Ed Becker
Las Vegas promoter, businessman, private investigator and author
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ed Becker was a Las Vegas promoter, businessman, private investigator and author.
He was the entertainment director at the Riviera Hotel and Casino at Las Vegas.[1] In 1956 he met singer Frank Sinatra through a cousin of Sinatra's, they became friends.[2] In the 1960s he began to work part-time for private investigator Julian Blodgett, a former FBI agent.[3] He later founded his own investigative firm, Ed Becker Associates.[4]
Becker was hired as a researcher for Ed Reid's book The Grim Reapers: The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America (1970).[5] He co-authored with the journalist Charles Rappleye All-American Mafiosi: The Johnny Roselli Story, published in 1991 by Doubleday.[6][7] Becker had known Roselli personally from his days in Las Vegas. He was introduced to Sidney Korshak through him.[8]
He was one of a plethora of people interviewed for the book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas (1995) by Nicholas Pileggi, later adapted into the film Casino by Martin Scorsese.[9] He contributed the afterword to a 2000 Barricade Books edition of Hickman Powell's 1939 biography of Lucky Luciano, Lucky Luciano: The Man Who Organized Crime in America (original title: Ninety Times Guilty).[10]
Becker died in 2007.[5]