Dutch Schultz
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Dutch Schultz (August 6, 1902–October 24, 1935) was a New York City-area gangster of the 1920s and '30s. Born Arthur Flegenheimer into a German Jewish family in the Bronx, he made his fortune in bootlegging illegal alcohol and the numbers racket in Harlem.
Schultz's father mysteriously abandoned the family when Schultz was 14. The event traumatized Schultz, and throughout his life he would steadfastly deny that his father had left him, instead telling people that the elder Flegenheimer was a respectable man and an ideal father who had died tragically of disease. As a result of the abandonment, Schultz left school to work in order to support himself and his mother. He ended up apprenticing to low-level mobsters at a neighborhood night club. He robbed craps games before graduating to burglary, but was caught breaking into an apartment in the Bronx and arrested. He spent time in prison on Blackwell's Island (now known as Roosevelt Island) before the prison staff, unable to deal with him, transferred him to a work farm, from which he escaped. Schultz was re-captured shortly thereafter and given an additional two months. Upon his return to the streets, his old associates dubbed him Dutch Schultz, the name of a deceased strongarm notorious for dirty fighting tactics.
Schultz drove a truck for Arnold Rothstein before becoming involved with Jack Diamond, through whom he met future Don Lucky Luciano. By 1928 Schultz was in business for himself, working as a bootlegger for speakeasy owner Joey Noey, who quickly became Schultz's best friend and ally. Schultz moved in on rival speakeasies, forcing the owners to buy his beer or face the consequences. An Irish speakeasy owner named Joe Rock attempted to fight Schultz, but ended up kidnapped and hung up by his thumbs from a pair of meathooks. While Rock was suspended, Schultz smeared a piece of gauze with discharge from a gonorrhea infection and had it taped over Rock's eyes, causing him to go blind.
Around this time, Schultz began to hire on new muscle for his operation: Vincent Mad Dog Coll, with whom he formed a strong bond, Vincent's brother Peter, Abe "Bo" Weinberg and Abe's brother George. With the extra strength, Schultz and Noey were ready to move on to bigger things and relocated their operation from the Bronx to Manhattan, placing them in direct competition with Schultz's former associate Jack Diamond. Diamond responded by having Joey Noey murdered as he walked out of his speakeasy one night.
Schultz was devastated by the loss and took the matter personally. Shortly after Noey's death, Jack Diamond's own best friend, Arnold Rothstein, was found murdered; newspapers speculated that Rothstein had welched on a deal he had made with another gangster, but talk amongst the underworld suggested that it was a revenge killing perpetrated by Schultz. There was no question, however, that Schultz was the man responsible for Jack Diamond's demise; Diamond was shot three times in the head at point-blank range by Abe Weinberg.
Simultaneously, Schultz faced troubles with Mad Dog Coll. Schultz bailed Coll out of jail when he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. Coll, in turn, jumped bail, and Schultz was forced to pay the $10,000 fine. When Coll resurfaced, he demanded that Schultz make him a full partner. Schultz refused, and Coll left the gang with brother Peter, intent on starting up their own bootlegging venture. Schultz hid out in the apartment of well-known New York madam Polly Adler for a time during the war. Soon after, Schultz had Peter gunned down. Coll in turn murdered four of Schultz's truck drivers and stole their loads. The Schultz-Coll war reached a head when Coll, in a botched drive-by shooting, accidentally murdered a five-year-old boy named Michael Vengali. Coll was forced deep into hiding. Schultz managed to track Coll down to a dilapidated apartment complex. When Coll left the building one evening to use a pay phone, a trio of Schultz's gunmen (reportedly including Bo Weinberg) surrounded the phone booth and machine-gunned Coll to death, cutting his body in half in the process.
With the end of Prohibition, Dutch Schultz sought illegal income elsewhere. His answer came in two forms: Otto Berman, and the Harlem numbers racket. The numbers racket, the forerunner of "Pick 3" lotteries, required players to choose three numbers, which were then derived from the last number before the decimal in the odds at the racetrack. Otto Berman, nicknamed "Abbadabba," was a middle-aged accounting whiz who aligned himself with Schultz. In a matter of seconds, Berman was able to mentally calculate the minimum amount of money Schultz would need to bet at the track at the last minute in order to alter the odds, thereby ensuring that he always controlled which numbers won.
In the early 1930s, Schultz was chased out of New York by prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. Schultz moved to Newark, New Jersey. He wanted to have Dewey assassinated, but other gangsters (such as Luciano) worried about the public reaction that a murder of this sort would produce.
Death
Schultz was shot to death on the night of October 23, 1935, at a Newark diner called The Palace Chophouse. Since fleeing New York, Schultz had converted the back room of the Chophouse into his hideout, where he held regular meetings with his associates.
Schultz had excused himself to go the bathroom when Charles Workman (a.k.a. "Charlie the Bug"), Emanuel Weiss, and a third, unidentified man known only by his alias "Piggy," all hit men working for Louis Buchalter's Murder, Inc., entered the back room. Accounts of what happened next vary from person to person; what is known for certain is that Emmanuel Weiss carried a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun loaded with buckshot, and Charles Workman was armed with a .38 special revolver and a .45 automatic loaded with rust-coated bullets. It is unknown whether "Piggy" was armed, if he fired any bullets, or if he was simply the getaway driver.
The most widely accepted story has Workman and Weiss opening fire on the three men they found there: Otto Berman, Schultz's chief henchman Abe Landau, and Schultz's bodyguard Lulu Rosenkrantz. In the bathroom, Schultz apparently heard the shots but had difficulty truncating his urination to come to his men's aid.
Workman opened fire with his .38. Before either of the Schultz gunners had been able to get off a single shot, "Charlie the Bug" had re-loaded his .38 twice, and all 12 bullets hit their marks: five bullets ripped through Rosenkrantz from his chest down; a total of four went through Berman, into his wrist, elbow, his shoulder, and into his neck (which exited through the side of his face); and three struck Landau, in the wrist, right arm, and left shoulder (which exited the right side of his neck, severing an artery). In addition, Weiss shot Rosenkrantz twice from long range with the shotgun (ricocheting pellets even ripped apart one of his shoes), and shot Berman once in the torso.
Workman found Schultz in the bathroom, trying to finish up his business at the urinal. With his free hand, Schultz reached for an 8.8 cm (3.5 inch) "Chicago Spike"-style switchblade knife, the only weapon he had on him at the time; he'd been intending it to be an uneventful evening and had been planning on returning soon to the hotel room he was sharing with his wife. Before Schultz could retrieve his knife, Workman fired off two shots from his .45. The first bullet missed, while the second bullet struck Schultz slightly below the heart, ricocheting off bone and damaging Schultz's spleen, stomach, colon, liver, and gall bladder before tearing out of his back. It is likely that rust off the casing entered Schultz's bloodstream in the process.
Workman returned to the back room, whereupon he discovered that Weiss had run out of the diner, followed miraculously by Rosenkrantz and Landau, the latter of whom was clutching his neck to stop the spray of blood from his severed artery. Landau fired all the bullets from his .45, none of which did any serious damage to his prey. As Weiss and Piggy sped away in the getaway car, Landau sat down on a trash can outside the door of the Palace Chophouse. Rosenkrantz finally collapsed, his body ripped open from two shotgun blasts and five bullets. Workman stepped over Rosenkrantz and ran into the night.
Shortly after Workman had fled, Dutch Schultz staggered out of the bathroom, clutching his side. He did not want to be found dead with his pants unzipped, lying on the floor of a men's room. He picked up his hat, staggered back to his seat, sat down, and slumped over the table. He called for someone to get an ambulance. Rosenkrantz dutifully pulled himself to his feet, and rather than go immediately to the phone booth near the bar, he demanded that the bartender (who hid behind the register the entire duration of the shootout) change his quarter for five nickels; Rosenkrantz didn't want the phone company getting twenty more cents than they were owed. Rosenkrantz deposited a quarter and called for an ambulance before collapsing against the wall of the phone booth.
When ambulances arrived, the first man they found was Landau, still sitting on the trash can, his arms dangling at his sides and blood faintly coming out of his neck. His last bits of strength were used to give the police a fake name and address before he died of blood loss.
The next man discovered was Rosenkrantz, inside the phone booth; he was strapped to a gurney and taken away. Otto Berman, barely clinging to life, was the next to go. Police interrogated Schultz and gave him brandy while they waited for another ambulance to arrive. When he was finally loaded into the ambulance, Schultz gave the paramedics twenty dollars and asked them to take good care of him.
At the hospital, Berman and Rosenkrantz awaited surgery and refused to speak even a word to the police until Schultz arrived and gave them permission; even then, they provided only minimal information. Berman died four hours after he was wounded; meanwhile, Rosenkrantz was taken into surgery, where doctors found themselves unsure of where to start, considering the extent of his wounds.
Before he was operated on, Schultz received last rites from a Roman Catholic priest per Schultz's wife's request, having converted shortly before the end of his life. Doctors performed surgery, but they were unaware of the extent of damage done to his abdominal organs; he would succumb to peritonitis 24 hours after being wounded. In what can only be considered a medical marvel, Lulu Rosenkrantz lasted an hour longer, dying at the 25-hour mark at the age of 33.
Schultz's last words, influenced by a high fever and large quantities of morphine, were a strange stream of consciousness babble. They were taken down by a police stenographer, and have been used by several Beat writers, most notably William S. Burroughs. This includes the famous
- A boy has never wept...nor dashed a thousand kin.
But the entire text (linked below) is much more rambling, including such gems as
- 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
After Schultz's death, it was discovered that in addition to the woman who was the mother of his children, Schultz had also married two other women; all three came forward to try and claim his earthly possessions.
By receiving last rites, Schultz was guaranteed interment in the Gate of Heaven Roman Catholic cemetery in Hawthorne in Westchester County, New York.
Schultz's life has been the basis of numerous novels and feature films, most of which have taken substantial dramatic license with the facts. The most famous of these works is novelist E.L. Doctorow's Billy Bathgate, a PEN/Faulkner Award winning novel which dramatizes the last three months of Schultz's life, as seen through the eyes of a young boy who briefly becomes his protégé. In the 1991 film adaptation of the book, Schultz is played by Dustin Hoffman.
The 1997 film Hoodlum centers upon Harlem numbers kingpin Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson during Schultz's time there, and the bloody turf war fought between the two men before Schultz's death. Johnson is played by Laurence Fishburne, Schultz by Tim Roth.
See also
- Prohibition
- Organized crime
- Rum-running
- The Last Words of Dutch Schultz a novel-cum-screenplay by William S. Burroughs
- Polly Adler
External links
