ‘the strip’ to this day. It makes sense, he spent 20 years working on and around the Sunset Strip in LA after all.
Although he called El Rancho home, to the locals McAfee was most synonymous with The Golden Nugget, where he was president until his retirement in 1960.
Having successfully turned Vegas from a dusty town to a gambling Mecca full of neon signs and exciting nightlife, McAfee was able to settle in and simply run his businesses, continuing to invest in the industry throughout the 1950’s.
He even tried to buy the Flamingo Hotel in 1950, once owned by his now dead rival Bugsy Siegel, but the deal fell through so he bought the Last Frontier instead, adding a super modern hotel to the complex in 1954, and paving the way for the mega resorts of the future.
Guy McAfee retired in 1960, but only because his health was failing. An avid hunter, he had fallen from a horse back in 1951, and had never properly gotten over it, suffering with a heart condition that eventually took his life in February, 1960.
Who Was Bugsy Siegal?
Another man who was hugely influential in the boom years of Las Vegas, but one who met a rather more grizzly end, was Bugsy Siegel.
While Guy McAfee at least did a good impression of a legitimate businessman, Siegel was an out and out mobster.
He might have a cool sounding name, but back then the term ‘bugs’ meant crazy, so as you can imagine, Bugsy was not his real name, it was a nickname he earned, and not because he went a bit mad art parties.
Born Benjamin Siegel in New York in 1906, Bugsy was almost destined for a life of crime. His childhood friends were the likes of Meyer Lansky – better known as ‘The mob’s Accountant’ – and Al Capone, who probably doesn’t need introducing.
This gave him a unique position at the time, since he was part of the Jewish mob but also had very strong ties and deep friendships within the Italian American mafia. He was there when the National Crime Syndicate was formed, for example, and not as a bit part player either.
His other notorious claim to fame was the Murder Inc. Organisation; a group of people who worked together to do exactly what it says on the tin. Their biggest hit is probably the one ordered by Lucky Luciano, on his own boss Joe Masseria, who ran what would become the Genovese Crime Family.
Essentially, Siegel was there at every stage of the process that formed the world of organised crime we know today.
Moving to Los Angeles
Bugsy had committed many violent crimes, but he made his money as a bootlegger during the prohibition era, and was a wealthy man by the 1930s.
However, his criminal activities were making life hard from him in New York, with both the police and rival criminals after him, so when his associates wanted someone to move to the West Coast to set up business there, he was an obvious fit.
He settled in Los Angeles in the mid 1930s and immediately began treading on the toes of Guy McAfee, working with one of McAfee’s rivals, Jack Dragna, and setting up illegal bookmaking wires, prostitution rackets, and even ran drugs across the border with Mexico.
While in Los Angeles, Bugsy – who hated the nickname by the way – became a fixture at VIP events and nights out, becoming friends with many Hollywood stars of the day, the social elite, and even world leaders.
His association with Countess Dorothy di Frasso led to him meeting Mussolini in 1938 and 1939, whom he tried to sell guns and later atomite to; and also to meeting Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goring in 1939, who he didn’t like at all and offered to kill, personally.
His reputation for violence wasn’t going down so well in Los Angeles though, especially now he was trying to work with legitimate business people, and his connection to the particularly famous murder case of Harry Greenburg was doing him no favours.
First Mafia Casino in Las Vegas
He had already established some operations in Vegas, but had left the running of them to a subordinate. Now he was going to re-locate there permanently.
The important thing to note about the Flamingo project however, was that he used money borrowed from his mafia connections to finance it.
After a short time, he essentially forced Wilkerson to hand over full ownership of the club to him, and therefore the mob, and it became the first big mob run casino in Vegas… but on its initial opening it was a flop.
The venue wasn’t ready despite massive overspending, high profile guests failed to show up for the grand opening, and bad weather kept regular punters away too. Even worse, those who did show up kept winning.
It was the worst possible start and the casino was losing money fast, the bosses at the top were getting impatient for a return on their investment, and the pressure was mounting on Bugsy.
He relaunched the venue much more successfully, starting a trend glitzy opening ceremonies and features like air cooled rooms, but it was too little too late.
He had spent too much and taken too long, and the mafia weren’t taking kindly to rumours that Bugsy’s new girlfriend, Virginia Hill, had been skimming money off the top to fund her extravagant lifestyle.
On June 20th, 1947, Bugsy was reading a newspaper in his girlfriends house in Beverley Hills, when an unknown gunman fired through the window hitting Siegel several times, including twice in the head. He was killed instantly, and the image of his corpse was printed in newspapers the next day. No sooner was he dead, but his mafioso associated walked into the Flamingo club and took control for themselves, and the association between Vegas and the mob was complete.
Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel’s murder remains officially unsolved, and with pretty much everyone who could shed light on the story now long dead too, it will probably stay that way forever.