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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that shines a light on the darkest corners of

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Speaker 1: human history. I'm Gabeluesier, and in this episode, we're kicking

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Speaker 1: off our annual Halloween Week with a look at the

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Speaker 1: life and death of Dutch Schultz, a trigger happy mobster

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Speaker 1: whose own deathbed musings left a surprising mark on the

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Speaker 1: literary world. As a warning, today's episode contains descriptions of

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Speaker 1: human suffering and violence which some listeners may find disturbing.

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Speaker 1: The day was October twenty third, nineteen thirty five. American

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Speaker 1: gangster Dutch Schultz was ambushed at the Palace Chophouse in Newark,

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Speaker 1: New Jersey two unidentified guns who stormed the restaurant that

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Speaker 1: night and proceeded to mow down Schultz and three of

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Speaker 1: his closest mob associates. The badly wounded gangsters survived the

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Speaker 1: attack and were rushed to a nearby hospital, but by

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Speaker 1: the following evening all four of them were dead. The

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Speaker 1: event quickly became known as the chop House Massacre, one

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Speaker 1: of the bloodiest killings in the history of organized crime.

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Speaker 1: Dutch Schultz was born on August sixth, nineteen o two

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Speaker 1: in a bronch slum of New York City. His birth

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Speaker 1: name was Arthur Flegenheimer, and he was the son of

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Speaker 1: Jewish immigrants from Germany. His father walked out on the

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Speaker 1: family when Schultz was in his early teens. Not long after,

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Speaker 1: Schultz dropped out of school and started working odd jobs

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Speaker 1: to support his mother. He soon realized that crime was

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Speaker 1: a much more efficient way to make ends meet, so

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Speaker 1: he joined a gang and started pulling robberies. He was

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Speaker 1: arrested for burglary at age seventeen and served a year

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Speaker 1: and a half in prison for the crime, the only

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Speaker 1: time he would spend behind bars in his entire life.

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Speaker 1: Upon his release, Schultz returned to his gang and began

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Speaker 1: demonstrating the short temper and pension for violence that earned

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Speaker 1: him his nickname. The original Dutch Schultz was a deceased

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Speaker 1: local gangster who had been known to kill for no

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Speaker 1: reason at all, a proclivity that Arthur Flegenheimer seemed to share.

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Speaker 1: In the nineteen twenties, when prohibition was in full swing,

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Speaker 1: Schultz became a prominent bootlegger, smuggling liquor from Canada to

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Speaker 1: New York City and brewing his own beer. He formed

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Speaker 1: a gang of his own with fellow criminal Joey Noy,

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Speaker 1: and together they made a fortune selling illicit booze all

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Speaker 1: over the Bronx, sometimes raking in as much as twenty

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Speaker 1: million dollars a year. One of Schultz's most lucrative rackets

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Speaker 1: was intimidating local bars into buying huge supplies of his product,

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Speaker 1: and if an owner refused, Schultz was just as happy

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Speaker 1: to call in one of his hundred hired guns to

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Speaker 1: make them pay in a different way. His reputation for

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Speaker 1: shaking down bar owners and issuing bloody ultimatums soon earned

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Speaker 1: him another nickname, the beer Baron of the Bronx. By

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Speaker 1: the early nineteen thirties, the prohibition era was drawing to

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Speaker 1: a close, and Schultz had expanded his operation to include

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Speaker 1: policy rackets, a form of illegal gambling. In nineteen thirty three,

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Speaker 1: he was charged with tax evasion, the same offense that

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Speaker 1: had brought down al Capone just two years earlier. Schultz

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Speaker 1: eventually stood trial twice, but he beat the rap in

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Speaker 1: both cases thanks to some first rate jury tampering. The

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Speaker 1: gangster tried to return to business as usual, but other

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Speaker 1: New York mobsters, including Lucky Luciano, had moved in on

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Speaker 1: his territory during his absence. In nineteen thirty five, the

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Speaker 1: Dutchman was forced to move his operation across the Hudson

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Speaker 1: River to New Jersey, eventually setting up shop and the

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Speaker 1: Robert Treat Hotel in Newark. That same year, he was

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Speaker 1: hit with the yea another indictment for tax evasion, and

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Speaker 1: this time the Feds aimed to make it stick. The

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Speaker 1: walls were closing in on dutch Schultz and he was

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Speaker 1: beginning to feel the pinch. In his desperation, the gangster

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Speaker 1: hatched a scheme to bump off Thomas E. Dewey, the

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Speaker 1: special prosecutor assigned to his case. He called a meeting

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Speaker 1: with the other major figures an organized crime and demanded

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Speaker 1: they help him with the murder. Schultz argued that if

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Speaker 1: Dewey was allowed to live, it was only a matter

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Speaker 1: of time before he started targeting their own illegal operations. However,

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Speaker 1: the syndicate was unconvinced. They viewed Schultz as a holdover

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Speaker 1: from a more reckless era of New York crime, and

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Speaker 1: now that the mob had grown more methodical, loose cannons

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Speaker 1: like him had become a liability. The other leaders refused

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Speaker 1: to sign off on Dewey's murder for fear that it

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Speaker 1: would put too much heat on the rest of them,

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Speaker 1: but since they couldn't trust Schultz to not act on

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Speaker 1: his own, they decided to have him killed instead. The

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Speaker 1: Dutchman made it fairly easy for them, too, as he

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Speaker 1: stuck to a regular routine of almost nightly meetings at

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Speaker 1: the Palace chop House on Park Street. The restaurant and

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Speaker 1: tavern was right around the corner from his hotel headquarters

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Speaker 1: in Newark, and Schultz liked to have dinner there while

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Speaker 1: reviewing the day's receipts. The evening of October twenty third

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Speaker 1: proved no exception. Schultz spent several hours at the chop

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Speaker 1: House talking business with his three most trusted associates, his

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Speaker 1: right hand man Abe Landau, his accountant Otto Berman, and

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Speaker 1: his chauffeur and bodyguard, Bernard Rosenkrantz. According to the chop

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Speaker 1: House bartender, two men entered the restaurant a little after

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Speaker 1: ten pm. Then they drew their guns and headed straight

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Speaker 1: for the back room, where Schultz was holding court. They

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Speaker 1: shot Landau, Berman and Rosenkrantz in quick succession, and then

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Speaker 1: found Schultz washing his hands in the bathroom. One of

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Speaker 1: the gunmen shot him multiple times in the stomach and

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Speaker 1: then made a bee line for the exit. Amazingly, the

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Speaker 1: four wounded gangsters were still alive when the police arrived,

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Speaker 1: but once they were taken to the Newark City Hospital,

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Speaker 1: they began to succumb to their injuries one by one.

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Speaker 1: The death of Dutch Schultz in particular, was painful and slow.

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Speaker 1: The wound in his abdomen caused internal bleeding and quickly

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Speaker 1: became infected by the rust coated bullet lodged inside it.

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Speaker 1: Police remained by his bedside throughout the night, drilling him

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Speaker 1: for information on the shooting, but Schultz refused to say

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Speaker 1: who had shot him or why he wound up, taking

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Speaker 1: that secret to the grave, but investigators would later id

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Speaker 1: Charles the bug workmen and Immanuel mendy Weiss as the

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Speaker 1: ones who pulled the triggers. Schultz's condition worsened through the

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Speaker 1: night and into the next day. He contracted a high

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Speaker 1: fever and began drifting in and out of consciousness. Then,

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Speaker 1: in the grips of delirium, he began to babble in strange,

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Speaker 1: disjointed sentences. A police stenographer was brought in to record

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Speaker 1: these rantings in the hope they might provide insight on

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Speaker 1: the shooting or on Schultz's other criminal activities. What the

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Speaker 1: authorities got instead was page after page of seeming nonsense,

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Speaker 1: cryptic phrases like the glove will fit what I say,

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Speaker 1: French Canadian bean soup, and oh oh dog biscuit. Those

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Speaker 1: dreamlike ramblings were of no use to the police, but

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Speaker 1: they later became a subject of fascination for several avant

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Speaker 1: garde authors of the Beat generation. William S. Burrows, for example,

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Speaker 1: wrote an unproduced screenplay inspired by the dying gangster's stream

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Speaker 1: of Consciousness prose. It was called The Last Words of

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Speaker 1: Dutch Schultz, and a recording of the stenographer's transcript was

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Speaker 1: meant to play throughout the film as the soundtrack. As

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Speaker 1: for Schultz himself, he clung to life for twenty two

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Speaker 1: hours and then slipped into a coma and died at

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Speaker 1: the age of thirty three. His body was buried at

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Speaker 1: a cemetery in Hawthorne, New York, and while the headstone

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Speaker 1: bears no inscription, a fitting epitaph was supplied just a

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Speaker 1: few hours prior to his death. It arrived at the

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Speaker 1: Newer hospital in the form of a telegram sent by

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Speaker 1: rival crime boss Stephanie Saint Clair. Echoing a proverb pluck

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Speaker 1: from the Bible, it delivered a harsh truth to a

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Speaker 1: man who had reveled in needless bloodshed. As ye sow,

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Speaker 1: so shall ye reap. I'm Gabeluesier and hopefully you now

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Speaker 1: know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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Speaker 1: You can learn even more about history by following us

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Speaker 1: on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and

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Speaker 1: if you have any comments or suggestions, you can always

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Speaker 1: send them my way by writing to this Day at

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Speaker 1: iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,

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Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here

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Speaker 1: again tomorrow for another spooky day in history class at

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Speaker 1: the attempt