Virginia Hill was a Chicago Outfit

Chicago Outfit

The Chicago Outfit, also known as the Chicago Syndicate or Chicago Mob and sometimes shortened to simply the Outfit, is a crime syndicate based in Chicago, Illinois, USA...

 courier

Courier

A courier is a person or a company who delivers messages, packages, and mail. Couriers are distinguished from ordinary mail services by features such as speed, security, tracking, signature, specialization and individualization of express services, and swift delivery times, which are optional for...

 who was famous for being the girlfriend of Genovese crime family

Genovese crime family

The Genovese crime family , is one of the "Five Families" that dominates organized crime activities in New York City, United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the Mafia . The Genovese crime family has been nicknamed the "Ivy League" and "Rolls Royce" of organized crime...

 mobster Bugsy Siegel

Bugsy Siegel

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was an American gangster who was involved with the Genovese crime family...

, following the breakdown of his marriage.

The Kefauver hearings

In 1951, Hill was subpoenaed to testify before the Kefauver hearings

Kefauver hearings

The United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce was a special committee of the United States Senate which existed from 1950 to 1951 and which investigated organized crime which crossed state borders in the United States...

 and denied having any knowledge of organized crime

Organized crime

Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...

. Described by Time magazine as the "queen of the gangsters' molls", she told investigators that her income came from gifts her boyfriends gave her because of her sexual prowess.

Later life and death

Hill spent her remaining years in Europe because she was accused by the IRS of failing to pay $161,000 in income tax and indicted on 23 June, 1954. In her last years, when she was separated from her husband, she was supported by their only child, Peter Hauser, who worked as a waiter. She died of an overdose of sleeping pills, an apparent suicide, in Koppl, near Salzburg, Austria on March 24, 1966 at the age of 49. Her body was found in a lone area by a bridge crossing the "Alterbach," a small stream. Hill is buried in Aigen Cemetery in Salzburg

Salzburg

-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...

, Austria.

According to Andy Edmonds' biography Bugsy's Baby: The Secret Life of Mob Queen Virginia Hill, Hill's death was suspicious, since her body was found outdoors, near a brook, two days after she met with a former lover, former Genovese family boss Joe Adonis, who reportedly had her escorted home with two of his bodyguards. The Austrian media, which were well informed about her former relationship with Siegel, speculated that she tried to get money by using her knowledge of the Italian-American Mafia

Mafia

The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

 and the Mexican drug cartels.

Further reading

• Edmonds, Andy. Bugsy's Baby : The Secret Life of Mob Queen Virginia Hill. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Publishing Group, 1993. ISBN 1559721642

External links

• Excerpt of testimony