Dutch Schultz： The Rogue Gangster Who Was Too Dangerous for the Mafia ｜ Our History)

September 1935. One of New York's most feared gangsters, Dutch Schultz, suspects his right-hand man, Bo Weinberg, is plotting against him with a rival mob boss, Lucky Luciano. Schultz is outraged when he discovers that Bo Weinberg has betrayed him. He reacts, you know, explosively, to put it mildly. Schultz considered himself a unique killer and he liked to torture his victims whenever he could Weinberg isn't just any old member of Schultz's gang. He's one of Dutch's closest friends and that makes the betrayal even worse. Schultz doesn't just want Bo dead. He wants him to suffer. They pulled him towards the edge of the boat towards the bow and just tossed him overboard and he knew he would drown painfully. Weinberg committed the cardinal sin. He turned his back on Schultz and rejection is a wound that cuts Schultz deep. Dutch's problems stem from his childhood. As a kid he was abandoned by his father and the world would pay for his pain. After a short stretch for petty thieving, the 19-year-old kid is free and he wants to break from the past. Born Arthur Flegenheimer, Schultz started out in low-rent jobs around New York and nobody thought this kid was going to amount to anything. A chorus girl once famously said he looks like Bing Crosby with his face bashed in. He's not an attractive guy and he's not a particularly fierce looking guy. Now Flegenheimer wants to show the world he is somebody. So he joins a street gang in the Bronx and sheds his father's name to start afresh. They all remembered they had been this old-time gangster from a generation before named Dutch Schultz. Why don't you just borrow his name? That has more zip to it. And so it's Dutch Schultz, not Artie Flegenheimer, who is determined to show the underworld what he can do. Schultz starts his new career at the height of Prohibition America. In 1919, the U.S. government outlaws the production of booze. But for those who are willing to break the law, prohibition means something else. Prohibition is a tremendous opportunity for every gangster in America, every fellow who's in for the fast buck. Gangsters across the U.S. get into the illegal production and distribution of booze. And a young Dutch Schultz gets his big break as the muscle riding shotgun to protect the He sees firsthand how quenching the thirst of Americans in illegal speakeasies can make millions of dollars. Dutch Schultz learns from the best, a new king of crime in America. Arnold Rothstein is essentially the founder of Organized Crime, Inc. In New York, he is numero uno, number one, the big man, the big bankroll, the guy who puts everything together. Rothstein believes that to be successful, mob business needs to be exactly that, a professional business and all carried out in the shadows. So he begins molding rough young hoodlums in his own image. Arnold Rothstein was considered a very brilliant, refined mentor. He was an extremely pivotal personality in the psyche of a lot of people. In Rothstein, Schultz at last finds the father figure he's been yearning for. But Dutch has a rival. Rothstein is grooming another diamond in the rough, a smart kid with a big future. Schultz meets Charles, quote unquote, Lucky Luciano, who is an Italian who's sort of this other striving young gangster. They're both ambitious. Luciano learns fast while Schultz just can't give up the old ways. Arnold Rothstein could see the difference in gangsters. Guys like Schultz were just old fashioned killers. Luciano was smart, slick, realized if you could do it nonviolently and get away with it, it was a lot better than doing it violently. Once again, Dutch Schultz finds himself abandoned by a father figure. And the kid with the short fuse doesn't like coming off second best. Dutch Schultz was not someone who tolerated jealousy very, very well. If you were not with him, you were his arch enemy. While Dutch is passed over, Lucky Luciano is transformed under Rothstein's guidance. Rothstein teaches Luciano how to move among the Manhattan elite, how to dress with style, not like a street thug. It isn't long before the two young guns begin their own gangs. Typically, Luciano works smart, hooking up with talent like criminal genius Meyer Lansky and the charismatic Bugsy Siegel. Ignoring Rothstein's lessons, Dutch forms his gang from a group of old thug pals from the Bronx. Guys like Dutch don't understand the value of strategy. They only do business one way, through terror. Dutch first sets up with tough neighborhood buddy, Joey Noy. They hire a bunch of thugs, including another childhood friend, Vincent Mad Dog Cole. Vincent Cole was one of Dutch Schultz's old street gang buddies from when they were quite young. But even by gangland standards, he was violently unstable. Along with Cole are new pals Bo Weinberg and later Jules Martin. It's a loyal and vicious group. One of Schultz's first acts is to send a message to the man who rejected him. Dutch steps on Rothstein's toes by starting his own bootlegging outfit smack in Rothstein's territory. Rothstein's lucrative setup is strictly top-end. He sells only quality imported scotch to the Manhattan elite. But Schultz doesn't have Rothstein's class. At first, no one wants Dutch's disgusting bootleg beer. Not until they get the Schultz gang sales pitch. No one would normally stock this, but it was prohibition, it's being promoted by gangsters, and when somebody shows up at your illegal saloon with a shotgun and says, we'd like you to buy 10 cases of this, you don't really turn them down. Schultz's rival, Lucky Luciano, is smart enough not to set up without Rothstein's blessing. And along with bootlegging, Lucky's gang will later spread into prostitution and narcotics. The suave young gangster is on a path to sustainable success, while Dutch resorts to ever more extreme measures. When New York City speakeasy owner Joe Rock decides to make a stand against Schultz's thugs, he couldn't know the price he'll pay for refusing the mobster's bootleg beer. Schultz decides to make an example of him. Dutch Schultz is a psychopath. Somebody like Dutch Schultz has no remorse. He has no conscience. Rock isn't the first to get a beating at the hands of the mob, but what Schultz does next takes gangland retribution into a horrific new realm. They hang him up by his thumbs on a meat hook, torture him in various horrible ways, and then just out of sheer spite wrap a bandage around his eyes that has been liberally dipped in a gonorrheal sore. And although Rock's family pay a ransom of $35,000 for his freedom, Rock eventually goes blind. The story of Joe Rock spreads and ensures that no one will ever say no to Dutch Schultz. He is now feared as the beer baron of the Bronx. Dutch's brutal regime soon sees his gang making hundreds and thousands of dollars a month. But it's not enough. Schultz still harbors resentment for being passed over by his one-time mentor. So this time he makes a direct attack on the empire of Arnold Rothstein. His gang try to muscle in on a notorious mobster bankrolled by Rothstein, Manhattan bootlegger Jack Legs Diamond. But Diamond won't back down, and Schultz learns that sometimes violence can levy a heavy price. Diamond has a reputation of his own, and his gang hits back, shooting Schultz's closest confidant, Joey Noy. This is one of the few times in Schultz's adult life where he's genuinely upset by something happening to someone other than himself. Joey was one of the only people who could call Schultz by his original name, Arthur, which is something Schultz let almost no one do. Noy suffers for three weeks before dying from his wounds. Dutch hits back. Despite several attempts to kill Diamond, somehow Rothstein's man in Manhattan survives each attack. But Dutch's relentless savagery wears Diamond down, and he skips town, leaving Dutch Schultz to take over Legs Diamond's business. Schultz now has a big presence in Manhattan, but is greedy for more. And when his one-time mentor is killed in a shooting, Schultz thinks he's hit the big time. Rothstein's empire is now up for grabs, and Schultz feels he's in a prime position to assume the role vacated by the death of the Mafia king. 1929, and when Schultz turns up to a mob meeting in Atlantic City, he discovers that he's not the only mobster with a stake. It's the biggest meeting in the history of organized crime. Top of the agenda is Rothstein's empire. Leading the meeting is Dutch's arch-rival, Lucky Luciano. But Lucky is after more than a slice of Rothstein's organization. He wants to create a legacy in his boss's image, an end to gangland violence, and a new era of cooperation between the families. Luciano proposes a new way for the mob to be run like a business, and with its very own board of directors that will come to be known as the Commission. It was composed essentially of the New York families and other families that they welcomed in, and that they would be sort of the security council. Whenever there was any disputes, Lucky, of course, will be one of the leaders on this new commission, and as a big-time New York boss, Dutch expects to join him. But violent reputations like Schultz's are exactly what the mob now want to avoid. As much as people thought about mobsters that they was all about dominance, the irony is a lot of it was, can you get along with other people? Lucky and other mobsters make sure there will never be a place for Dutch Schultz on the Commission, and when Rothstein's rackets are shared out, a large portion goes to Lucky Luciano. Dutch gets nothing. Back in the day, both men were mentored by Rothstein, but Schultz didn't listen. Now the golden boy, Luciano, has everything, and what little Schultz has is about to disappear. 1933, and prohibition is finally repealed, bringing an end to the mob's lucrative business. The beer baron of the Bronx is left high and dry. He needs a new business plan, and fast. With liquor now legal, Dutch turns to gambling, and he spots a business ripe for a hostile takeover in Harlem. Harlem's gambling rackets are thriving, and Dutch sees the African-American and Hispanic organizations as vulnerable to his aggressive brand of negotiations. He was not a guy who was really able to reach accommodations with other people. It was his way or you're dead. Soon, Schultz runs almost every gambling racket in Harlem. He also moves into protection rackets, putting in charge his trusted lieutenant, Jules Martin. Dutch and his violent gang are back on the up and up, but Dutch is the only one raking in the profits. While Luciano's empire grows by giving everyone a stake, Dutch keeps it all for himself, paying his mob only a miserly wage. And to make sure no one is ripping him off, Schultz breaks another of Rothstein's cardinal rules. He keeps detailed ledges of his profits. Inevitably, there's a mutiny. When one of Schultz's most trusted gang members, Vincent Cole, demands a share of Schultz's success, Dutch turns him down flat. Schultz is just too much of a hothead and has too much pride, in a way, to sort of give in to any of Vincent Cole's demands. And he just doesn't have that sort of compromising gene that people like Arnold Rothstein, lucky Luciano has. Cole is furious. So begins one of the bloodiest feuds in New York history. It's the kind of open warfare that Luciano is trying to end. Acting out mob business on the bound to attract the attention of the government. The hothead Dutch Schultz has set in motion a violent chain of events that will eventually lead to his downfall. But rival gangsters like lucky Luciano fear the damage being done to organized crime goes further than the body count. Luciano realized if you could do it non-violently and get away with it, it was a lot better than doing it violently. Then in the long run, too much violence brought too much attention, too much attention from law enforcement. And that could be your undoing. While the headcount stays within rival gangs, the war is tolerated. When it spreads to innocent bystanders, the situation rapidly changes. That led into the horrific incident in which Vincent Cole and his gangsters shot up a bunch of children by trying to hit one of Dutch Schultz's associates on the street. Four children are hit. Five-year-old Michael Vengali later dies in the hospital. In this newsreel, young mourners point to where the bullets sprayed. Lucky Luciano wants the war to just go away. And it does. But only after Schultz's men track Cole down and blast him to death in a phone booth. It's a bloody and public end to a bloody and public war. But it brings about a new threat for Dutch. Just as Luciano predicts, the government come after organized crime in the shape of new and ambitious chief assistant attorney Thomas Dewey. For 20 years, the underworld has preyed on our people and robbed them and then frightened them into silence. But now the day of fear of the gangster is coming to an end. Dewey wants to publicly take down a big time gangster. But with limited resources, he must prioritize between the two big names in New York, Lucky Luciano or Dutch Schultz. Dutch Schultz was wild. He was highly public. He was seen in night spots like the Cotton Club. He was flashy in a repulsive way. And it made him an easy target. Inevitably, Schultz is seen as the priority target. After the high profile humiliation of Chicago mob boss Al Capone on tax evasion charges, Dewey goes after Schultz's business records. Big time racketeers like Luciano and his former mentor Arnold Rothstein knew to keep their ledges far from the prying eyes of the state's taxmen. But Schultz's scrupulous bookkeeping, designed to spot pilfering by any of his gangsters, now light up Dutch's criminal enterprise like Broadway. Dewey has all the evidence he needs to bring Schultz down. In January 1933, Dutch Schultz is indicted for tax evasion and now faces an extraordinary 43 years in prison. Eventually, Schultz takes a page out of Arnold Rothstein's book, the mentor he's come to hate. It's become a staple weapon in the mob's arsenal, the big bribe. Schultz for once acts rationally that he does send one of his minions to Washington to try to sort of sort things out and implicitly offer a bit of a bribe. And this is turned down cold. And Schultz is genuinely surprised by this because, you know, in his experience, almost every politician he's encountered can be bribed. When the bribe doesn't work, Schultz goes into hiding. The police distribute 50,000 wanted posters. And after nearly two years on the run, the government declares Schultz as public enemy number one. Fearing the G-men might gun him down as they had former public enemy number one, John Dillinger, Dutch decides he needs to be around to face the music. And he turns himself in. Everyone, even his own gang members, think Dutch's days are numbered. After a persuasive argument by his lawyers, a few days later, Dutch is out, but on a massive $75,000 bail. In the public eye, with his court case pending, Schultz is free to shore up his crumbling empire. He calls a meeting with his close lieutenant, Jules Martin, to apparently discuss strategy. But Dutch knows only one strategy. Death. Dutch has heard rumors that Martin has stolen $70,000 from him, money Dutch now desperately needs. When Schultz calmly confronts his lieutenant, Martin confesses, but to a lesser amount, claiming he's only stolen $20,000. If he thinks that's enough to buy his life, he's mistaken. He does not react very well at all when his personal associates sort of turn on him. He takes this personally, and he takes this revenge personally. Even with the police and press watching his every step, Dutch can't help himself. Schultz pulled out a gun, put it in Jules' mouth, and pulled the trigger. With his high-profile court case on the horizon, even for Schultz, the killing of Martin is a reckless act. Dutch's day in court finally arrives in July 1935. Schultz's trial is the newsreel story of the day. Dutch's lawyers argue that a trial in New York will not be fair, and the judge agrees to move the legal proceedings to a small town called Malone on the Canadian border. Schultz now does something completely out of character, and acts more like his arch-rival, Lucky Luciano. Dutch Schultz learned enough from Luciano to do something very smart when he was on trial. He went to upstate New York, and he bought the town. He began to bribe people. He began to try to be charming. He ended up becoming quite popular. He became a part of the community. Dutch even employs local lawyers and pillars of the community to represent him. The usually violent and brutal Schultz, a mobster who's made millions through his vicious reputation, is now gambling his entire life on a different way of gangster business. Bribes. The question is, has Dutch Schultz made the right decision? Everyone thinks Dutch is going down, including the members of his own gang, but Dutch's bribes pay off. The jury finds Schultz not guilty. Schultz is genuinely surprised at his victory, and Dutch isn't the only one. The small town judge is appalled. The judge ruled later that those folks could never serve on another jury. He said this decision is against the evidence. Thomas Dewey vows he'll still get Schultz. Having beaten the government for tax evasion, Dutch returns to New York to discover that other forces have been conspiring against him while he was upstate on trial. Schultz has won in Malone, but he quickly realizes that he's been betrayed by one of his closest associates, Bo Weinberg, who's been with him for years. Weinberg is plotting to betray Schultz, and he's going to do it with the one man who's haunted Dutch's life, his arch rival, Lucky Luciano. Not for the first time, betrayal fogs Schultz's mind, and he loses control. At this moment, there's an enormous amount of press attention on Dutch Schultz. The police are breathing down his neck. Prosecutors are breathing down his neck. Thomas Dewey is watching him very closely. So what does Schultz do? He says, well, let's just kill Bo Weinberg. Schultz discovers that in exchange for a slice of Dutch's empire, Weinberg offers to tell Luciano everything about Schultz's gang business. Dutch is enraged. He liked to torture his victims and watched them while he died. So he got this idea that he would encase Bo Weinberg's feet in concrete and dump them into the Harlem River. One by one, Schultz murders his close friends in an attempt to remain in power. But Dutch is now on his own, and under threat not just from rival bosses, but also prosecutor Thomas Dewey. Dewey had his finger pointing at Schultz, and Schultz found out about it. And that turned him into a paranoid, that he knew if Dewey was after him, he might get him. And Dutch Schultz's answer to everything was bloodshed. Schultz doesn't want to learn and turns again to violence to solve his problems. He chooses to hit Thomas Dewey. It will be the highest profile mob hit ever. But one thing stands in Schultz's way. Golden Boy Lucky Luciano and his newly created commission. The commission is sort of, you know, imagine it as a board of directors for organized crime in America, but it's basically run by Lucky Luciano and some very close allies, sort of to, you know, make decisions and make approvals for assassinations. Schultz is forced to put his plan to kill one of the most famous prosecutors in the U.S. to his peers. But although Luciano has no intention of allowing Schultz to kill Dewey, he realizes that his former stablemate is too hot-headed to brush off. So Luciano indulges the wild Dutchman and commissions the mob's top hitman, Albert Anastasia, to scope out a hit on Dewey. Anastasia spends days casing Dewey's apartment, posing as a doting father, fake pram included. When he reports back to the commission, it isn't what Luciano wants to hear. Anastasia tells the meeting he can hit Dewey when he makes his morning calls from a phone booth outside his apartment. Dutch thinks he's got the go-ahead he needs, but then Lucky talks to the other mob bosses. Luciano said, if he kills Dewey, he'll bring the whole world down around our ears. The whole world will drop on us here. We can't let him do that. Schultz is desperate to pull the plug on Dewey, but the decision rests in the hands of the golden boy mobster, Lucky Luciano, the gangster who won out in Arnold Rothstein's attentions, who took control of much of Rothstein's empire, and whose quiet, strategic approach has made Schultz look like an amateur and the outsider he's always destined to be. Lucky knows if they stop Schultz killing Dewey, it means certain jail for Dutch. If they say yes, the government will turn everything they have on organized crime. Lucky delivers the commission's final verdict. It's a no. Schultz is appalled and he feels again a sense of betrayal. Schultz just completely loses his temper, you know, basically loses his mind, and says, I don't care what the commission has to say, I don't care what Lucky Luciano has to say, I'm going to do this myself. The commission now have to decide what to do with Schultz. When Dutch Schultz leaves the room, the commission knows they have a problem, and they know what the solution is, and the solution is to kill Dutch Schultz. Having dared to question the authority of the newly formed commission, Schultz has signed his own death warrant. The only question now is will the mob get to Schultz before Schultz gets to Dewey. October 23rd, 1935. Schultz is at his favorite restaurant, the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey. A lot of more cautious gangsters will eat in a different restaurant every night, change their schedule. Schultz didn't. He just picked the same place, and they would have often the same meal, steak and fries, and meet with the same people. So his enemies knew this and plotted an assassination. Dutch leaves the table to go to the bathroom. Moments later, two men enter the restaurant. Hitmen Charlie the Bug Workman and Emmanuel Mendy Weiss pull out a .38 caliber revolver and a double-barreled shotgun. The gunman came in and began firing. Some of the guys who were with him were shot six times. But the killers can't find the man they've come for. The killers didn't know exactly where Dutch was, and they went into the bathroom, and Dutch was there, and so they just blasted him. The two assassins make their escape as Dutch emerges from the bathroom. Schultz stumbles over to a table, sits down hard as if he was drunk, and then splays his face and arms on the table. He's still wearing his fedora and his overcoat. This photograph of this becomes a gangster classic. Schultz is still alive, just. He's rushed to the hospital for Luciano and the commission. This could be a catastrophe. If Dutch thought he still had friends in the mob, he soon learns the bitter truth. As he lies on his deathbed, he gets a telegram. It's from one of the Harlem gangsters Dutch threatened as a gangland boss. The telegram is a line from the It reads, On the 24th of October 1935, Dutch Schultz dies. He is 33 years old. Luciano and the commission meet after Schultz's death to quietly divide up his empire. The immediate beneficiary of Schultz's death is Lucky Luciano because he's the unofficial head of the organized crime in the United States. His peers, they sort of carve up Schultz's empire and Lucky Luciano helps himself to a nice big portion. Dutch lost everything because he didn't see how the mob was changing. Dutch Schultz was hated because he was unpredictable and the thing that these guys did not want at that time in history was somebody who would end up killing them. Schultz didn't see how Luciano wanted the mob to work together out of the public eye. Dutch was simply bad for mob business. Too public, too selfish, and ultimately too dangerous. Dutch Schultz has entered mob history as the boss everyone loved to hate. A black sheep who made many enemies and invented cruel ways to kill them. Dutch was wild and defiant and killed, you know, without even thinking. Dutch Schultz was the last mob boss to think that he alone could stand up to the might of Lucky Luciano and the American Mafia and he paid the ultimate price.