Juan Romero, 86; Art Dealer Owned Valentino Home

Juan Romero, an art dealer and importer who owned the homes in which silent screen idol Rudolph Valentino lived and mobster Benjamin (Bugsie) Siegel was slain, died Tuesday in a Burbank hospital of the complications of age. He was 86.

Romero, who donated many of Valentino’s books and objets d’art to area museums after he took over the mountaintop Falcon Lair in the 1930s, was a well-known local figure for many years. In the 1940s, he owned a Moorish-style home in Beverly Hills, which he eventually rented to Virginia Hill, Siegel’s girlfriend. The gangster was visiting there in June, 1947, when he was killed by rifle shots fired through a living room window.