The Everything Mafia Book (19 page)

Similar to the plot of the movie A Bronx Tale, young Dutch Schultz grew up on the mean streets of the Bronx and became starstruck by local mob boss Marcel Poffo. He began to work for Poffo and never looked back to the straight and narrow road.

Schultz was a man on a spiritual quest. Sometimes he would claim he was practicing Judaism, other times he considered himself Catholic. He was a gangster who gave a lot of thought to the afterlife. He considered himself a religious hood.

Dutch Schultz

Courtesy of AP Images

An undated photo of Arthur “Dutch Schultz” Flegenheimer.

He began his criminal career in the Bronx. Sent to prison at the age of seventeen, he was a problem inmate and was transferred to a harsher prison from which he promptly escaped, only to be soon recaptured. Committing the crime was a badge of honor among his Bronx buddies, who gave him the snappy tough guy moniker “Dutch Schultz.”

Like every other gangster at the time, he was involved in the bootlegging racket during the ’20s. His area of expertise was beer, and he and his cronies controlled the beer distribution in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan.

His gang was comprised mostly of Jewish and Irish hooligans. But Schultz stepped on too many toes and became one of the most famous victims of Murder Inc.

Dutch Schultz lies wounded

Courtesy of AP Images

Mobster Dutch Schultz holds his head in agony as he lies on a hospital cot, his arm and chest wounds exposed, in Newark, N.J., on Oct. 23, 1935. Schultz and his bodyguards were shot by rival gangsters and he died later the same night from his gunshot wounds.

On October 23, 1935, in the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey, Dutch Schultz and three of his associates found themselves in a pitched gunfight with Murder Incorporated. Schultz died in a nearby hospital days later. He converted to Catholicism on his deathbed, and his delirious dying ramblings are a legendary stream of consciousness mobspeak rant that inspired beatnik author William S. Burroughs to fashion a work called
The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: A Fiction in the Form of a Film Script.

Dutch Schultz was known as “the Beer Baron of the Bronx.” He made his name muscling in on the bootleg business of Irish saloonkeepers who did not shut down operations during Prohibition.

The End of the Gang

Most of the members of Murder Incorporated were Jewish gangsters. They were methodical hit men. They operated out of a Brooklyn candy store. They did not operate without orders, and their hits were well thought out and for the most part dispassionate. Hits had to have the unanimous approval of the Commission. The operated nationally, so they got to see America as they plied their trade. A simple shooting was the common form of execution, but staged accidents, faked suicides, and the occasional garroting were also accepted practices. Often the law had to write off the murders as missing-persons cases when the bodies were never found. Most hits remain unsolved, except for those revealed by the rats that squealed, and until Anastasia took power, they remained insular in their targets.

Murder Incorporated came to an end when several low-level members were arrested and began to “sing” to the authorities. The most famous was a man named Abe Reles, who was called the “Canary.” He gave the police information on about 200 murders in which he was directly or indirectly involved. He was in police custody when he decided to “take a dive” out of a hotel window. It is unlikely that he took his own life out of guilt over turning traitor. It is generally assumed that he was given a gentle nudge.

What is a “policy racket”?

This was a numbers game that was popular long before state governments made it legitimate and legal in the many lottery games of today. Policy rackets thrived in poor neighborhoods, where people dreamed of making a big score and improving their lot in life.

Lepke and Sparky

One of the two top members of Murder Incorporated was Louis Lepke, born Louis Buchalter. His first mob antics involved breaking strikes by the garment workers’ unions through threats and intimidation (and worse) during the 1920s. He paired with Lucky Luciano in the bootlegging racket and later became the main hit man for Murder Incorporated, carrying out hundreds of hits. He was eventually convicted of a narcotics charge, but while in jail some informants ratted him out, and he ended up convicted on a murder rap. In 1944 he and two other Murder Incorporated alumni, Mendy Weiss and Louis Capone (no relation to Al), met their maker courtesy of Old Sparky (a slang expression for the electric chair) in Sing-Sing.

Louis Lepke was betrayed by a boyhood friend with the curious name of Moey Dimples. While Lepke waited to meet his maker on death row, Moey had a few more dimples impressed upon his person in the proverbial hail of bullets. For more information on the vicious gangster Louis Lepke, look for the 1975 movie Lepke, starring Tony Curtis.

Wartime

The American government formed an alliance with the Mafia during World War II. They prevailed upon the jailed American gangster Lucky Luciano to use his connections with the Sicilian Mafia to monitor German troop movements as the Allied forces prepared for the invasion of Sicily. Other mobsters joined in to help, namely Vito Genovese. The Allies took control of the island, and this led to the fall of Italy and the end of Benito Mussolini’s reign. Italy switched sides and joined the Allies, and Mussolini was assassinated.

Sicilian Allies

The American forces released the Mafiosi from the prisons and put them in charge of reorganizing the social and political structure of the country. To give the United States the benefit of the doubt, one can say that the military was not aware of the criminal tendencies of these men. If they were looking at the situation in straightforward terms of black and white, they may have assumed that anyone who was clearly not a “common” criminal that was imprisoned by Mussolini must be there because he was a political prisoner and part of an organized opposition of freedom fighters.