SCHULTZ, DUTCH

SCHULTZ, DUTCH (Arthur Simon Flegenheimer, "The Dutchman"; 1902–1935), U.S. gangster of the 1920s and 1930s, only boss of Murder Incorporated to be killed by Murder Inc. Born in Manhattan to Emma Neu and Herman, Austrian-German immigrants, Schultz was raised in the Bronx after his father abandoned the family when Schultz was young. Leaving school at 14 in order to support himself and his mother, Schultz worked for low-level mobsters at a neighborhood nightclub and robbed crap games before graduating to burglary. On December 12, 1919, he was caught breaking into an apartment in the Bronx and arrested and sentenced to jail, the first of 13 arrests but his only prison sentence. After serving 15 months, he took on the name "Dutch Schultz," the nickname of a notorious young gangster from the late 1800s. Schultz rode shotgun in trucks for mobster kingpin arnold rothstein , and by 1928 was in business for himself working as a bootlegger and extortionist. With a quick temper and a reputation for brutality, Schultz muscled in for complete control in the Bronx of bootlegging, eliminating anyone who crossed him, like Legs Diamond and Vincent Coll, and, some say, Rothstein. With the end of Prohibition, he moved on to the numbers racket, and soon was named by the FBI as Public Enemy \#1. On January 25, 1933, the state of New York indicted Schultz for tax evasion in the sum of $92,103.34. Schultz moved to Newark, New Jersey to evade arrest, but on November 28, 1934, he was surrendered in Albany on the tax indictment charges. The case in Syracuse ended in a hung jury on April 29, 1935, and he was acquitted in a second tax trial in Malone, N.Y., on August 2, 1935. Schultz wanted to have Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey assassinated and presented a plan before the heads of the national Syndicate, including Lucky Luciano, lepke buchalter , and meyer lansky . But the Mob worried about the backlash of such a murder, and voted against the plan. Schultz left the meeting saying he would do it himself   within 48 hours. As a result, hit men working for Buchalter's Murder, Inc. shot Schultz and three cohorts two days later on October 23, 1935, at the Palace Chop House, which served as Schultz's headquarters in Newark, N.J. The three bodyguards were shot dead, but Schultz was taken to Newark Hospital and held onto life for another day. As time passed, Schultz began talking incoherently and nonsensically, influenced by a high fever and large quantities of morphine. Police assigned a stenographer to write down everything he said right until he died at 8:35 P.M. on October 24, 1935. Schultz received last rites in his hospital room from a Roman Catholic priest at the request of Schultz's 21-year-old wife, Frances, after he had been baptized three months earlier while awaiting trial in Malone. At his funeral in a Catholic cemetery three days later, only his mother, sister, wife, and Father McInerney, who performed a Catholic service, were present. His mother had a Jewish talit, or prayer shawl, draped over the coffin. Schultz's life, and specifically his death-bed confession, became legend, and were used by writers as the basis of numerous novels and feature films, including E.L. Doctorow 's Billy Bathgate (1989), which was made into the 1991 movie starring dustin hoffman ; William Burroughs' The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (1969); and the 1997 film Hoodlum. He was also the subject of Paul Sann's Kill the Dutchman\! The Story of Dutch Schultz (1971). (Elli Wohlgelernter (2nd ed.)