Did Esta Siegel Ever Marry Again?

Virginia Colina

Third in a series of profiles for Women's History Month.

On March 24, 1966, passersby walking on a footpath abreast a picturesque brook near Salzburg, Republic of austria, found the body of a woman in the snow beside a tree. Her coat was neatly folded on the ground. A possible suicide notation indicated the person was simply "tired of life."

The woman was Virginia Colina, the sometime so-called "Queen of the Mob," a courtesan and entrusted cash courier for household-proper noun American gangsters from the mid-1930s through the 1940s. An Austrian official concluded the 49-yr-erstwhile Virginia died of a cocky-administered overdose of sedatives, not a surprise given her history of near-fatal pill-swallowing going dorsum to the 1940s.

Hill, born in 1916, was surely something of a mental case, perhaps diagnosed today as bipolar, sociopathic, borderline personality or worse. But while nevertheless only a teenager in 1934, she showed her mettle as the cute and beguiling redheaded apprentice of Mob bookmaker Joe Epstein in the rough and corrupt urban center of Chicago. Soon, with incredible ease, using her looks, sexual liaisons and talents for laundering money and stolen merchandise, Hill rose higher than any other woman in the national underworld, an equal among the nigh infamous male racketeers in the United States, among them Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Johnny Rosselli, Charles and Joe Fischetti, Tony Accardo, Frank Nitti, William "Ice Option Willie" Alderman, Jack Dragna and, most famously, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.

Fifty-fifty every bit late every bit 1949, Hill was described every bit the "intellectual director" of the Chicago Outfit'southward narcotics trafficking ring in United mexican states by making the gang's "fiscal and social contacts" and entering "high Mexican social club through her many lovers," according to a 1951 report past Rudolph Halley, lead counsel to the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Criminal offense in Interstate Commerce, known as the Kefauver Committee.

Just Loma is best known for her relationship with Siegel, a stormy and sex-charged union of two professional criminals, experts in money laundering, gambling, intimidation, fraud and, after, Mexican narcotics. The 2, both at times irrational, started seeing each other every bit early on as 1937 in New York and resumed their affair total bore at actor George Raft's Hollywood dwelling in 1939. To the still-married Siegel, Loma was his ideal woman in all respects. Their intense pairing on the West Coast ironically fused the interests of rival Mob factions – Siegel'south ties to New York boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who used Siegel to gain a foothold in the Westward'due south race wire and gambling rackets, and Loma's association with the Chicago Outfit'south Charles Fischetti and Fischetti's Los Angeles boss, Jack Dragna, who liked to hear her tell what Siegel was up to.

Dragna, who detested Siegel, was said to take in one case remarked that Loma "was the only woman who could be trusted to keep her oral cavity shut." Loma's longtime fiscal provider, Epstein, who would be unusually dedicated to her for decades, reportedly confided to Lansky: "Once that girl is nether your peel, information technology's like a cancer. It's incurable."

Her bail with the every bit smitten Siegel, whom she regarded as the greatest of her many lovers, would take them to Las Vegas, which she grew to detest, in 1945 for the fateful edifice, opening, closing and reopening of the syndicate-financed Flamingo hotel-casino. Rumors swirled that by 1947 Siegel had skimmed $2 million of the Flamingo'southward building "costs" of $half-dozen 1000000 and gave information technology to his veteran cash-conveying girlfriend to hide in a Swiss depository financial institution. The terminate would come days after Chicago ordered Hill to get out Las Vegas in early June 1947 and to tell Siegel she was going to purchase wines for the Flamingo in Paris. Siegel called a lease aeroplane airplane pilot to wing her solo to Los Angeles. Siegel is said to have taken $600,000 in cash for his buddy "Fat Irish" Greenish to hold (Greenish later agreed to render the money to Lansky). Siegel flew to Los Angeles for the Beverly Hills abode Hill rented (with Siegel's coin) from Hill's friend, Juan Romero, her former Hollywood pic agent. Inside the firm, unawares, Siegel was killed by a rifle shot by someone – never apprehended – through the front window, almost certainly a gangland striking, on June 20, 1947. Hill get-go heard almost it from a swain reveler during a party on a boat in Paris.

Virginia's backstory started at her birthplace, the pocket-size boondocks of Lipscomb, Alabama, on August 26, 1916. She was i of nine or 10 children fathered past Mack Hill, a trader in horses and mules. Mack beat her during her childhood until one twenty-four hours she threw a hot skillet at him. She was sexually agile with boys at age 12 and allegedly married a mysterious homo named George when she was only 14. At 17, she moved with George to Chicago in 1933, where she dumped him. She then worked every bit a side prove "shimmy" dancer at Chicago's "A Century of Progress Exposition" and, some merits, as a prostitute. A year later, she was a waitress in a short skirt at the San Carlo Italian Hamlet, a hangout for the Capone gang, still thriving afterwards boss Al Capone was sent to federal prison in 1931. At the San Carlo, she met a customer, Epstein, the Capone grouping's bookmaker and accounts homo for Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik. The chance coming together with Epstein would lead to Virginia's futurity as the mistress, cash carrier, coin launderer and spy for many of America'south leading racketeers.

Epstein was impressed past Colina'southward no-nonsense demeanor. He met Colina again at a party in June 1934 and recruited her to wash Outfit racket money by placing wagers at Chicago horse race tracks. Epstein'due south betting schemes enabled him to increase his odds of winning. The funds from winning bets could then exist reported to the Internal Revenue Service as legitimate income. Hill, given greenbacks to bet $i,000, $2,000 and more per race, followed Epstein's precise instructions, brought back the winning tickets and got a 10 percent share of the proceeds. He showed her how to lure unsuspecting men into "sucker" bets – pure profit for bookies – such as for fixed battle matches. She passed with flying colors.

Epstein bought her expensive clothes and had her board planes carrying stolen jewels and furs for auction out of state. Her savvy, discretion and vulgar, wisecracking conversation at the Outfit'due south hangout, the Plantation Society, impressed those she met. By 1935, still not even so 20 years old, Hill was invited to confer about concern with Frank Nitti, Charles Fischetti and others in the Outfit'southward top echelon.

Hill, well-dressed and bejeweled, was seen every bit a shrewd and trusted courier of cash and a less-obvious target of frisking by police force enforcement than the typical male person Mob torpedo. In the mid- and late 1930s, Hill was the height moll of the underworld. Her fellow/benefactors included Major Riddle, a rich trucking and oil tycoon, Chicago Outfit associate and belatedly Las Vegas casino mogul. In a cloak-and-dagger scheme hatched by Epstein, Loma agreed to be Riddle'southward paramour for more than a twelvemonth, enticing Riddle to paw over thousands in cash for nonexistent "investments" that she but delivered to Epstein. She did almost anything for Epstein, including having sexual practice with men to obtain information. She fifty-fifty, on a dare without hesitation, gave oral sex to Charles Fischetti, Guzik and several other acme Outfit men in front of shocked guests – including Fischetti's wife – at a Christmas party in 1936.

The Outfit had effectually this fourth dimension fabricated a deal with Luciano's New York gang, allowing for common investments in each other'southward vice rackets. Epstein sent Loma dorsum Due east, instructing her to utilize her wilds on the vain Adonis, the king of New York's vice schemes, to see if he was holding up his end with Chicago. Hill relished the office. She moved to New York and laundered tens of thousands in greenbacks she received in the mail from Epstein. In Adonis, she found common physical attraction. She helped Adonis pull scams, collect and deliver racket-earned cash. They made money together during their affair, only neither was faithful to the other.

One of Adonis' main earners at the time was Siegel. Colina told the Kefauver Committee in 1951 that she met Siegel in 1942 or 1943, just she likely first saw the handsome, blue-eyed Siegel in 1937 while in the company of Adonis and almost immediately started a sexual relationship with Adonis' underling. This hurt and enraged Adonis. He fabricated his anger known to the Outfit, which before long cut Loma'south assart. She moved to be near her female parent in Georgia, and then headed to Hollywood, where ane day she got into a loud argument with a date, the famed actor Errol Flynn, at the Brown Derby restaurant. Her name made it into the national gossip columns.

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel

The yr 1939 would be a busy one. She had her hot dalliance with Siegel in Raft's Los Angeles home merely it did not last. She took up with a Mexican nightclub dancer named Miguelito Valdez, returned to Chicago and and so went to Georgia, where she met a 19-year-former college football game histrion at a bar, married him on the spur of the moment and had it annulled six months subsequently. She too may have taken Louis Dragna'southward meridian associate, Johnny Rosselli, every bit a lover. She married Valdez in early 1940 to permit him back into the United States to resume his career. That yr, Siegel sabbatum in jail on a murder rap from August to Nov. She invested Outfit cash into a nightclub in New York, the Hurricane, and appeared at the opening, dancing the rumba in her bare feet with Valdez before news cameras. After the opening, she tricked the hapless Valdez into signing a paper saying it was for a order booking when it was an uncontested divorce understanding.

By then, fluent in Spanish, Hill was directing drug trafficking – specifically heroin – out of Mexico for her Chicago patrons. To curry favor and obtain important information for the Outfit south of the edge, she had affairs with the son of a Mexican finance minister and a continued politician.

All the while, Epstein sent her cash through the post when she asked for information technology, a service her old loyal friend from her teen years would maintain into the mid-1960s. Luciano's top henchman Lansky as well used Hill to distribute Mob greenbacks, likely realizing her double attraction equally a courier who provided sexual favors to the recipient. The seductress served equally a spy, exchanging verbal communications with gangsters and reporting back to Lansky on the latest inside news and gossip.

In the early 1940s, Virginia was traveling from Chicago to New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City doing the bidding of Chicago and Los Angeles Mob figures. She and her brother Chick took interim lessons in Hollywood and tried to land movie parts. She spent thousands, thanks to Epstein, on furs and jewelry. She rented suites of rooms at the Beverly Hills Hotel and hosted lavish parties, dropping a and then-fortune $7,500 on one celebrity shindig. In New York in 1944, she started a relationship with Carl Laemmle, Jr., heir to the fortune left by his movie producer father. He brutal hard for her and bought her expensive gifts, but she rebuffed his advances.

Siegel dodged his murder charge, in the slaying of Mob associate Harry Greenberg, in 1942. He struck Hill during their frequent arguments. In 1944, soon after he allegedly punched and raped Hill, Los Angeles Canton sheriff's deputies arrested him for felony bookmaking. He beat the felony rap but his arrest made the papers. Embarrassed and frustrated dealing with L.A.'s gangsters and constabulary enforcement, he turned his sights on Las Vegas. He had investments there in a race wire at the Northern Lodge and El Cortez casinos. He thought Las Vegas had great potential as a new resort destination for travelers. He wanted Hill to join him there. She refused at first. Dragna contacted her and told her to become to Las Vegas, watch Siegel and report back on his activities.

In 1945, Siegel became a partner with Hollywood nightclub owner and publisher Billy Wilkerson, whose planned Flamingo resort projection in Las Vegas ran out of money later Wilkerson gambled away his cash. Siegel obtained near $i.v million in financing from, among others, Luciano'south crony Lansky and Chicago'due south Fischetti brothers and Murray Humphreys. Colina agreed to come live with him temporarily in Las Vegas.

Siegel fabricated many expensive changes to the Flamingo. Building materials were stolen under his nose and resold, driving up costs and delaying the project. The Mob'southward investment expanded to $vi million past the fourth dimension the casino opened, unfinished, on December 26, 1946. The debut included Raft and a handful of other Hollywood stars as guests but turned out to be a bomb. Lucky gamblers led to losses of about $300,000 (or so veteran thief Siegel'south story goes) in the first two weeks. Siegel closed the gambling hall, finished the hotel rooms and reopened information technology in early 1947.

1 twenty-four hour period in the casino, a boozer and enraged Hill punched a woman. Siegel took Hill upstairs and yelled, "You've fabricated me wait like a bum!" Shortly thereafter, Loma took an overdose of sleeping pills and vicious silent. She survived after Siegel and another man drove her to a hospital to take her stomach pumped.

The Flamingo turned around and earned an income in the spring of 1947, but was still in the red. Siegel's investors were unhappy with the losses and his corrosive personality. On almost June viii, 1947, Hill received orders from the Outfit to go out Las Vegas for Chicago. A airplane pilot, Lew Gourley, later on wrote that Siegel himself called him to lease her a flight to Los Angeles. Loma was "an excellent rider" during the flying merely she objected when Gourley told her that due to heavy fog. they might have to land in Palmdale. Hill said no, that she had to be in Los Angeles within an hour, probable to make a connecting flying. She flew to Chicago and eventually made information technology to Paris. Siegel was shot to decease 12 days subsequently. In the coming weeks in Europe Hill would survive three more suicide attempts and after returning to the states, a 4th in Miami where Siegel had bought her a firm. Subsequently a trip to Mexico, she returned and searched for a home in Reno, Nevada, and Spokane, Washington. By now, federal authorities were investigating her for evading taxes on her cash income.

In early 1950, she traveled to the popular ski resort of Dominicus Valley, Idaho. In that location she met a ski instructor named Hans Hauser, a onetime world champion downhill skier from Austria. Hauser's friend and fellow ski teacher Otto Lang described Colina every bit "far from pretty, a bit short and dumpy" who compulsively pulled out her eyelashes "hair by pilus." Shortly, Lang wrote, some "shady and ominous characters began to drift in and call Virginia and exit again" without skiing. She accepted deliveries of stacks of $100 and $50 bills and threw some gratis parties. The FBI came to investigate, and the lodge wanted her to get out. But Hauser told Lang he wanted to marry Loma. Lang advised confronting it just Hauser and Hill eloped the next morning time. They had a son, Peter, on November xx, 1950, in Brighton, Massachusetts.

The following yr, the Kefauver Committee subpoenaed Hill, at present 34, to appear in New York to show during nationally televised hearings on organized crime activities. Loma arrived on March sixteen, 1951, several months after giving birth. She entered the Foley Courthouse in a $5,000 mink cape, broad-brimmed hat and silk gloves. Some described her as the "star witness" of the Kefauver hearings.

Hill evaded questions from committee counsel Halley virtually her organized criminal offence associations. She gave vague answers and artfully lied about the origins of the tens of thousands in cash she had Epstein hold for her in a rubber deposit box. The money was from her winnings betting on the horses, she explained. Hill likewise claimed the "fellas" she knew, including Siegel, only sent her gifts and money along the way.

"Bought me everything I wanted, when I was with Ben. He paid for everything. And he gave me some coin, too, bought me a house in Florida."

About Siegel and the Flamingo, Colina said she advised him to sell the casino "considering information technology was making him a nervous wreck."

Halley asked about how she obtained up to $twenty,000 in the past year, including the $12,000 she spent during her brief stay in Sun Valley.

Colina said she had asked Epstein since 1935 to hold her gambling winnings. He sent some when she needed money and she "never kept track of information technology." She also said admitted recently receiving $10,000 cash from friends in Mexico.

Virginia denied, likely on cue from her Mob cohorts, that the infamous men she consorted with were racketeers or gangsters. She too denied being part of the "dirty business" of mobbed-up drug sales in United mexican states. Merely investigator Halley knew otherwise. In 1949, she was identified as assisting in the heroin trade in Mexico with Al Blumenthal, possessor of the Los Angeles nightclub Ciro's, providing the investment cash.

Halley complained to Loma that she had zip substantial to provide the committee despite having associated with organized criminals for years.

"But I never knew annihilation nigh their business concern," she said. "They didn't tell me about their business organization. Why would they tell me? I didn't care anything well-nigh business in the first place. I don't even understand information technology."

Halley replied: "The reason I ask you is that you seem to have a great deal of power to handle financial affairs."

"Who, me?" she asked.

Halley told her "it only seems impossible" that she did non know who Siegel's associates were at the Flamingo. Hills claimed she more often than not stayed upstairs with friends in her hotel room.

"I didn't always leave. … In the start place, I had hay fever. I was allergic to the cactus. Every time I went at that place, I was sick. So I had to take those benadryls, and they would make me feel terrible anyhow. … Ben'due south friends, I never fifty-fifty met them or was effectually them."

After the commission finally excused her and on the mode out of the hearing room Loma spewed obscenities at the press, slugged and floored a female reporter, Marjorie Farnsworth, and covered her face up while walking speedily through the corridors. Before climbing into an awaiting cab, she told reporters she hoped an atomic bomb would fall on them.

Hill and Hans Hauser did not remain in the country for long. Hans overstayed his visa and had to leave. He flew to Chile to teach skiing and brought Peter with him. The IRS was pursuing Mrs. Hauser with vigor. That July, the bureau served a $161,000 lien on her for back taxes from 1942 to 1947. In a stopover at the Denver airport, Colina was nearly arrested. She snapped at reporters, "I'd shoot you if I had a gun." In August, while the Hausers were in Europe, the IRS auctioned off 800 of Hill's possessions in Spokane – including ii cars, five expensive furs worth $23,000, a ruby and diamond band from Siegel for their intended wedding ceremony in 1947, mainland china and crystal sets, her $30,000 dwelling house – from which the IRS netted a mere $41,000.

Now that Hill was in Austria, almost Switzerland, some in u.s.a. speculated that she had deposited equally much equally $5 million in Swiss banks for the underworld. U.Due south. and Interpol agents monitored Hill's movements. She fabricated 65 border crossings in Europe from 1952 to 1956. She traveled with Epstein in Italy for several days in 1953. The Hausers moved to Klosters, Switzerland, and kept an apartment in Zurich. A grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Hill in 1954 on four counts of tax evasion. The ever-loyal Epstein sent most $iii,000 a month to his patron through the mail service and delivered money to her personally in Switzerland. In 1957, she dined with one-time boyfriend Joe Adonis in Rome and later inquired about returning to the Us. Merely she faced a $227,000 revenue enhancement evasion suit in Los Angeles and heard she faced at least a twelvemonth in prison if convicted.

Hill and her family moved to Austria. Past the mid-1960s, she wearily related to people about her wish to commit suicide. In 1965, her husband found her unconscious and took her to a hospital for yet some other overdose of sedatives – her seventh – to be pumped from her breadbasket. She flew to Cuba but officials knew who she was and denied her entry. In 1966, at present out of money, even Epstein ignored her pleas for funds. She is said to have spoken past telephone to Adonis, then living in Naples, Italy, on March 20. She left her home on March 22. Her torso was constitute two days later. Some maintained that Adonis had his soldiers forcefulness feed her drugs to kill her afterwards she tried to extort money from him. Epstein publically admitted he had sent her $100,000 from 1952 to 1965 from her investments, backed by money provided by mobsters, and that her assets had finally run out.

Hans Hauser died from in an apparent suicide in Austria in 1974. Peter Hauser, a busy U.Due south. Regular army veteran of the Vietnam War, died in a car blow in Toulouse, France, in 1994. All three family members are buried together in a cemetery in Salzburg, Austria.

 Jeff Burbank is content development specialist for The Mob Museum. Contact him at jburbank@themobmuseum.org .

Did Esta Siegel Ever Marry Again?

Source: https://themobmuseum.org/blog/virginia-hill-queen-of-the-mob-was-no-ones-pushover/

Share this post