The Woman Who Moved the Mob's Money and Built Las Vegas

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An Old Fashioned, some red lipstick and a black dress…sigh, there’s just something undeniable about a good ol’ classic. The beloved Vegas showgirl may be an endangered species these days (insert tear), but “VEGAS! THE SHOW” preserved those feather-clad beauties and the likes of an era when everything was flashier and dripping with sophistication. What’s that you ask? Can a show filled with gorgeous and talented women a la Rat Pack era really exist in the here and now? Oh yes my friend, it sure can and all we have to say is raise that curtain and let the good times roll. With a little song, a lot of dance and that certain sultry allure that only old timey Vegas could pull off, this is a trip down memory lane and, well, it’s pretty legit. The costumes are fun, funky, sexy and so real. Ok, well maybe not the candy-themed costumes but hell, their Sammy Davis Jr. sure had us pining for an autograph. For a city that was built on pure, raw talent and obviously dolla dolla bills, this show celebrates iconic moments from the city's rich entertainment history through the decades that made the Vegas we know and love today. And we’ll tip our top hats to that.
RockSinCity
Published
March 24th, 1966. A frozen field above Salzburg. A 49-year-old woman lies in the snow beside a brook. To the local police she is Virginia Hauser — a housewife married to an Austrian ski instructor.

She was born Oney Virginia Hill in Lipscomb, Alabama, and for two decades she carried more of the American underworld's money than almost anyone alive.

She learned the trade from Joe Epstein, an accountant for the Chicago Outfit who found her waiting tables at the 1933 World's Fair. He never taught her to gamble. He taught her to move money — how to carry it, how to hide it, how to walk it into a bank and out of a country. Chicago. New York. Mexico City. Havana. Accounts in Zurich and Geneva opened under names that were not hers.

Then came Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the Flamingo, and six million dollars that was supposed to be one.

On June 20, 1947, nine shots came through a window on North Linden Drive in Beverly Hills. Virginia Hill was four thousand miles away in Paris. No one was ever charged. No one has ever been tried.

In 1951 the Kefauver Committee put her on live television and asked how a woman who had never held a steady job came to own cars, furs and homes on two continents. Her answer made the front pages. She named no one.

This is the story of the courier who held the accounts, the secret, and the name of whoever gave the order in Havana — and who took all three into an alpine field.

CHAPTERS
0:00 A body in the snow, March 1966
1:01 Alabama: born Oney Virginia Hill
1:35 Chicago, 1933 — Joe Epstein finds her
2:23 Learning to move money
3:20 "The Queen of the Mob"
3:37 Mexico City, Havana, Zurich
4:12 Bugsy Siegel goes west
5:11 The Flamingo
5:57 Six million dollars — and the skim
7:18 Opening night disaster
7:55 The meeting in Havana
8:08 June 20, 1947 — nine shots
9:33 From courier to loose end
10:10 The Kefauver hearings, 1951
11:36 Exile, the IRS, and Hans Hauser
12:37 The last threat
13:04 March 24, 1966 — into the snow
13:40 What she took with her

SOURCES & NOTE
This video is a narrative account drawn from public reporting, Kefauver Committee
testimony and published histories of the Chicago Outfit and the Flamingo. Where the
record is contested — the origin of the Flamingo's name, the reason she left for
Paris, whether she made a final threat — it is stated as contested, not as fact.
The murder of Benjamin Siegel remains officially unsolved.

#VirginiaHill #BugsySiegel #Mafia
Category
Vegas Untold
Tags
virginia hill, bugsy siegel, virginia hill mob
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