Virginia Hill, The Queen Of The Mob
Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock PhotoVirginia Hill was largely known for her relationship with Bugsy Siegel.
Virginia Hill was born in a small town in Alabama, but she eventually rose to prominence in Chicago and later Los Angeles. Although she was never technically a mob wife, she was the affair partner of one of the biggest names in the mob: Bugsy Siegel.
She dropped out of school after the eighth grade and got married at the age of 15 to a boy one year older by the name of George Randell. The two moved together to Chicago two years later, where Hill planned to enter the pornography industry — which wasn’t exactly something her young husband envisioned for their future. The two separated, and Hill began working as a waitress and “shimmy dancer” at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.
This was how she first became connected with the mob, as she was part of the wait staff at the fair’s San Carlo Italian Village exhibit, which was run by the criminal organization. Impressed with her intelligence and demeanor, mobsters eventually began to put Hill to use as a mistress, courier, and money launderer — and she wasn’t even 20 years old yet.
By the early 1940s, Hill was an invaluable member of the mob — and that’s when she met Bugsy Siegel, another prominent gangster who was making waves in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. What followed was a tumultuous affair full of rumors and speculation from the outside.
This affair only lasted a few years, though, as Siegel was killed in Hill’s home in Beverly Hills in 1947. Hill happened to be in Paris at the time, leading some to suggest she knew about the hit, though this was never proven.
Three years later, Hill married an Austrian skier named Hans Hauser, and the two had one son together. Tragically, though, Hill’s story did not have a happy ending. Even after leaving the mob life behind and settling down with a new family, she could not escape her own demons, and on March 24, 1966, Virginia Hill was found dead in her home after overdosing on sleeping pills.
