October 23, 1935: Dutch Schultz Is Rubbed Out

October 23, 1935: Mobster Dutch Schultz is rubbed out, along with 2 bodyguards and his accountant, at the Palace Chophouse at 12 E. Park Street in Newark. He was 34 years old.

(The address no longer exists, as the 60 Park Place Building has wiped it out. A restaurant called Dutch's Lounge has opened at 24 E. Park.)

Schultz had asked the Mafia Commission for permission to kill the U.S. Attorney investigating him in New York, Thomas Dewey. They refused, because it would have meant the U.S. government declaring all-out war on them, a war the Mob knew it couldn't win. They thought he might try it anyway, and rival Charles "Lucky" Luciano sent 2 hitmen from Murder, Incorporated to do it. He was shot at 10:15 that night, and died at 2:20 the next morning.

Born on August 6, 1901 as Arthur Simon Flegenheimer, Dutch Schultz started as a bouncer at a Bronx speakeasy, whose owner, Joey Noe, took a liking to him for his ruthlessness in throwing guys out. He joined Noe's bootlegging operation, and took over when Noe was rubbed out in 1928, as part of the Castellamarese War. Schultz may have ordered the 1928 killing of Arnold Rothstein, the gambler who fixed the 1919 World Series; and the 1930 attempted rubout of Legs Diamond, who recovered, only to be killed by another gang the following year.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, Schultz moved into a numbers racket (an illegal lottery) and extortion. But Dewey, remembering how Al Capone was brought to justice, indicted Schultz for tax evasion. So Schultz made his request, and it ended up backfiring.

He didn't die immediately, and was still conscious when he was loaded into an ambulance that would take him to Newark City Hospital (now University Hospital). He had $3,000 in cash (about $64,000 in 2022 money) on him, and gave it to an intern in the ambulance, because, "It's not going to do me any good where I'm going." When it looked like Schultz might live, the intern got scared that Schultz might want the cash back, and gave it to the police.

Schultz lived for 29 hours, and remained lucid long enough for the police to question him, and ask him if he knew who shot him, or if he knew who sent them. Keeping the Mob's code of silence, he wouldn't say.

With a tombstone bearing his real name, he is buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York -- the same cemetery as Babe Ruth, Billy Martin, Ralph Branca, Giants owners Tim and Wellington Mara, Heywood Broun, Dorothy Kilgallen, Conde Nast; steel magnate Charles M. Schwab (no relation to the investment guru Charles R.), Fred Allen, James Cagney, Sal Mineo and 1920s Mayor Jimmy Walker.

One of the gunmen, Charles Workman, served 23 years in prison. The other, Emmanuel Weiss, was arrested for a different murder, and executed in 1944. Albert Anastasia, the Commission head, "the boss of all bosses," remained in power until getting whacked himself in 1957.

Lucky Luciano and his business partner Meyer Lansky allowed their friend Abner "Longy" Zwillman, a former bootlegger and the king of Newark's "numbers racket," to take over Schultz's New Jersey operations. He became the most powerful gangster between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, until his tax problems piled up, and he was found dead in his West Orange home in 1959, shortly before he was to testify before a Senate Committee in Washington. It's been alleged that Vito Genovese, head of the New York crime family that still bears his name, ordered it, with Lansky's blessing.

Luciano was convicted in 1936, a case prosecuted by Dewey, but the charges had nothing to do with the Schultz murder, for which he was never charged. He was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison. During World War II, he accepted a deal with the federal government, negotiated by Lansky: Through his operations, he had naval knowledge that could help win The War. In 1946, his sentence was commuted, on the condition that he accept deportation back to Italy. He accepted, and died in Naples in 1962. Lansky lived on until 1983, his power and fortune having waned, but he was never imprisoned. Nor was he assassinated, like the Hyman Roth, the character based on on him for the film The Godfather Part II.

Schultz has been played by Lawrence Dobkin on 3 episodes of the TV series The Untouchables in 1959, Vic Morrow in Portrait of a Mobster in 1961, Vincent Gardenia in Mad Dog Coll the same year, James Remar in The Cotton Club in 1984, Dustin Hoffman in Billy Bathgate in 1991, and Tim Roth in Hoodlum in 1997.

In 1998, Michael Walsh published As Time Goes By, an authorized combination prequel and sequel to the film Casablanca. It imagines Humphrey Bogart's character as a young man named Yitzik Baline, working for Solly Horowitz, a mobster based on Schultz. When Horowitz is rubbed out on October 23, 1935, "Rick" Baline, by then running Horowitz' speakeasy, has to flee the country, and changes his name to Richard Blaine.

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October 23, 1935 was a Wednesday. Puerto Rican golfer Juan Antonio "Chi-Chi" Rodríguez was born.

The baseball season was over, the hockey season didn't start for another 2 weeks, there was no NBA, and it was a Wednesday, so there were no football games. So there were no scores on this historic day.

April 20, 1938: The Battle of Yorkville Casino

Nazis after the battle

April 20, 1938: It was organized crime vs. Nazis. No matter who the other team is, always root against the Nazis.

In his alternate history novel The Plot Against America, novelist Philip Roth, a native of Newark, New Jersey, wrote of Jewish gangsters resisting Nazi influence. But it was based on reality. Abner "Longy" Zwillman, the most powerful gangster in New Jersey at the time, and professional boxer Nat Arno organized the New Jersey Minutemen, who coordinated with the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, to find out when the German-American Bund, and other pro-Nazi groups in America, would organize, and confront them. Sometimes, violence erupted. Every time it did, the Nazis lost.

Longy Zwillman

Eventually, Zwillman began working with New York City's top Jewish gangster, Meyer Lansky; a Jewish Congressman and former Judge, Nathan Perlman; and America's leading rabbi, Stephen Wise. Lansky said, "The main point was to teach them that Jews couldn't be kicked around." Lansky talked to Perlman, and asked, "You got some boys who might want to punch a Nazi?"

"I do, Judge," the mobster answered. "Respectfully, you understand we can do better than punch? I know just the crew, in Brownsville. The boys in the press call them Murder, Inc." But Perlman knew he couldn't go too far: "I want you to do anything but kill them." Lucky Luciano, Lansky's childhood friend who ran American crime's "Commission," offered help, but Lansky told him it was a Jewish problem, and it would have a Jewish solution.

The Yorkville section of the Upper East Side of Manhattan had long been home to German immigrants and their children, but some of them were Jewish. The Bund recruited heavily there, and on April 20, 1938, they were ready to march down East 86th Street, nicknamed Sauerkraut Boulevard, from Carl Schurz Park to the Yorkville Casino, for a birthday party for German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

There were 3,000 of them. They were faced by 60 Jewish-American World War I vets fought the 1,000-strong German American Bund at a birthday party for Hitler. As historian Michael Benson wrote, "Men who knew how to march were fighting men who knew how to hurt."

The “Battle of Yorkville Casino” had the desired effect:. When the next Bund meeting was scheduled for White Plains, on October 16, only about 250 of an expected 1,000 Nazis showed up, many still bearing injuries from the Yorkville fight. A strong police presence kept Lansky’s crew from getting into the arena, but he bribed two local Jewish teenagers, for $1 each, to smuggle corked, glass bottles into the event.

The following year, the Nazis had a rally at Madison Square Garden, and the Minutemen and Murder, Inc. did not disrupt it. By the end of the year, Britain and France were at war with Nazi Germany, Fritz Kuhn was a convicted criminal, and support for the Bund had collapsed completely.

The Yorkville Casino was at 210 East 86th Street. With some appropriateness, medical offices are on the site today.

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April 20, 1938 was a Wednesday. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The NHL season had ended 8 days earlier, when the Chicago Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox had a day off. They had played 3 games in the previous 2 days, and played again the next day, all at Fenway Park in Boston.

* The New York Giants lost to the Boston Bees, 6-4 at the Polo Grounds. The Bees -- as the Braves were known from 1936 to 1940 -- scored 4 runs in the top of the 8th inning, on a grand slam by Gene Moore. Mel Ott went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-5 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia.

* The Washington Senators beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-0 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Dutch Leonard pitched a 7-hit shutout.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the St. Louis Browns, 9-0 at League Park in Cleveland. Bob Feller allowed only 1 hit, a single to Billy Sullivan in the 6th inning. He did, however, walk 6 batters.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 10-4 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-4 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Hank Greenberg went 0-for-3, but did draw 2 walks.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-4 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Paul Waner went 1-for-4, and his brother Lloyd Waner went 3-for-6.