Question of the Day - 26 March 2024

The story goes that Ben Siegel, ever paranoid and survival minded, built secret escape routes into the four-story Oregon Building, where he lived in a penthouse suite.

No less an authority than the Los Angeles Times reported in a 2011 story (in which the reporter interviewed Millicent Siegel Rosen, one of Siegel's two daughters, 79 at the time), "Multiple escape routes in the original building included a ladder hidden within a hall closet. It led to an underground tunnel and a getaway car, in which a chauffeur waited around the clock in case Siegel had to make a hasty exit." 

That always seemed a bit fanciful to us, so we welcomed this question as an opportunity to get to the bottom of it. 

Predictably, repeated queries to Caesars Entertainment, which has owned the Flamingo for decades, dislodged nothing in the form of information.

But Mob Museum Vice President Geoff Schumacher was considerably more forthcoming. As regards spelunking, he says there were “no tunnels that I've ever heard of. If there were, they definitely don't exist today. All the original buildings were demolished in the 1980s and a new much larger [Flamingo] built in their place, with all the water, sewer, and other infrastructure to support it.”

Actually, the Oregon building at the back of the property was demolished in 1993, the last time the rumors of subterranean escape routes surfaced, so to speak. We remember distinctly that none was found -- or at least reported.

We might add that since the bulk of the work on the original Flamingo was done under Billy Wilkerson’s stewardship, he would have little or no need to try and chisel escape tunnels out the ever-resistant caliche clay. Siegel, who eventually might have used a subterranean way out, was a relative latecomer to the project.

In addition, his colleagues and bosses were maintaining a strict rule at the time: No one gets whacked in Vegas. And given Siegel's violent proclivities, the prohibition was probably aimed at him as much as it was about him. Thus, he probably felt safe in Vegas. True to form, Siegel was shot and killed in Beverly Hills. 

So though the truth may never be known, we believe that Siegel's escape routes are an urban myth.