Welcome back to Mafia, and in this audio boom original podcast series, we explore America's criminal underworld to reveal the lives and careers of its greatest gangsters.

Our sponsors for this episode are Zit Prokrutter and Dollar Shave Club.

This series has been extensively researched and produced in consultation with experts, authors, and those who are actually there.

Previously on Mafia.

Ben Seagal wasn't a make pretend tough guy. He was an out and out killer.

Hollywood actually thought they saw in Bugsie Seagal a star.

They thought that Bugsie Seagal was, you know, he was a Mafia.

He was everything that Hollywood tried to envision when they did their movies.

Bugsie Seagal was a hitman, a Mafia guy. They loved it. They loved him.

And then all of a sudden this news comes out that he possibly murdered somebody and it opened their eyes.

They're like, oh my god, like you're actually the gangster. We thought you were just pretending to be.

So at this point, you know, his life was ruined in Hollywood.

It was just a desert town, pretty empty, you know, weeds overflowing.

It was not the glamorous world that he's leaving behind, but he had a vision for it.

And he was out to make it the next destination that he could be the king of.

Benjamin Bugsie Seagal was a Jewish street kid who rose through the ranks of Lucky Luciano's mob to become one of the most feared and vicious gangsters on the West Coast.

But Bugsie's ego and love of the high life would get the better of him and ultimately lead to his downfall.

There was a pecking order in the Mafia and the mob does not like to be screwed over.

That's an absolute death sentence. It's totally unforgivable.

This is Mafia.

1945.

Ben Seagal and his volatile gangster Maul, Virginia Hill, had recently left the glitz and glamour of Hollywood behind for a ram-shackle town in the middle of the desert.

...