Dutch Schultz – In the Crosshairs of Murder Incorporated

Organized Crime and Punishment

Title: Dutch Schultz – In the Crosshairs of Murder Incorporated

Original Publication Date: 7/12/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/lbDcbM4OuQu

Description: this episode, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the captivating life of Dutch Schultz, a notorious American mobster during the Prohibition era. Born as Arthur Flegenheimer, Schultz rose to infamy as a ruthless bootlegger and racketeer in New York City. Known for his flamboyant personality and cunning tactics, Schultz built a vast criminal empire that included speakeasies, gambling operations, and protection rackets. However, his reign of power came to a violent end when he became entangled in a bloody gang war. Join us as we explore the enigmatic life of Dutch Schultz and how he will find himself on the wrong side of Murder Incorporated.

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Thanks for joining Mustache, Chris and I as we continue to discuss the Mafia and particularly the vicious game of Contract Killers, murder Incorporated. We've been examining a lot of the biographies, some these people, and there might be somebody who you're, if you know anything about Murder, murder that you're screaming that we haven't really talked about and.

That person is the person we're gonna talk about today. Dutch Schultz, uh, one of the most deadly and dangerous people and a group of deadly and dangerous people. So Chris, um, who is Dutch Schultz and why should we spend some time talking about his story? Just going through the notes of like, when we were going through, uh, the History of Murder Inc.

And um, in the previous episode we talked about a couple of the big murders that Murder Inc. Had, uh, been involved in. And obviously, uh, we're gonna have to talk, talk about the murder of Dutch Schultz. But cuz I would, I would argue that's probably the murder Inc's most famous [00:01:00] murder. Um, yeah. As soon as I started getting into Judge Schultz, I figured why not just do an episode on this guy ending in his death by Murder, Inc.

Because he plays, he's such an important part of this time period of the, uh, uh, mob history, and he's all interconnected with all these guys in Murder, Inc. In one way or another. Maybe not so much, say a Ellis and Jacob Shapiro and those types of guys, but. Uh, Leke and, uh, lucky Luciano and Albert Anastasia, he's, he's all interconnected with these guys more, the higher up end of the, uh, I guess, uh, murder Inc, uh, apparatus.

So, uh, give us a little bit of background on Dutch. Arthur Si. Simon Frankenheimer. Sorry, that name is different. Gonna make free not laugh. Yes. That was, uh, D's actual name. Uh, was, was, uh, born to, uh, German Jewish immigrants on August. Uh, Six, uh, [00:02:00] 19, oh, uh, 1904. His father would end up abandoning the family when he was, uh, quite young.

And this would traumatize Dutch for the rest of his life. Like up until the point where when people would ask him about his fathers, he would make up stories. Like his father was like, oh, he was a really important businessman. He was doing stuff overseas. And, um, I believe it's something that just he kept with him for the rest of his life.

This, um, um, trust issues or maybe sense of abandonment issues, uh, I mean, that would be traumatizing. You know, any time period in history your father just picks up and leaves and doesn't want to have any, anything to do with you. Um, This inevitably. Yeah. So Dutch would, you know, grow up and he would be involved in like petty crimes and fights and things of that nature.

By the 1920s, Dutch would've worked as a bouncer for, uh, a speakeasy for a gentleman named, uh, Joey. Uh, no. Joey took a shine to Dutch because of his, uh, he, he [00:03:00] recognized pretty quickly that Dutch was a pretty brutal and ruthless person, which we're gonna get into, uh, details, uh, quite shortly. And yeah, before you know, it, uh, him and Joey were, you know, opening up joints together.

And this is kind of when Dutch starts, uh, getting into serious, uh, criminal activity and. Yeah, they would even use their own trucks. Like, so it would cut out all the transportation costs that would be involved in, you know, just transporting the liquor, uh, at the time. And Dutch would actually, you know, get.

You mentioned, I remember one of the episodes you were mentioning some grocery chain store where they have like, the managers have to work on the floor and then they have to work in every department before they move up to the higher office, is kind of what Dutch is doing here. Like he literally would go on these trucks, ride shuck, gone to these trucks, to uh, I believe it was Union City, New Jersey, where this guy would make the booze for them and he would be part pretty much.

[00:04:00] From the entire process and seeing like the boos getting made and riding shotgun in the trucks to it getting delivered and, you know, playing, uh, you know, the patrolman basically. Yeah. It's really amazing that, um, you know, Dutch, he's in the, the business side, but he's also in the sort of the head cracking side.

Anybody who can do both of those things in the criminal element is gonna go far. Let's talk a little bit about moving forward some of the gang wars that are going on during this time. This time is definitely an era of gang wars. Oh, a hundred percent. Because once prohibition, you know, came into effect, there's just so much money to be made off of legal booze and everyone was looking to make a quick buck.

And, you know, some of these gangs were more successful than others. Uh, so the No and Dutch gang, which is what I'm gonna be calling and ends up getting into conflict with the, uh, John, I guess you can call it the [00:05:00] Rock Brothers, uh, gang. It was John and Joe Rock. Um, a lot of the time how these prohibition gangs would work is they would force other speak speakeasies to, uh, sell their booze or they would force other gangs to like buy booze off them, which they would later in turn go sell at the different speakies or their own speakies and.

John, who was the older brother, you know, initially they both said, no, you know, bugger off, Dutch, bugger off. No, like, we're not doing any business with you. And then John realizes, you know what, maybe you know, I'll buy some booze off you guys. Whatever, you know, let's try to keep it, uh, keep this from breaking up into conflict.

Joe. Uh, Joey though, the younger brother, he says, screw that. Like I refuse to do it. And Dutch and no. Saw an opportunity. Know what? We gotta set an example out this guy. And they kidnapped the young, they kidnapped Joey, the younger brother, and they beat him [00:06:00] up to a bloody pulp and they hang him up by a meat hook.

And I guess in one of the more, uh, Disgusting moments I've ever read about in, uh, mob history is apparently they, when he was hanging up by this meat hook, they had, I guess, gathered a gonorrhea, um, discharge bandages, like from a local hospital. How they would get these hands, get their hands on these things, I'll, I don't know, but they did, and they wrapped it around his eyes and.

Basically made him blind. Like while this was all all going on, his, his family is like calling Dutch in the note Dutch and no, like, we want, you know, we want our son back, we want our son back. And Dutch said, well, okay, well it's gonna cost like $35,000, which the family ends up paying. But uh, Joey for the rest of his life was blind and partially crippled because of this, uh, because of what Dutch and, uh, no [00:07:00] did.

And I would say, yeah, this event pretty much secured their reputation in the, uh, prohibition era. Gangsters is being like one of the most disgusting and ruthless out of them all. You really start to see during the prohibition era, it's. It separates the, the big leagues from the minor leagues. So a lot of people seem to have gotten involved in, in.

Illegal alcohol and the illegal alcohol trade, but just because it was a, a young industry and anybody could get into it. And then you, you got like the big time criminals who got involved and they pushed out all the little guys. We're gonna talk a little bit now about a side character in Dutch's story, but he is really important.

A guy named who goes by the name of Vincent Mad Dog call. Just to kind of put in perspective like the, the, the Noel Schultz gang or the Dutch, uh, [00:08:00] Noel Gang, whatever you want to call it, um, at this point, like they were the only gang that could rival the interconnected crime families, uh, Italian crime families, and.

I was just thinking about this, uh, um, just from research in this time period, like it still shocks me in this like short kind of little window. You have like the likes of like Dutch and Lepke and other Jewish gangsters that we talked about and you know, combined together. They're just as powerful as the Italians and I'm pretty sure that there's no point other point in American history except for this short window where that could be said.

Um, Yeah. So when Schultz, uh, moves, uh, Schultz decide Schultz and no decide like we're gonna move outta the Bronx, we're gonna expand our operation. So they end up moving into Manhattan, which, uh, gets em into conflict with the gentleman that we talked about earlier, Jack Legg's Diamond, [00:09:00] and by by extension the rest of the Irish mafia.

And. What ends up happening initially in this, in this conflict is Joey no, um, ends up getting shot several times in front of a speakeasy. Uh, he survives, but he ended up, his, uh, wounds would end up getting infected, uh, and he would die, uh, on November 21st, uh, 1928. Um, this obviously made Schultz, you know, this guy was, he took him under his wing.

He was kind of like a father figure to him in a lot of ways. He was his mentor. Um, And obviously made Schultz very, uh, mad. So he waited a little bit, uh, to strike revenge, but he ended up getting it, uh, where Jack Legg's Diamond was shot several times in front of, outside of a restaurant. Uh, we talked about that on the Jack Legg Diamond episode.

If you guys want more details about, uh, crazy Life of Jack LE's Diamond, and basically when Jack LE's Diamond was [00:10:00] at the hospital at the time, touch moves his way into. Uh, that area, the Manhattan region then becomes even more powerful. But then this leads to Dutch having to deal with an internal conflict with the fellow lunatic.

As you mentioned earlier, Vincent, mad Dog Cole. Um, It's, yeah, it's interesting just a little, kind of a side bit during this whole time, cuz it, it's gonna relate to when we start getting a little bit more detail about Vincent Mad Dog. Cole is Schultz Randall's gang. He paid them via a salary. So it wasn't like most of these gangs at the time were, uh, you get a base on a percentage of like, how much illegal booze do we sell or how much, uh, uh, illegal gambling money did we bring in?

Schultz just paid guys with like a monthly salary. Which I thought was pretty interesting. Nobody else was doing that. The Italians weren't doing that, and from my understanding, none of the other Jewish gangs were doing that. Let's talk a little bit more about this, this [00:11:00] key character of Mad Dog Cole, because he does have a big part to play in not only Dutch Schultz's story, but moving basically the whole American Mafia forward.

Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, uh, um, like when, uh, Jack, sorry, when, um, Dutch was able to take care of Jack Legg, diamond Jack, Legg's Diamond, he started having internal conflict. Uh, Vincent madd dog Cole was, uh, was a young up and up and coming hood that, uh, Dutch took a liking to cuz he saw a lot of similarities between him and himself.

I mean, they were both like stone cold sociopaths and. Pretty much willing to do anything. Uh, yeah, like I pointed out earlier, Dutch hired him to be like a hitman and an enforcer. Um, but it, the problem was the, the qualities that made Mad Dog a good gangster or made mad dog, like appealing to Dutch, you know, the fact that he was a psychotic and he was willing.

To pretty much do [00:12:00] anything, um, led into direct conflict with Dutch because it's hard to control individuals like that. You know, sometimes you get, you strike a perfect balance, or Dutch, he's, he's just the right amount of psychopath, but he is able to somewhat keep it under control to be able to run a criminal empire where Mad Dog wasn't able to really keep it enough, keep it under control, and he, he wasn't gonna take orders from anyone really.

Um, So he starts doing, uh, starts doing his own thing and Dutch starts telling him it's like, you can't be doing this. And as I had pointed out earlier, Dutch paid his, uh, fellow soldiers with a salary. Uh, so when Dutch went to go confront Mad Dog about, uh, his erotic behavior, apparently Mad Dog like freaked out on him and said, you know what?

You're gonna make me an equal partner, otherwise I'm just gonna form my own gang. And, uh, You know, Dutch was probably, I can only imagine Dutch at this time. Like really? Like, are you, do you know who I am? You're telling, you're making [00:13:00] demands to me. He must have been flabbergasted. Um, and that's basically what Mad Dog does.

He forms his own gang and it leads to like one of the. Bloodier wars and uh, and organized crime history, especially, at least in the New York region that I've read about. I think it ends up with like 50 people who end up getting killed in this war. And it's shooting on the, you know, in the open streets.

Even like Mad Dog's brother, his own brother gets killed out, uh, was one of the first victims. Um, Eventually this ends up leading to, uh, how uh, mad Dog got his, uh, his nickname and basically there was a hit going. There was Mad Dog was trying to take out some of like Dutch's guys and what ended up happening was he does like a drive by ends up hitting one of the young kids that were playing nearby and.

One of them ends up dying. I think two of them ended up getting injured. [00:14:00] And then from this point on, I believe it was the mayor of New York at the time, or it was the governor called him a mad dog. And this is how he got the nickname Mad Dog Cole. Um, yeah. So this ends up going to court and. It's funny, like he hired a pretty good lawyer and he denied it from, denied it, obviously, that he had anything to do with killing this kid, killing these kid, killing this kid.

Uh, the other thing he ended up saying was like, oh, I wish I could rip the throat out. Or the guy that actually killed the kid, he'd be ripping his own throat out. But that's neither here nor there. The case, there wasn't a, there wasn't really a ton of evidence. Um, Gangster. So he and ends up getting thrown outta court.

Mad Dog just ends up going back to, uh, what he does and. Should I talk about him getting hired by Marzano? I think it's one thing that's really interesting about Dutch is [00:15:00] hiring these people on on a payroll. I think it shows you the really different sides of organized crime. There's some organized crime where they have a revenue stream, like through.

Be it illegal drugs or be it in this case, illegal alcohol or in, uh, other circumstances. It's construction. The money's coming from somewhere. But then there's other situations where these crews are just kind of freelancers who are trying to get into any scam they want to, and you don't wanna pay them a salary because otherwise those guys are gonna sit around and drink coffee all day because they, otherwise they'd have nothing to do either.

We really start to see that there's a lot of different facets to organize crime. Yeah. Maybe the idea you mentioned earlier in the, the previous episode of Murder Inc. They, at least, at the very least, they were paying like a retainer. Remember, this is an idea that they, they took from Dutch. I, I don't [00:16:00] know for sure about that, but I mean, it's, it's highly possible.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You don't want these guys, you need when you, when you need guys, you want to have them, yeah. Available. Not tracing down every, you know, shaking down every bookmaker and candy store owner and to, on the main street, you, you want them waiting to do jobs. But if it was in another circumstance where you, where the crews are trying to shake down candy stores, you don't want them sitting in the bar when they should be out shaking down.

Oh yeah. For sure. I mean, yeah, no, it makes sense, right? Um, Yeah, and I guess, so they, they kind of quickly talk about how Mad Dog Cole gets outta the picture is, you know, one, the one thing that Mad Dog Cole did to make money, uh, when he formed his own gang was to kidnap, uh, fellow gangsters. He paid like, you know, bro, like fellow brothers of gangster [00:17:00] bosses or even sometimes bosses themselves and ask for ransoms and obviously, They'd pay it, right?

Cuz of where are they gonna go? They can't go to the cops. So obviously this didn't make many friends for, uh, mad Dog, Cole and Dutch and a couple other bosses, but a 50 grand, 50 grand, uh, bouncy on his head and. What ended up happening is they, they saw him at a, like a phone booth, uh, I believe it was in front of a restaurant, and a couple of the Duchess men, um, saw him there and they came out with Tommy guns and shot him up.

I think it was, they hit him 15 times and f. Or 20 times and 15 of the bullets went right through 'em. And, but that's a quick rundown. You can't really tell the Dr. Sots story without mentioning Mad Dog Cole and that trial and kind of how they met and how the breakup happened and his death. Yeah, it seems like Mad Dog came up with.

Dutch and then [00:18:00] they broke apart. But it shows that all this interconnectivity and especially interconnectivity into all different facets of the mafia Dutch ends that Doug's run. But, um, what were some of the rackets that Dutch was involved in? Yeah. When prohibition was starting to come to an end, like Dutch, uh, started looking for other revenue, like other ways of making money, um, One of the, uh, one of the more brilliant things he did is he muscled his way into the Harlem Numbers racket.

Uh, I believe it was, I can't remember her name, but it was this, it was this, uh, black woman that was running this numbers racket. Apparently she held EL for quite some time and I think eventually had just, uh, ended up giving in. Um, Dutch also, he also hired this guy, Otto Berman, I guess he, his version of Meyer Wanski.

And they, um, came up with this like, he was like a math numbers whiz type of [00:19:00] guy, and he came up with this. That's above my pay grade, but basically the scheme or working with the numbers so that it would basically maximize the amount of money that they were getting from those numbers and paying up as little as they possibly can.

And the, and the numbers, uh, scheme, if anybody who's not familiar in the numbers is basically just like his lottery back in the day. That's just what they called it. Um, And obviously this guy was really important cause from what I read, like Dutch was paying him 10 grand a week and translated to nowadays money that that's almost $150,000.

He was paying him a week to run this number scam for him. So you could imagine the type of money that was getting brought in. Steve here we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like James Earley's, key Battles of American History Podcast and many other great shows. Go [00:20:00] over to parthenon podcast.com to learn more, and here is a quick word from our sponsors.

Just recently, one of the lottos, I think it was the Powerball, was over a billion dollars and that was, the purse was a billion dollars and I can't, the government takes a certain percentage of the sales of the tickets, so we're talking about yins with a B of dollars that people have put into this. Into this.

I mean, the numbers and essentially, like you said, the numbers is the, is basically the lottery. They're almost exactly the same. That's an insane amount of money. And like you said, let alone legalized sports gambling today, I mean, even given inflation and everything, I think PE we probably gamble more than they did back then because there's so many more opportunities [00:21:00] to gamble.

But they were still doing a lot of gambling back then as well. Oh yeah, for sure. And then what was the other industry that Dutch ended up getting involved in too? Was, uh, was the service industry and the, especially the unions. I don't, I think I mentioned this on a previous episode, but I guess it's worth like mentioning again, like back in the day, it, it seems like from everything I've read, there was like a union for everything.

He basically, he set up his own like association called the Metropolitan Restaurant and Cafeteria Owners Association. Uh, um, Was basically like, you know, you join this as join my association, or this is gonna happen. This is what he would actually do to people. Like, he would send 'em as like goons in there to stink bomb, uh, restaurants, like during rush hour so people just wouldn't fail to eat.

I know that sounds like, oh, that's like something at a high school, but you know. Nobody's eating there and they're not paying, then the restaurant's gonna start close down. Right. Um, you know, with the backing of [00:22:00] like the different unions too, he would demand, he would get the workers to start demanding like ridiculous pay increases to the point where, you know, the restaurant's just not gonna be profitable.

And then, you know, if all that didn't work, he would. Send us real, like real tough goons and start doing physical harm to like these restaurant owners that they didn't end up joining this association. Like, you know, this is textbook extortion. You know, this is, uh, this is the reason why some of these people, they look up to the mob guys and I just don't get it, man.

Like a lot of these restaurant owners, they're just like trying to make a living. You know, that's all they're doing. They're just opening up a restaurant, trying to make a living, and you have this crazy lunatic Dutch who threatening to kill them because he won't pay the Mafia tax. It's just how do you look up to these guys?

I don't, I don't get it. I'll never understand how people do, but you know, a lot of people do it. In a way though, that one [00:23:00] thing that's. I don't know if admirable is the the right word for it, but surprising that somebody came up with the idea that he squeezed the owners and he squeezed labor, which the mafia start to go more for taking on, squeezing the owners through labor where Dutch, but just basically rung out as much money out of both of them and talking about money.

We've talked a lot about money and death and death and taxes go together. He winds up getting into some tax issues, which a lot of mobsters wind up getting into tax issues. What was Dutch's problem with his tax? Well, in, in the 1930s, this is when Tommy is Thomas, Dewey ends up showing up on the stage and he starts going after.

People like Doug, he starts going after people like Lepke. He starts going after people like Jacob Shapiro and all these Lucky Luciano, which I mean, we could probably, we'll probably end [00:24:00] up doing a whole episode on just Thomas Dewey and Lucky Luciano, that trial, cuz it is, it's very, uh, controversial how that all went down.

But, uh, that's not really, uh, for this episode here. But, you know, Dewey was just going after all these mob guys didn't like any of them. Um, Base. Yeah. So when Dutch was indicted on like federal, like income tax evasion, he ran away. He ran up. To, he ran an, uh, he ran, uh, upstate to Albany in hopes of finding like if, well, if I get arrested here, you know, hopefully the jury doesn't owe me as well and I can convince him that I'm something that I'm hide.

Cuz I'm sure if he got, uh, arrested in his neighborhood where he was, there's not a, there's not a chance that anybody in the jury is gonna, you know, think favorably of 'em because they know who Dutch is. First trial for income tax evasion, it ended up in, uh, It was a hung jury. Um, of everything that I read, and a lot of people speculate, it was because Dutch was [00:25:00] bribing members.

Uh, and probably, let's be honest, that's exactly probably what was happening. As you saw, he, as I pointed out earlier, he was paying a guy $10,000 a week, uh, to run his number scam. So it's not like Dutch didn't have money. Um, Leading up to, I believe it, leading up to a second trial, uh, for income tax evasion.

It was gonna take into place, it was gonna take place in, uh, take place in Malone, New York. Um, and which is, was looking at up on the map, I guess it's like the more of like, kind of, maybe it's not country anymore, but at the time it was more like country area of New York, uh, state. Um, Dutch came up with this pretty brilliant, uh, PR scheme where, He would just go around presenting himself as a good old boy.

He was donating money to hospitals. He'd, uh, give money to small businesses, give toys to sick kids, and, um, I gotta give it to him. And it worked. It, uh, he ended up being found [00:26:00] innocent of, uh, you know, the income tax of Asian charges. Uh, the mayor of New York. Apparently he was like so outraged over the verdict.

He put a demand that like Dutch, every return to New York City, he'd just be arrested immediately. Cause you know, they could arrest him for anything really. It's like, it's Dutch. He's, he's committing some kind of crime. Um, and this basically forced Dutch to move all his operations to, uh, New Jersey, New York, um, and.

I just like it to myself. Like, imagine like a mayor just made such a declaration, like regards to getting rid of like violent criminals, being like, you know, like, you guys are just not Welcome to the city. We know you're committing crimes. We'll find you on anything and we're just gonna arrest you the second you walk into the city.

Now let's bring in, uh, lucky Luciano into the story. Because Dutch, he's hobnobbing with this high echelon of New York and really American crime. And we have, at [00:27:00] this point, the commission is starting to form and uh, the national crime syndicate and all of this stuff is really coming about. But Dutch has brought a lot of heat as honestly as.

Innovative as starting the Arthur Heimer Defense Fund and all that stuff was, it's bringing, putting the spotlight on some things that the bigwigs don't want spotlights put on. Yeah. Well, I mean Dutch, I mean, he was kind. He was, you know, pissing people off, like higher up. And he was also pissing people off in his own organization where, you know, as these, like as the legal problems were mounting for a judge, he ended up starting like this, cutting back on his employees salaries and using it, as you pointed out, the Arthur Frankenheimer Defense Fund that, sorry, that's always gonna make me laugh, um, to help pay for these legal costs, and this sounds ridiculous.

But apparently at one [00:28:00] point, like the people in Dutch's organization, like rented out a hole and like went on strike. So like, we're not doing any more work. We have to pay this, this extra tax to pay for your legal problems or something like that. He's just like, all, all right guys. All right. Forget about, we're not paying for the tax anymore.

Just how, how crazy is that? Eh? Like the gangsters Go on. Strike it real. It's was bus. It was big business. Now, this is the point where Dutch really starts. I mean, if you didn't think he was going off the rails before, this is where he really starts going off the rails, and Dutch is gonna make some some decisions, and that's gonna cause the higher ups and organized crime like the commission to make some decisions.

What, what happens with the, where does Dutch take all this? Okay, so Bo Reiner, who was kind of like, he was, uh, like dutch's right hand muscle or [00:29:00] whatever, when all this legal trouble was going on, he, he got into contact with Lucky Luciano and basically they both worked at a deal where they would take over all of Dutch's operations once he went to jail.

Cause everyone had, was fairly convinced that he was not gonna get off these charges. It's Dutch Schultz for God's sakes. Like, he's not gonna get off these charges. Um, and what, what Lucky, really wanted to. Do because he wanted to kind of break up his rackets and like take a fair, take most of them himself and then spread it throughout the Italian families.

Um, I think thinking like if once we get Dutch out of the picture, then we don't, there's literally no one that we have to worry about in terms of organized. Crime, at least from the like of the, the Italian half of it that anyone can challenge us. Once Dutch is outta here, then there's no one they can challenge us.

It's only, you know, us fighting ourselves really. Um, that's the way I interpret it. I think he was thinking like, I can make personal [00:30:00] gain out of this. And, uh, overall the Italian mafia long term is gonna gain from this. Right. We'll take out our last enemy, really. Um, But what ended up happening was, you know, like as we talked about earlier, Dutch gets off the charges, so people weren't expecting that.

Um, And as soon as Dutch got off the charges, he, you know, he got into contact with Lucky Luciano, like demanded a meeting with the commission to help clarify the uh, situation. And apparently Lucky explained to Dutch, he's like, oh no, we were just holding down the fort for you guy, like fort for you Dutch, until you came back and.

I just imagine Dutch's face, just like listening to this and being like, I, oh my God, I have no choice. I have to like, I have to like pretend like I believe this. Um, but he didn't have to do that with Bo Weinberg. Apparently Bo Weinberg, as soon as Dutch got off the charges, and I think it was in a couple weeks, he went missing.

And they never found his, they never found him. Dutch has been in a lot of [00:31:00] legal troubles and he comes up and he, I guess when you're in that situation and you're in legal troubles, you could go on the straight and narrow, or you could kill the prosecutor who's, who's been hounding you all these years.

What does Dutch make? What decision does Dutch make to do? Well, so the commission, because Thomas Dewey was going after everyone, they, they held a meeting, um, to talk about like, what are we gonna do about Thomas Dewey? Right. And there was different opinions of what to do with Thomas Dewey, um, lucky Luciano.

And there's a wing of the commission that thought we're not gonna do anything, what Thomas is doing, like, we're just gonna weather the storm and. Not try to try, try not to draw heat to each our ourselves, right? Where there was a wing that was in favor of, you know what, let's just kill Thomas d. He seems to be the guy that's causing all these problems.

We weren't having these problems before this guy showed up, but we just kill him. Maybe [00:32:00] they'll just start go. They'll just go away again. You know, Dutch was in this wing. Albert Anastasia thought the same thing, and Jacob Shapiro thought, yeah, let's just, let's get right to this guy. Um, People might call me crazy, but I kind of, from everything that I read, I, I kind of agree with 'em, where if they just get dewy outta the picture, I, I don't think a lot of this stuff that ends up happening ends up happening, but, you know, maybe it brings more heat.

I mean, maybe it brings too much heat, but then you're gonna have to find somebody who's like Thomas Dewey to replace Thomas Dewey. I just don't think you were gonna find that guy. Thomas Dewey was a very unique individual. That's such a tough one and I've gone back and forth on whether I think that that would've been a good idea to, to take out Dewey.

I think had they taken out Dewey, we would see a very different. World come out of that, that does it become [00:33:00] normalized then to kill prosecutors. Then we're talking about Italy type stuff, where in Sicily, where they're killing judges and uh, prosecutors, I think that the heat would've come down on them so hard.

That they would've had the entire, uh, government, F B i, ccia, A I R Rs, everything. And, and Marines, you name it, coming down on them. And I think in the, in my estimation, it was probably a good idea, not. To kill him just because the amount of heat that would've come down with that. And it might not have even been through prosecutions.

I mean, it could have been almost like clandestine sort of things, but I don't think that the government of that era would've let that go. Without serious, serious repercussions. But again, I mean, we're all in What if [00:34:00] territory, just to wrap up the story of Dutch today, let's set up the scene of Dutch's death, and then we'll start to get into what's some of the fallout, uh, with Dutch's death.

Because really, honestly, after this whole thing of wanting to kill Dewey and Dutch being overridden on this, you know, things are gonna come to a head at that point. That it's not gonna be all right. I shuck cause I didn't get to, uh, kill the most famous prosecutor. Something's gonna come out of that.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. Yeah. So the commission comes to the conclusion. It's like, yeah, okay. Obviously we're, we're not killing Dewey. It's nuts. We're not doing this. Apparently Dutch storms over the meeting and says, you know what? I don't care what you guys guys say, I'm gonna do it anyways.

Uh, And there was like a kind of a moment pause like, oh, [00:35:00] is he being serious or not? And apparently the thing that confirmed to the commissioner that Dutch was dead serious, that he was gonna kill Dewey, apparently he asked Albert Anastasia to stake out, uh, Thomas Dewey's apartment. Uh, apparently a little side note, apparently Albert actually did do this, and he was.

Borrow. He borrowed like a fellow mobsters baby and was basically pushing her on a baby carriage and surrogate to do his apartment and staking him out basically. And Albert went to the commission and the commission said, okay, well he's actually gonna do this. He wasn't just like, he wasn't just blowing smoke and they had a meeting that lasted for like six hours and they're like, all right, well, it's either Dewey or Dutch, and like, all right, we're gonna take out Dutch and.

The Hammer went down and they hired out Murder Inc. To, uh, take out Dutch salts. And then how does Dutch ultimately, uh, meet his demise? On October 20, uh, third, uh, [00:36:00] 1935, while at the, uh, palace Chop House in New York, two gun men entered the place, uh, the via the, uh, back of the restaurant. And. Began to open fire.

They hit two of Dutch's. Uh, right hand. Right hand man. You know, two of his bodyguards. Uh, one of them took a bullets in the neck and, uh, the other took a bunch of bullets, uh, close range. Neither of them died. They ended up fighting back. I think, uh, one of the, uh, murder Inc. Assassins, uh, left one of the other ones there cause he freaked out cause like, thought for sure that they were dead.

Um, He ended up running out to the restaurant apparently when one of, uh, Abe's bodyguards was shooting at him, as he is like running outta the restaurant down the street and like collapses on a trash can. Um, during this, uh, melee, apparently Dutch was in the bathroom and got hit by stray bullet, uh, in the, uh, chest region, and, uh, was demanding to call, [00:37:00] uh, demanding his him man to call hospital for him.

Uh, you could actually see, uh, He's not dead in this picture. You can actually see a picture of Dutch where he's like leaned over on the, like, um, the one of the restaurant tables and he's, uh, slowly, uh, bleeding out. Uh, apparently when the ambulance showed up to pick up Dutch. They didn't have any painkillers, so all they could give him was Brandy.

Dutch demanded to uh, uh, I believe when he was, uh, when they got into the hospital, he demanded to have his life last rights, uh, by a Catholic priest. So, and that's another thing, and Dutch's life that didn't really get into, it's like he was Jewish, but it seems like. To a degree he became a Catholic, um, and kind of rejected his, uh, his, uh, Judaism.

Uh, I think people at the time thought it was just like him trying to fit in with the Italians, but I think there was some, I think there was some sincerity in it. Isn't that so strange that somebody [00:38:00] who is a, uh, Just a violent, psychopathic murderer has a religious conversion. Uh, it's so strange, and like you said, it wasn't a deathbed thing from my understanding.

No, I wait. I think he was worried that, I think he was worried that he might be dying, but this is, um, like we, I didn't get into it, we didn't get into a ton of detail about, um, this, but it, it's just something that kind of was always falling around Dutch where. Uh, like he seems to have really respected the Catholic religion and Catholicism in general, uh, to a degree.

And where, like I said, there were a lot of the Italian guys thought he was just playing it up to fit in where a lot of other people thought that there was, so there was a fair amount of sincerity to it. It'd be interesting to kind of really dig into that to see if we can find like a definitive answer.

Was this just all phony baloney or was this a. Sincere, uh, [00:39:00] conversion when Dutch was slowly dying, apparently he was like slipping in and outta consciousness and he. I don't know. I guess he kind of creates David Lynch, uh, dialogue, uh, from say something like Twin Peaks, cuz it, it, it just reads like, it, it is just a stream of consciousness really.

Like some of the things he was saying was A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand. Kim, you can play jacks and girls do. That with a softball and do tricks with it. This is kind of the stuff that he was talking about, like, oh, oh, dog biscuit. And when he is happy he doesn't get snappy. The boss himself.

Yes. I don't know. I am sore. I'm going up and I'm going and I'm going to give you honey if I can. Mother is the best and don't let Sayan draw you too fast. It's this and this. You can look it up. This is like literally, there was a guy, there was a woman there who was recording literally everything that [00:40:00] Dutch was saying, and it's pages and pages and pages and pages of this stuff.

And I haven't read the play, but apparently it was the last day of Dutch Schultz was turned into a play. Uh, apparently it was a quite famous play where it, I don't know if it's quite written in this type of style, but it's, um, it's written kind of like stream of consciousness type style, which is this, that type of style of, uh, writing was starting to get popular at this time too, if I'm not mistaken, even after Dutch died, apparently he, uh, He left us something pretty interesting during his ramblings.

He mentioned that he had a 7 million fortune stashed away, and you know, if you adjusted it to today's money, it'd be about 500 million. And apparently people are still hunting to this day for Dutch's Hidden Treasure. I'm sure he had money stashed, I don't know, about 5 million, but it's somewhere or somebody found it, didn't say anything.

You know, like the, these guys keeping money under the [00:41:00] mattress. It seems like it'd probably be like a pretty typical thing. Yeah, I have to imagine that you would think that you would hear of hoards getting found in Manhattan, tearing down a building or renovating a, a building. But you don't hear about it that much.

And maybe it is all talk that they have money stashed away. I mean, the one that will certainly talk about in the future is Jimmy, Jimmy Burke, who was, uh, made famous by Robert De Niro and the movie Good Fellas. He wound up with all of the money from the Luhan, Lufthansa, uh, robbery, millions and millions of dollars.

Nobody's ever found it, and I'm assuming that the family has it. Because you think about the amount of revenue that he was bringing in. Yeah, 7 million is a lot of money. Any which way you cut it. But I, I mean that, that's like, you know, like a safety that's, I don't know, that's kind of [00:42:00] like an insurance policy with the amount of revenue that Dutch was bringing in.

And that's not a, a packet of bills though was stuffed in the drywall in your house. And that's like a pallet of money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somewhat. You know, I just think, I think somebody close to him knew where it was or had, maybe it wasn't quite 7 million, but he had money stashed away. They took it. Never said anything about it.

It's not like Dutch's gonna use it anyways. It could have been the mafia for all know. You know, they interrogated somebody in Dutch's gang found out where the money was and they took it for themselves. It's very possible. What's your final takeaway on Dutch? What, what do you want people to leave with?

What, uh, thinking about Dutch and the, the impact that Dutch made on the American mafia, like, I gotta say personally like Dutch is. One of the more polarizing charact like figures that I've read [00:43:00] about, uh, for me personally, like there's a part of me that just finds them absolutely disgusting and beyond reproach.

But there's a part, there's parts of me that I kind of, I kind of respect him from a distance, you know, like Dutch never tried to be like anything other than a gangster even right Way, even like the way he dressed, like they would joke about, you know, they would make fun of Dutch cuz he dress dressed like a slob and.

He dressed like a street guy. Really. You know, like Meyer Lansky tried to, tried to play this guy where he was just like a numbers guy and he was like a gambling guy and like Frank Costello tried to be like, oh, I'm just, you know, I'm just a businessman. And Arnold Rothstein tried to like, pretend like he wasn't part of high society wearing fancy suits and having the proper etiquette or.

Dutch never, never did that. I never pretended to be anything than what he was. He was a gangster. And I dunno, the, the impression that I get of Dutch is I may, I obviously wouldn't have liked the guy, but I would've known where I could [00:44:00] probably have a conversation with Dutch and I could probably know where he stands on any given issue.

I think he was generally an honest guy where it's just like, this is the, what you're getting paid in terms of your salary. If you don't like it, leave, you know. And if you get, if you steal from me, you're gonna get killed. You know, like, I don't think any of that was like up in the air. I don't where like a lot of these other atal, like a lot of these like Italian mob guys, you, it's all kind of like this, I don't know, backstabbing, you know, get your best friend to, you know, take you out type thing.

Where, I mean, Dutch would just do it himself. I mean, and to a certain degree, I think there's, I don't know. There's something to respect about that in comparison to how some of these other guys acted. Well, thanks everybody for joining us and join us next time as we continue to discuss the incredible history of Murder Incorporated.

We'll take a deeper look into the leadership of Murder Inc. And the ultimate collapse of [00:45:00] this criminal organization. We'll see you next time, but don't forget to tell your friends about organized crime and punishment. That's one of the biggest ways to help us grow this podcast and to let other people know about the show and tell your friends so that your friends can become friends of ours.

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