William Wilkerson - The Final Meeting

The Final Meeting

By December 1946, Wilkerson received a phone call from J. Edgar Hoover warning him about Siegel, but the call was all too late. Wilkerson was already deeply involved. Any attempt to extricate himself would have jeopardized his entire investment. Wilkerson decided to make the best of a bad situation. He would bolster his investment by making sure the outside world knew about the Flamingo. He hired press agent Paul Price in Los Angeles. Together the two men began formulating a massive public relations campaign for the hotel's gala opening.

Wilkerson was in the middle of this campaign when Siegel called a stockbrokers' meeting at the unfinished hotel. The meeting took place in mid-December, two weeks before the Flamingo's opening. Present were lawyers representing Siegel, Louis Wiener and Clifford A. Jones. Jones at the time was Lieutenant Governor of the State of Nevada. Moe Sedway and Gus Greenbaum, who had originally been Wilkerson's partners in the Flamingo's casino, accompanied Siegel to the meeting. Wilkerson attended with his legal counsel, Greg Bautzer.

Wilkerson's interest in the Flamingo made him the largest individual stockholder, owning 48 percent of $6 million. From the very onset of the meeting, Siegel demanded that Wilkerson part with his portion of the interest and not be compensated for it. After Bautzer told Siegel that Wilkerson was not going to cut his interest in the project due to Siegel's overselling of shares, Siegel became enraged and threatened to kill Wilkerson.

News of Siegel's overselling stunned both Wilkerson and Bautzer. It made the publisher question the value of his share. What was clear was that Siegel had no intention of honoring legal obligations, especially those he had signed with Wilkerson.

The second thing Wilkerson learned from the ill-fated meeting was that killing meant little to Siegel. Until that meeting he had usually managed to ignore both Siegel's unsavory occupation and his hair-trigger temper. Siegel's personality defect now came home to haunt him, adding a horrifying new dimension to the debacle. In voicing his loud threats, Siegel had made it abundantly clear that Wilkerson's fate was inextricably linked to his own and that the publisher's failure to comply might result in both their deaths.