FBI Los Angeles letter to the Director on the killing of Benjamin Siegel (1 July 1947)

Scans 5 to 12 of the FBI Vault’s “Bugsy Siegel” file, Part 30, are a Federal Bureau of Investigation letter from the Los Angeles office, dated July 1, 1947, marked “Confidential” and “Airmail, Special Delivery,” addressed to the Director. The reference line reads “The Killing of Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel; Miscellaneous, Information Concerning Crime Survey,” and the letter answers a Salt Lake City teletype of June 24, 1947 asking for details. Large parts are redacted. Scans 5, 7 and 8 were read as page images; the first is stored here.

The letter states that the killing “was brought to the attention of this office after the shooting, at 10:50 P.M. on June 20, 1947,” by a telephone call. It places the shooting in the living room at 810 North Linden Drive, Beverly Hills, “Virginia Hill’s residence,” with Allen Smiley present. The first telephone report, as the letter gives it, said Siegel had been shot five times and that seven bullets of .45 caliber were fired. Later in the letter, scan 8 reports that seven cartridges of 30 caliber size were found outside the window, that the bullets “were copper jacketed, which were no doubt shot from a U. S. Army Carbine Rifle,” that Siegel “was seated four feet from the window which was fourteen feet from the spot where the carbine was rested on a lattice,” and that “Nine shots were evidently fired.” The two accounts differ, and the letter does not reconcile them.

Scan 7 records that from June 21 through June 26 the death “received newspaper headline publicity in Los Angeles,” and lists proposed reasons the papers gave, including “gang warfare and dope smuggling,” losses at Las Vegas gambling clubs, and the claim that Siegel’s interest in the Flamingo “drained his resources.” It also records unverified statements telephoned to the office by callers whose names are redacted. These are press theories and callers’ claims, not findings of the FBI. Later pages of the letter summarize testimony at the coroner’s inquest. As far as the OCR can be read, a July 1947 letter in Part 23 of the same file tells the Los Angeles office that the Bureau had no jurisdiction because no federal violation was involved; that page image was not read for this record. This archive does not state who killed Siegel.