Benjamin Siegel was gunned down in a Beverly Hills mansion on June 20, 1947, a grisly end for a man who spent his life craving legitimate high-society glamour. Born in Williamsburg in 1906 to impoverished immigrants, he rejected poverty for the streets, running a pushcart protection racket that became the blueprint for everything he did later.

This deep dive is a structural history of how American organized crime transformed from chaotic turf wars into a national corporate enterprise, and how Siegel's colossal ego helped build modern Las Vegas only for his own board of directors to order his corporate termination.

• His partnership with Meyer Lansky and the 1929 Atlantic City Conference that formed the National Crime Syndicate
• His role in Murder Incorporated and the elimination of the old-guard bosses
• His move west, ...