The "military" (trained or actual military) theories are based on the murder weapon: a WWII .30 carbine, a less powerful version of the M1 Garand, which was the standard infantry rifle for GI's. Some earlier writers think that the murderer was Chick Hill, Virginia's brother who lived with her, because he owned a .30 carbine. So did several hundred thousand other Americans, who bought them cheap as war surplus.

Michael Shnayerson, Siegel's most recent biographer, theorizes that the Mob knew Virginia had been skimming the Flamingo project and stashing the money in Swiss bank accounts. He thinks they made her an offer she couldn't refuse: keep the money and get Chick to assassinate Bugsy. Either Chick or a military trained sniper who was his friend, pulled the trigger. This is a ridiculous theory: if the Mob knew she was skimming, they would have forced her to hand it over and then killed her. And, they wouldn't have entrusted such an important assassination to a rank amateur.

Bugsy was capable of being charming, but he had a knack of making powerful enemies. They included the wire service operators and their customers, whom he screwed; Jack Dragna, whose rackets he'd been horning in on for years; and all those Flamingo investors, including Luciano, Adonis, Lansky, Costello, etc. They saw no return from the millions they'd invested. Follow the money...

Frankie Carbo could have been the actual triggerman. He pulled the trigger in the Harry (Big Greenie) Greenberg murder that Siegel was in on.