Original article published by The Hollywood Reporter
The home where infamous mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was shot and killed 75 years ago has come on the market in Beverly Hills. Listed with Myra Nourmand of Nourmand & Associates, the Spanish Colonial-style mansion on North Linden Drive has an asking price of $16.995 million.
Siegel — the ruthless gangster who socialized with Hollywood stars and also drove the early development of Las Vegas — didn’t own the house. He leased it for his mistress, Virginia Hill, who served as a courier for the mob. On the night of June 20, 1947, Siegel was killed by an assailant who fired at him through the front window of the home with an M1 Carbine, dispatching him with two gunshots to the head. The case was never solved. (A photo in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner collection shows a detective pointing to five bullet holes in the wall the day after the murder.)
The seven-bedroom house has had a number of different owners in the years since Siegel’s murder and last changed hands in 2003. Its current owners are Dr. Joel Aronowitz, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, and Fiona Chalom.
Nourmand describes the property as a “glamorous Spanish home that’s not your typical house that you would see in the flats of Beverly Hills” with an architectural style that’s more “Palm Beach [like] the Breakers Hotel. That’s the feeling of this house.”
Visitors to the residence, which was designed by Joseph Fox and Sons, are greeted by a two-floor entry that includes original iron railings, hand-painted tiles and a grand staircase.
“It really has such a big presence. It sits on a knoll and is on half an acre,” continues Nourmand. “You walk in the entry with the staircase and the balcony and all of that has been completely maintained just the way it was done in 1928. Even the bathrooms are the original.”
She notes that upgrades to the house in recent years have included a new kitchen (featuring an island and a Sub-Zero refrigerator) and a new pool with pool cover.
Nourmand notes that the property — which features a private, hedged yard and is located less than a mile from the Beverly Hills Hotel — clocks in at 7,092 square feet. “All the bedrooms are very spacious,” she says, adding, “A lot of Spanish homes that were built in the 20s have a musty, heavy, dark feeling. Unlike those, this house is full of light with windows and high ceilings everywhere.”
“This house also has a tower and at the top of the tower is a room,” she adds, detailing that the space would be perfect “for a musician or a writer.”
In addition to the murder of Siegel in 1947, this block of Linden made news the year previously when Howard Hughes’s plane crashed there, damaging two houses.
Siegel — who developed the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas in association with former Hollywood Reporter owner Billy Wilkerson — is associated with a number of other properties around Los Angeles. He was known to frequent the Georgian Hotel in Santa Monica (which is currently undergoing a renovation) and also leased an apartment at what is now the Sunset Tower (the space was turned into the hotel’s Tower Bar restaurant). He also lived at one point at Castillo del Lago, a Mediterranean-style estate in the Hollywood Hills that he is said to have used as a speakeasy and gambling parlor.
Siegel also built an estate in Holmby Hills for his wife Esta (who he later divorced) that was later owned by producer-director Bud Yorkin and actress-producer Cynthia Yorkin. After the couple sold it in 2013, the house was torn down and replaced with a new residence on the site.
But viewers who watch Bugsy, the biopic of the gangster’s life starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, will not see the house on Linden where he was killed. The murder scene in the movie was shot In Hancock Park at an Italian mansion located on South Plymouth Boulevard. It last sold in 2021 for $7.5 million.
