Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins discusses the new book Sin City: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Las Vegas with author Jeffrey Sussman. As you may know, your host, Gary Jenkins, chased the #mafia around Kansas City while they were secretly skimming millions from Sin City or Las Vegas casinos. Jeffrey Sussman has extensively researched the rise and fall of the Mafia in Las Vegas. Sin City had no home-grown Mafia family, and starting with Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Frank Costello, they built the Strip into a money-making machine. When Atlantic City opened, The New York mobsters took control of all gambling action in Atlantic City, while the Chicago Outfit moved into Sin City big time.
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Transcript
Jeffrey Sussman
Feb 07, 2023 12:50PM • 20:59
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
las vegas, casinos, money, teamsters, mob, built, chicago, tony, rosenthal, howard hughes, buy, people, book, gangsters, jeffrey, character, lefty, moe, hand, friend
SPEAKERS
JEFFREY SUSSMAN, GARY JENKINS
00:00
A lot of people don’t realize is that the flamingo hotel was not started by Bugsy Siegel as portrayed in the movie bugzy. It was actually started by a man named Billy Wilkerson, who owns the Hollywood Reporter, and a number of other places in Hollywood, including several restaurants. He started a flamingo and named it the flamingo but it had nothing to do with Bugsy Siegel’s girlfriend Virginia Hill, which was the premise in the movie that the flamingo got its name for because Bugsy Siegel named it after Virginia hill. It never happened that way.
00:36
Welcome while you are to average out there. Good to be back here in studio gangland wire. We have my repeat guest Jeffrey Sesemann. Jeffrey, welcome.
00:45
It’s a pleasure to be with you again, Gary.
00:47
Well, Jeffrey, we’ve done boxing in the mob. We’ve done some other older mob things that you and I talk a year or so ago about this new book about the kind of the origins in Las Vegas, how it developed, you get a copy of that book there, hold that up.
01:04
I have a copy of the book. It’s called Sin City gangsters, the rise and decline of the mob in Las Vegas. And it was just published.
01:12
Cool. So guys, I’m gonna have links to the Amazon site where you can buy that book, I highly recommend you buy the book and and looking forward, you’ll see that your intrepid host, Gary Jenkins gets a little credit.
01:24
Absolutely. Well deserved credit.
01:28
So definitely that he interviewed me and he recorded what I knew about Las Vegas courts. My knowledge of Las Vegas, as you all know, is really from Kansas City. And that’s about the skimming and what happened in the Kansas City area of the skimming investigation in the 1970s. But I was happy to help Jeffrey and I wish you all luck in the world. And so how did you happen to get started this year in the easterner right what you boxing in the mob has been one of your things boxing is your real thing. So head right into this.
02:00
Well, I met three different people at different points and it sparked my interest. In the late 1970s. I met a man named Big Julie Weintraub, who looked like an ex heavyweight fighter, you know, he had a broken nose and he was about six foot five 250 pounds. And he was the creator or the inventor of what was called the Las Vegas junket where he would take high rollers to the dunes hotel,...