Born in 1916, Virginia became entangled with bad boys in her teens. Those where Great Depression years and she came from a violent childhood. She may've been struggling for survival. She moved from Marietta, Georgia to Chicago to New York to Los Angeles.
At 18 she became a courier for the organized crime syndicate - The Mafia - and so Virginia became a mobster herself. She wanted to be an actress.
In those early days of the 19th century it was a rare woman who was so promiscuous. Had she been molested or raped as a kid?
She made her own commissions from carrying cash around. Some say she also went to Mexico to negotiate a drug route.
She slept around with gangsters. Though she earned her keep, she had boyfriends who were generous. She was considered beautiful, capable, strong willed, and, well, she had red hair. So she got called "The Flamingo."
She is most known though for her relationship with the traditionally married Ben Siegel, also called Bugsy because he was said to go crazy at times, a man who was violent, but not to his wife and children, and who, though excellent at compartmentalizing his life, eventually left his wife for her.
By 1943 Virginia lived with Ben in luxury in Beverly Hills waiting on the divorce.
When Siegel dreamed of a Las Vegas as we known of now, and decided to build a a hotel called "The Flamingo," which was named after Virginia, she was on his team.
Ben, who hated his nickname of Bugsy, was a business man whose dream went over budget. He as also a hit man.
How much Virginia knew really is unknown. Called The Queen of the Mob, she claimed not to know much at all but in 1951 she was summoned to testify by the Kefauver Rackets Committee where she denied a lot and used some foul language to shock everyone.
Was she in on the fact that Ben was to be murdered himself? She wasn't in Los Angeles when he was killed. Maybe she was tipped off. Maybe she was shocked. Maybe she had just lost the best thing she'd ever had going.
Eventually Virginia fled to Europe as a tax evader. She married a ski instructor named Hans Hauser and they may have had a son. In 1966, with that relationship failed and no hope of returning to the United States, some say still heartbroken over Ben, she took a heavy dose of sleeping pills and was found dead in the snow on the ski slopes of Salzburg, Austria. You see, most people don't kill themselves outdoors with pills so some people thought the mob had caught up with her and forced her to take the pills.
Dead at the age of 49, Virginia Hill had lived many years full of intrigue and betrayals.
Of great fascination, there have been television movies and then some depicting their relationship. One of the best stars Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.
C Mistress Manifesto / Missy Rapport 2013 All Rights Reserved
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