Mob Museum and True Crime Tours in Las Vegas — Sin City's Dark Side
# Mob Museum and True Crime Tours in Las Vegas Expose Sin City's Organised Crime Roots
In Las Vegas, Nevada, two dedicated true crime experiences — the Mob Museum and the Vegas Underworld Walking Tour — let visitors trace the real gangster history behind America's most famous gambling city, and both are open and operating today.
The Mob Museum: Where Federal Law Met Organised Crime
On 14 February 2012, the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement — universally known as the Mob Museum — opened its doors on the 83rd anniversary of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The date was not accidental. It was a deliberate signal that this institution takes its subject matter seriously.
The building itself is part of the story. The museum occupies a meticulously restored 1933 federal courthouse and post office in downtown Las Vegas. In the early 1950s, this same building hosted sessions of the Kefauver Committee hearings — televised congressional investigations into organised crime in America. Senators grilled mob figures on the very ground you now walk through as a paying visitor. The courtroom where some of those hearings took place is preserved inside.
The exhibits cover the full sweep of American organised crime history: the rise of the Cosa Nostra, Prohibition-era bootlegging, the FBI's long war against the Five Families, and crucially for Las Vegas visitors, the mob's foundational role in building the city itself. Bugsy Siegel's development of the Flamingo Casino — funded by organised crime money — transformed what was essentially open desert into the blueprint for the Las Vegas Strip. Without the mob, there may have been no Las Vegas as the world knows it.
Practical Information
The Mob Museum is open daily from
