Author with Las Vegas ties found dead in L.A.

Friday, Jan. 5, 2001 | 10:36 a.m.

At age 12, Susan Berman attended what was in its time one of the largest funerals in Las Vegas history -- that of her father, mobster and Riviera and Flamingo co-owner Davie Berman.

She stood at her father's casket alongside the mob's elite -- mourners like Gus Greenbaum, extortionist Willie "the Icepick" Alderman and her father's casino business partner Joe Rosenberg -- and colorful Las Vegas figures like noted gambler Nick "The Greek" Dandolos.

Yet, despite hobnobbing with such characters, it would take the young author-to-be 20 years to learn the truth about her father -- truth that she would compile in her book "Easy Street."

Susan Berman chronicled Davie Berman's racketeering, his associations with mob boss Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel -- he opened the Flamingo in 1946 and was murdered the following year -- his bankrobbing and bootlegging.

Yet Susan Berman led a life away from crime. She was an upstanding citizen who wrote books and film documentaries.

Dave Berman, also known in his time as "Mr. Las Vegas," died on Father's Day 1957, at age 54 of natural causes -- during surgery.

Susan Berman, a former San Francisco Examiner reporter, was found dead on Christmas Eve. Her death was mob style -- a single gunshot wound in the head. She was 55.

Her body was found in the bedroom of her Los Angeles home. Police say they are treating the case as a homicide. Police have no motive.

"We're actively pursuing the leads that we have," Detective Ron Phillips told the Associated Press. "It didn't appear that anything had been stolen."

Phillips told Reuters news agency: "She has a history of family involvement in the Mafia. Does this have anything to do with the Mafia? I have no idea at this time. We are still conducting our investigation."

Berman's manager, Nyle Brenner, told the entertainment newspaper Variety that he was "at a loss as to why his client was killed.

"I don't know that there was anything she was working on that had any relevance to the (current) Mafia," he told Variety. "She had been talking to a lot of people in Las Vegas recently, people who'd had 'a past' there."

Born in 1945 in Minneapolis, Berman grew up in Las Vegas and California. She got a bachelor's degree at UCLA and a master's in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969.