Dutch Schultz

Arthur Simon Flegenheimer (August 6, 1901 – October 24, 1935), known as Dutch Schultz, was an American mobster based in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. He made his fortune in organized crime-related activities, including bootlegging and the numbers racket. Schultz's rackets were weakened by two tax evasion trials led by United States Attorney Thomas Dewey, and also threatened by fellow mobster Lucky Luciano. Schultz was shot at a restaurant in Newark, New Jersey, and died the next day.

Early life Arthur Simon Flegenheimer was born in the Bronx borough of New York City on August 6, 1901. He was the second child of German Jewish immigrants Herman and Emma Flegenheimer (née Neu), who had married in Manhattan on November 10, 1900. He had a younger sister, Helen, born in 1904. Flegenheimer's father apparently abandoned his family, and his mother is listed as divorced in the 1910 United States census. In her 1932 petition for U.S. citizenship, however, she wrote that her husband had died in 1910–though it is unclear whether he died before or after the 1910 census.

This event traumatized young Flegenheimer, who spent the rest of his life denying that his father had abandoned his family. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade to help support himself and his mother. He worked as a feeder and pressman for the Clark Loose Leaf Company, Caxton Press, American Express and Schultz Trucking in the Bronx between 1916 and 1919.

Criminal beginnings

Before turning to burglary, Flegenheimer worked at a neighborhood nightclub owned by a small-time mobster, where he robbed craps games. Eventually he was caught breaking into an apartment and sent to the prison on Blackwell's Island (now called Roosevelt Island). His mugshot, at age 18, was published in the 2010 book New York City Gangland. Joe's family reportedly paid $35,000 for his release. Shortly after his return, he went blind. From then on, the Noe-Schultz gang met little opposition as they expanded across the entire Bronx. Although seriously wounded, he managed to return fire. A blue Cadillac was seen hitting some parked cars and losing one of its doors before speeding away. When police found the car an hour later, they discovered the body of a Louis Weinberg (no relation to Schultz gang members Abraham "Bo" Weinberg and George Weinberg) in the backseat. Noe's wounds became infected, and he died on November 21. Schultz was left angry and distraught by the loss of his friend and mentor.

Retaliation started a few weeks later when Arnold Rothstein, a crime boss in the Jewish mob, was found fatally shot near the service entrance to the Park Central Hotel on November 6, 1928. Although George "Hump" McManus supposedly killed Rothstein over an unpaid gambling debt, Schultz is believed to have ordered the killing in retribution for Noe's death. This theory is supported by the fact that the first individual McManus rang after the killing was Schultz's attorney, Dixie Davis. Schultz's trusted lieutenant, Bo Weinberg, then picked up McManus and drove him away from the murder scene. McManus was later cleared of the killing.

On October 12, 1930, Diamond was shot and wounded at the Hotel Monticello on Manhattan's West Side. Two gunmen forced their way into Diamond's room and shot him five times before fleeing. Still in his pajamas, Diamond staggered into the hallway and collapsed. When asked later by the New York City police commissioner how he managed to walk out of the room, Diamond said he drank two shots of whiskey first. Diamond was rushed to the Polyclinic Hospital in Manhattan, where he eventually recovered. On December 30, 1930, Diamond was discharged from Polyclinic. During his absence, his gang was forced to leave the city. When he returned home, Diamond began carving out a new territory for himself in Albany. He was killed in an Albany rooming house at 67 Dove Street by two gunmen in December 1931.

Schultz also had to deal with internecine conflicts within his own gang. In 1930 one of his enforcers, Vincent Coll, demanded to be made an equal partner. This was because Schultz's subordinates received a flat salary instead of the customary percentage from the take—a unique arrangement compared to other major gangs in organized crime. When Schultz refused, Coll formed his own crew with the ultimate goal of murdering Schultz and taking over his territory. In the bloody gang war that followed, Coll lost his older brother Pete and earned the nickname "Mad Dog" from the press after a child was killed during a botched assassination attempt committed by his gang. In February 1932, while Coll was taking a call in a drugstore phone booth, gunmen armed with machine guns entered the store and shot him to death. The killers may have included Edward "Fats" McCarthy and the brothers Bo and George Weinberg.

Racketeer Along with the policy rackets, Schultz began extorting New York restaurant owners and workers. Working through a hulking gangster named Jules Modgilewsky (also known as Julie Martin), Schultz made deals with the leaders of Waiters Local 16 and Cafeteria Workers Local 302 to extort money by forcing restaurant owners to join the Metropolitan Restaurant & Cafeteria Owners Association, an employer association that Schultz had founded. Those who refused to join the Association were faced with exorbitant wage demands from labor unions, followed by strikes and stink bomb attacks. The Association then stepped in to arrange a settlement of the strike with a sweetheart contract for low wages contingent on the employer joining the Association. Martin successfully extracted thousands of dollars of tributes and "dues" for Schultz from the terrorized restaurant owners.

During his tax trial, Schultz began to suspect that Martin was skimming from the shakedown operation; Schultz had recently discovered a $70,000 disparity in the books. On the evening of March 2, 1935, Schultz invited Martin to a meeting at the Harmony Hotel in Cohoes, New York. At the meeting, at which chief enforcer Bo Weinberg and mob lawyer Dixie Davis were also present, Martin belligerently denied Schultz's charges and began arguing with him. Both men were drinking heavily as the argument continued, and Schultz sucker-punched Martin. Finally, Martin admitted that he had taken $20,000, which he believed he was "entitled to" anyway. Davis related what happened next:

Dutch Schultz was ugly; he had been drinking and suddenly he had his gun out. Schultz wore his pistol under his vest, tucked inside his pants, right against his belly. One jerk at his vest and he had it in his hand. All in the same quick motion he swung it up, stuck it in Jules Martin's mouth and pulled the trigger. It was as simple and undramatic as that—just one quick motion of the hand. Dutch Schultz did that murder just as casually as if he were picking his teeth. New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was so outraged at the verdict that he issued an order that Schultz should be arrested on sight should he return to the city. As a result, Schultz was forced to relocate his base of operations across the Hudson River to Newark, New Jersey.

Assassination Betrayal

As his legal defense costs in the tax case mounted, Schultz had found it necessary to reduce the commission he paid to those running his policy rackets to bolster what he called the "Arthur Flegenheimer Defense Fund." This tactic angered the runners and the games' controllers, who, despite being threatened with violence for showing any dissent, hired a hall, held a mass protest meeting and declared their version of a strike. Very quickly the cash flow dried up, and Schultz was forced to back down, permanently damaging the relationship between his gang and their associates.

Bo Weinberg, Schultz's chief lieutenant, was so concerned about the amount of money that Schultz was taking from the rackets that he sought advice from New Jersey mob boss Longy Zwillman, who put him in touch with the Sicilian-born gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano. The deal that Weinberg wanted was to retain a percentage and keep overall control of the Schultz gang. However, Luciano planned to break up the gang's rackets and territory among his own associates once Schultz was convicted of tax evasion. Believing that a guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion at the second trial, Luciano and his allies implemented their plan to take control, which met little resistance because of the ongoing bad feelings over the attempted pay cuts and the support of Weinberg.

Schultz had proposed to the National Crime Syndicate, a confederation of mobsters, that Dewey be murdered. Luciano argued that the assassination of a high-profile prosecutor would precipitate a massive law enforcement crackdown. The Commission later voted unanimously against the proposal. Later, Murder, Inc. leader Albert Anastasia approached Luciano with information that Schultz had asked him to stake out Dewey's apartment building on Fifth Avenue. Upon hearing the news, the Commission held a discreet meeting to discuss the matter. After six hours of deliberations, the Commission ordered Louis Buchalter to eliminate "The Dutchman."

Shooting Dutch Schultz was shot on October 23, 1935 at the Palace Chop House restaurant at 12 East Park Street in Newark, along with his accountant Otto Berman; Abraham “Abe” Landau, his new chief lieutenant; and his personal bodyguard, Bernard "Lulu" Rosenkrantz. While Schultz was in the men's room, two Murder, Inc. hitmen named Charles "The Bug" Workman and Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss entered the establishment. Workman walked the length of the bar and opened the door to the men's room, where he encountered Schultz. Workman shot Schultz, who dropped to the floor. He then entered the rear dining room with Weiss, with both men firing numerous times at the Schultz gang members.

In 1941, Workman was convicted of killing Schultz and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was paroled in 1964. The building that housed the Palace Chop House was torn down in 2008.

Final words and legacy

Schultz's last words were a strange stream-of-consciousness babble spoken in his hospital bed to police officers who attempted to calm him and question him for useful information. Although the police were unable to extract anything coherent from Schultz, his rambling was fully transcribed by a police stenographer. These include:

A boy has never wept...nor dashed a thousand kim. You can play jacks, and girls do that with a soft ball and do tricks with it. Oh, Oh, dog Biscuit, and when he is happy he doesn't get snappy.

Schultz's last words have inspired a number of writers to devote works related to them. Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs published a screenplay in novel form titled The Last Words of Dutch Schultz in the early 1970s, while Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson connected Schultz's words to a global Illuminati-related conspiracy, making them a major part of 1975's The Illuminatus! Trilogy. In Wilson's and Shea's story, Schultz's ramblings are a coded message. In his 1960 anthology Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm and After, Dwight Macdonald presents Schultz's last words as a parody of Gertrude Stein. In E. L. Doctorow's novel Billy Bathgate, the title character uses clues from Schultz's deathbed ramblings to locate his hidden money.

Although Schultz's gang was meant to be crippled, several of his associates survived the night. Martin "Marty" Krompier, whom Schultz left in charge of his Manhattan interests while he hid in New Jersey, survived an assassination attempt the same night as the shootings at the Palace Chop House. No apparent attempt was made on the life of Irish mobster John M. Dunn, who later became the brother-in-law of mobster Edward J. McGrath and a powerful member of the Hell's Kitchen Irish mob.

After Schultz's death, it was discovered that he and his wife had never gone through an official marriage ceremony, and the possible existence of another wife emerged with the discovery of letters and pictures of another woman and children among his effects at the hotel where he was staying in Newark. This was never resolved, as his common-law wife refused to talk about the matter and the mystery woman never came forward. Two other women also called at the morgue to receive his effects, but their identities were never established.

Though Schultz was estimated to be worth $7 million when he died, no trace of the money was ever found. Shortly before his death, fearing that he would be incarcerated as a result of Dewey's efforts, he commissioned the construction of a special airtight and waterproof safe into which he placed $7 million in cash and bonds . Schultz and Rosenkrantz then drove the safe to an undisclosed location somewhere in upstate New York and buried it. At the time of his death, the safe was still interred. With no evidence to indicate that either Schultz or Rosenkrantz had ever revealed the location of the safe to anyone (or that it even existed), the exact location where it was buried died with them. Schultz's enemies are said to have spent the remainder of their lives searching for the safe. As it has never been recovered, treasure hunters have annually returned to look for it in the Catskills. One such meeting became the documentary film Digging for Dutch: The Search for the Lost Treasure of Dutch Schultz.

In popular culture Several actors have portrayed Dutch Schultz in film and television: Vic Morrow in Portrait of a Mobster (1961), Vincent Gardenia in Mad Dog Coll (1961), James Remar in The Cotton Club (1984), Dustin Hoffman in Billy Bathgate (1991), Lance Henriksen in The Outfit (1993), and Tim Roth in Hoodlum (1997).

On television, in the 1959 The Untouchables episodes "Vincent 'Mad Dog' Coll", "The Dutch Schultz Story" and "Jack 'Legs' Diamond", Schultz was played by Lawrence Dobkin. He was portrayed by John Dennis in ten episodes of The Lawless Years from 1959 to 1961. These episodes included: "The Dutch Schultz Story", "The Jack 'Legs' Diamond Story", "Louy K, part two: 'Sing Sing'", "Louy K, part three: 'Birth of the Organization'", "Louy K, part four: 'Heyday of the Organization'", "Louy K, part five: 'The Disintegration'", "Ginny", "The 'Mad Dog' Coll Story, part one", "The 'Mad Dog' Coll Story, part two", and "Ike, the Novelty King". In the 1993–1994 series The Untouchables, he was portrayed by Si Osborne in the 1993 episode "Attack on New York". In the 2015 AMC series The Making of the Mob: New York, he was played by Christopher Morrow.

In the Naked City episode The Fault in Our Stars, a Beat poet recites a fragment of Schultz' last words.

On November 18, 2020, a PBS Secrets of the Dead episode entitled "Gangster's Gold" premiered which detailed the investigation and the hunt for Schultz's lost treasure. In July 2022, an episode of Expedition Unknown, titled "The Bootlegger's Millions", focused on Schultz and his treasure.