Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was born on February 28, 1906, in Brooklyn, New York. His poor Jewish parents lived in a crime-ridden slum known as Hell's Kitchen--the breeding ground for many criminals of that era. Among Siegel's boyhood friends were George Raft, who later established a movie career playing gangster roles, and Bo Weinberg, later a top aide to gangster Dutch Schultz.

In a manner similar to fellow gangster Louis Lepke, Siegel began his criminal career by preying upon pushcart peddlers on the Lower East Side with a sidekick named Morris "Moey" Sedway.Unlike Lepke, Siegel did not usually beat the vendors he was trying to convince to buy protection from him. Rather he would simply have Sedway pour kerosene(a fuel oil) over the vendors' merchandise and then light it on fire. It usually only took a vendor one lesson to decide to pay the "insurance."

By the time he...