My father’s deathbed confession could rewrite one of Beverly Hills’ greatest murder mysteries. He was sitting next to the victim when the bullets flew… and told me a secret he kept for decades

The daughter of a Hollywood mob boss has shared a chilling revelation from her father that offers new insight into one of America’s most notorious unsolved murders.

Luellen Smiley is the daughter of mobster Allen Smiley – a member of a loose alliance between the Italian and Jewish mafias known as National Crime Syndicate, which dominated organized crime in the US in the early to mid-20th century.

Smiley was also the associate, confidant and best friend of Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, the mogul who built the Flamingo, Las Vegas‘s first luxury casino, and whose unsolved 1947 murder has baffled historians and law enforcement for nearly 80 years.

He was next to Bugsy when he was shot through a window of his mistress’s $17 million Beverly Hills mansion – murdered in cold blood with two gunshots to the head on June 20, 1947. His killer has never been found.

Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, Luellen recounted the 1983 deathbed conversation she had with her father that revealed just how close he had been to Bugsy and throws open new questions about the intended target of the hit. 

‘He was in the hospital. He was dying of liver failure,’ Luellen explained. 

‘And he said, “There’s going to be a lot of talk about me after I pass. And you’ll read things in the newspaper about me. Just remember that [Bugsy] was my best friend, and he would take a bullet for me.”‘

Luellen said she was certain that her father knew who Bugsy’s killer was but he never told her, police or the FBI, despite law enforcement’s persistent efforts to get him to talk.

Luellen described her father as a man who was ‘tyrannical’ but also ‘devoted’

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