What Happened to Virginia Hill After Bugsy Siegel?
Mobsters DailyAfter Bugsy Siegel was murdered in her Beverly Hills house in June 1947, Virginia Hill lived 19 more years: she became a star witness at the Kefauver hearings, fled an IRS tax case to Austria, married an Austrian ski instructor, and died there in March 1966, found beside a road near Salzburg after a barbiturate overdose, aged 49. The mob's most famous girlfriend ended as its most famous exile.
Paris, then the witness chair
Hill was in Paris when Siegel was shot through her window — a trip many historians read as her being deliberately cleared from the scene. She attempted suicide more than once in the grief and panic that followed, then rebuilt the only way she knew: as a celebrity. In 1951 the Kefauver Committee called her, and Hill, in mink, delivered the hearings' most quoted performance — denying all knowledge of mob finances and explaining her years of high living with a line about being very good to men that stopped the room. Her screen version of those years, opposite Warren Beatty, is weighed in was Bugsy (1991) accurate about Siegel and Virginia Hill? The government was unamused: the IRS built a tax evasion case on her unreported income, and in 1954, rather than face it, Hill fled to Austria.
Siegel got the famous death; Hill got the long, slow one — which is why, with November here and the holidays coming, rewatch season belongs to the Tony Soprano Ugly Christmas Sweater: Tony in black-and-white stencil, nothing covering the design, built for holiday parties and long nights back in this world.
Austria, and the end of the road
In Austria she settled with Hans Hauser, a ski instructor she had married in 1950, and raised their son in the Salzburg area — a continent away from the Flamingo, whose origins are retold in did Bugsy Siegel build the Flamingo? The myth explained. The money ran down, the tax claims followed her across the Atlantic, and the woman who had carried cash for the Chicago Outfit and charmed a Senate committee was reduced to obscurity and dependence. On March 24, 1966, her body was found near a road in Koppl, outside Salzburg; the official finding was suicide by sleeping pills. Rumors that the mob silenced her have never been substantiated — by 1966 there was nothing left for her to tell that the IRS had not already taken. She was buried in Austria, far from Siegel's Hollywood grave and further still from the desert casino that made them both immortal.
Frequently asked questions
How did Virginia Hill die? She was found dead near Salzburg, Austria, on March 24, 1966, of a barbiturate overdose, officially ruled a suicide. She was 49.
What was Virginia Hill's role in the mob? She was a trusted courier and money mover — a 'bag woman' — for Chicago Outfit figures, valued for carrying cash and messages between cities.
Why did Virginia Hill flee to Austria? To escape a federal tax evasion case built on her unreported mob-era income; she left the United States in 1954 and never returned to live.
Keep reading: Gus Greenbaum, the Flamingo boss found dead in Phoenix · Moe Sedway, Siegel's partner who took over the Flamingo · was Moe Greene based on a real person?
From the shop: You Look Like a Gangster Tee — the compliment every mob fan actually wants to hear.
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