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Dutch Schultz, byname of Arthur Flegenheimer (6 August,1902 - 24 October,1935), was a New York City-area gangster of the 1920s and 30s. Born 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 fourteen. 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 ideal father who had died tragically of disease. As a result of the abandonment, Schultz had to drop out of school and work to support himself and his mother, but ended up apprenticing himself to low-level mobsters at a neighborhood night club. He stuck up 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, 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 Noy, 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 gonhorrea 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 Coll, with whom he formed a strong bond, and his brother Peter, and Abe "Bo" Weinburg and his brother George. With the extra strengt, Schultz and Noey were now 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 devestated by the loss, and took the matter personally. Shortly after Joey's death, Jack Diamond's own best friend, Arnold Rothstein, was found murdered; newspapers speculated that Rothstein had welched on a deal he had 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; he was shot three times in the head at point-blank range by Bo Weinburg.
Simultaneously, Schultz faced troubles with Vincent Coll; Schultz bailed Coll out of jail when he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. Coll, in turn, jumped bail, and Schultz was faced to pay the $10,000 fine. When Coll resurfaced, he demanded that Schultz make him a full partner. Schultz refused, and Coll and his brother Peter left the gang, intent on starting up their own bootlegging venture. In response, 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. 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 payphone, Schultz gunmen 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 middle aged accountant-cum-mathematical genius who aligned himself with Schultz. In a matter of seconds, Berman was able to 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 what numbers won.
Schultz was chased out of New York by Thomas E. Dewey to Newark, New Jersey in the early 1930s. Schultz wanted to have Dewey assassinated, but other gangsters, such as Lucky Luciano, worried about the public reaction that a murder of this sort would produce. Schultz was killed by members of Albert Anastasia's gang, on Luciano's orders, in the Palace Chophouse in Newark.
His last words 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.
Schultz was born Jewish, but converted to Catholicism shortly before his death. He was therefore interred in the Catholic Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York.
Schultz's life has been the basis of numerous novels and films, most of which have taken substantial dramatic license with the facts. The most famous of these works is E.L. Doctorow's PEN/Faulkner award winning Billy Bathgate, which dramatizes the last three months of Schultz's life, as seen through the eyes of a young boy who becomes his protege.
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