We consulted several Las Vegas historians and they tend to give the credit to Wilkerson. In W.R. Wilkerson III’s The Man Who Invented Las Vegas, the author relates that Wilkerson, while taking a January 1945 car ride from the El Rancho to the fledgling Las Vegas airport, spotted a "For Sale" sign on a sizeable piece of land. "Two dilapidated shacks and a crumbling motel sign occupied a corner of the lot." Wilkerson had the owner’s phone number taken down for future reference. It emerged that the property comprised 33 acres and owned by Margaret Folsom, who’d fallen on hard times.
The next month, Wilkerson sent Greg Bautzer, "a handsome playboy lawyer who had bedded many of Hollywood’s most prominent stars and starlets, including the young Joan Crawford and Lana Turner," to broker a deal with Folsom. The latter was not easy to pin down, she having moved to Honolulu to open a brothel. Long hours of negotiation between Bautzer and Folsom, who represented herself, eventually secured Wilkerson the land at a cost of $84,000 or $2,545 an acre. To keep the price down, Bautzer purchased the acreage under his own name. The transfer of deed wasn’t even recorded for another 11 months.
By that point, Wilkerson had gone cold on the Flamingo project and sold the land to Moe Sedway. However, film producer Joe Schenk persuaded Wilkerson to repurchase the site from Sedway, which was done in November 1945, with ground being broken on the Flamingo that same month. Wilkerson was a third of the way into construction when the scarcity (and high price) of materials drove him over budget. He also owed $100,000 in gambling debts to Sedway. By January 1946, "Wilkerson’s project had ground to a complete standstill." It was at this point that Sedway brought the project to the attention of Meyer Lansky.
The Mob tycoon arranged for the purchase of two-thirds of Wilkerson’s stake, a deal brokered by Harry Rothberg. In return, Wilkerson received a million dollars to complete the casino. In March 26, the construction site was visited by "a loudly-dressed [sic] character who enthusiastically presented himself to the publisher as his new partner." This marks the first appearance of Bugsy Siegel in the narrative.
Seeking another point of view, we consulted Missouri University of Science & Technology professor Larry Gragg, who is writing a biography of Siegel. He says that your question is a good one that lacks a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Consulting the Wilkerson biography, Siegel’s FBI file and a title search on the Flamingo itself, he has arrived at the following narrative.
"First, Billy Wilkerson bought the land from Margaret Folsom with the initial payment in March 1945. He secured a loan from Bank of America for $600,000 to begin the construction of the property.
"Second, Wilkerson changed his mind, believing that his compulsive gambling would create too many problems for him and sold the property to Moe Sedway, but in November 1945 Wilkerson changed his mind [again] and bought back the property from Sedway through his lawyer Greg Bautzer.
"Third, Siegel enters the picture in spring 1946. He formed a corporation called the Nevada Project Corporation and in two transactions in summer 1946 bought all the land for the Flamingo from Wilkerson."
Any way you slice it, it would appear that Margaret Folsom was well out of the picture by the time that Bugsy made his presence felt at the Flamingo.
