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For years, Dutch Schultz seemed untouchable.
He outsmarted investigators, defeated the federal government in court, built one of the most powerful criminal empires in America, and became one of the richest gangsters of the Prohibition era.
But one decision changed everything.
When Schultz proposed assassinating a powerful prosecutor, the Mafia Commission reached a conclusion that would seal his fate forever.
This documentary tells the complete true story of Dutch Schultz—from his rise in New York's underworld to his shocking assassination inside the Palace Chop House in Newark. Based on FBI records, court documents, contemporary newspaper reporting, and historical research, this film explores one of the most dramatic chapters in American organized crime history.
Inside this documentary:
• The rise of Dutch Schultz during Prohibition
• The Harlem numbers racket empire
• The federal tax evasion trials
• How he defeated the U.S. government in court
• The conflict with Thomas Dewey
• Why the Mafia Commission voted against him
• The Palace Chop House assassination
• His mysterious final words
• The legend of the lost Dutch Schultz treasure
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0:00
His real name was Arthur Flegenheimer.
0:03
>> [music]
0:03
>> Nobody called him that. The name he
0:06
chose, Dutch Schultz, carried more
0:09
weight on the streets of the Bronx than
0:10
any birth certificate ever could. And by
0:13
1935, that name was on every front page
0:17
in America. Some men are famous for what
0:20
they did. Dutch Schultz was famous for
0:22
what he got away with. This is a
0:25
documentary retelling of verified
0:27
historical events. Where exact words are
0:30
lost, exchanges have been reconstructed
0:33
from court records, testimony, and
0:35
contemporaneous reporting.
0:37
He was born in 1902 on the Lower East
0:40
Side of Manhattan. His father left when
0:43
Arthur was 14. [music]
0:45
His mother ran a restaurant. His uncle
0:48
ran a pool hall. Neither could hold him.
0:51
By the time he was 17, he had been
0:53
arrested for burglary. By the time he
0:56
was 21, the Prohibition era had handed
0:59
him something worth far more than a pool
1:01
hall. It had handed him an empire. The
1:05
Bronx beer trade in the 1920s was not
1:08
subtle. Trucks moved at night. Money
1:12
moved in envelopes. Judges moved on
1:15
schedules. Dutch Schultz understood all
1:18
three. He muscled into the illegal beer
1:21
distribution business with a combination
1:24
of violence and financial precision that
1:26
most of his rivals could not match. Men
1:29
who refused him faced harsh
1:31
consequences.
1:33
>> [music]
1:33
>> Men who still refused him did not get a
1:36
third opportunity.
1:37
>> [music]
1:37
>> By the early 1930s, he had expanded into
1:40
Harlem. The numbers racket, the street
1:43
lottery that ran through nearly every
1:45
poor neighborhood in New York, was
1:47
generating millions. The people running
1:50
it were small operators. Dutch Schultz
1:53
was not small. He moved into Harlem the
1:56
same he moved into the Bronx,
1:59
with muscle, with money, with patience.
2:03
And within 2 years, he controlled an
2:05
operation that brought in somewhere
2:07
between 20 million and 100 million
2:09
dollars a year.
2:11
>> [music]
2:11
>> The man who ran it all was careful in
2:13
specific ways and reckless in others.
2:17
He wore cheap suits. He ate at diners.
2:20
He did not buy yachts or penthouses.
2:24
He did not throw parties.
2:26
But he did order men killed. And he
2:29
expected everyone around him to
2:31
understand the difference between a
2:33
business decision and a personal one.
2:35
There was, for Dutch Schultz, rarely a
2:38
difference.
2:39
By 1933, the federal government had seen
2:43
enough. The Internal Revenue Service had
2:45
been watching his finances for years.
2:47
[music]
2:48
They had done it to Al Capone in
2:50
Chicago.
2:52
They intended to do it again. [music]
2:54
A federal indictment for income tax
2:56
evasion was filed against Arthur
2:58
Flegenheimer, known as Dutch Schultz,
3:00
[music]
3:00
in January of 1933.
3:03
The charge was specific. The evidence
3:06
[music] was substantial. And Schultz
3:08
ran. He spent more than a year as a
3:11
fugitive,
3:12
moving between safe houses,
3:14
communicating through intermediaries,
3:16
continuing to run his organization from
3:19
wherever he happened to be sleeping that
3:21
week.
3:22
Law enforcement knew roughly where he
3:24
was.
3:25
Getting him was another matter.
3:28
When he finally surrendered in November
3:30
of 1934, [music]
3:31
he did so on his own terms, walking into
3:34
a federal building in Albany with his
3:36
lawyers beside him and his composure
3:39
intact.
3:40
>> [music]
3:40
>> The first trial was held in Syracuse,
3:42
New York in April of 1935.
3:45
The prosecution believed the case was
3:48
airtight.
3:49
>> [music]
3:49
>> They had financial records. They had
3:52
expert testimony.
3:54
They had years of documentation.
3:57
What they did not have, and what they
3:59
could not fully anticipate, was the
4:01
jury.
4:02
After days of deliberation, the jury
4:05
could not reach a verdict. A mistrial
4:08
was declared. The government tried
4:10
again.
4:11
This time, the trial was moved to
4:13
Malone, New York, a small town near the
4:15
Canadian border, far from Schultz's base
4:17
[music] of influence in the city. The
4:19
logic was obvious. A rural jury,
4:22
unfamiliar with Schultz, untouched by
4:25
his money, removed from the politics of
4:27
New York City courts. It should have
4:30
been a cleaner fight. It was not.
4:33
>> [music]
4:33
>> What happened in Malone remains one of
4:35
the more extraordinary episodes in the
4:37
history of American organized crime
4:39
trial. Schultz arrived weeks before the
4:41
[music] case began. He did not hide. He
4:44
donated to local charities.
4:47
He attended church. He introduced
4:49
himself to shopkeepers.
4:51
He made himself a neighbor. [music]
4:53
The prosecutor in the case was a man
4:55
named Martin Conboy.
4:58
Conboy was experienced. He was
5:00
methodical.
5:01
He believed the evidence spoke for
5:03
itself.
5:04
But the evidence was speaking to people
5:06
who had spent the last several weeks
5:09
watching Dutch Schultz hand money to the
5:11
local Catholic church and wave to
5:13
children on the street. Martin Conboy
5:15
was not in the room for that part of the
5:17
trial.
5:18
The Malone jury deliberated for over 24
5:21
hours. A juror, speaking to reporters
5:24
after the verdict, was asked how the
5:26
panel had viewed the defendant. He
5:29
seemed like a decent enough fellow to
5:30
us. Not what we expected. The reporter
5:33
pressed further.
5:35
We went by the evidence. That's all I'll
5:37
say.
5:38
The verdict came back not guilty on all
5:41
counts.
5:42
The courtroom erupted. Schultz shook
5:45
hands with his lawyers, smiled for the
5:47
cameras, and walked out of the Malone
5:49
Courthouse a free man.
5:51
>> [music]
5:51
>> It was August of 1935.
5:55
He had beaten the federal government.
5:57
Twice. Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey
6:01
had been watching.
6:02
Dewey [music] was 33 years old. He was
6:05
meticulous, ambitious, and [music]
6:07
deeply unimpressed by the outcome in
6:09
Malone.
6:10
He had been appointed specifically to
6:13
dismantle the organized crime operations
6:15
that had taken root in New York City.
6:18
And Dutch Schultz was near the top of
6:20
his list.
6:21
What Dewey began building after the
6:23
Malone verdict was a new case. This one
6:26
would not rely on tax records.
6:29
It would rely on witnesses.
6:32
On the numbers operation itself.
6:34
>> [music]
6:34
>> On the women and men who ran the slips
6:37
and collected the money and moved
6:38
through Harlem every day. Dewey intended
6:41
to take Schultz's empire apart from the
6:44
inside.
6:45
Schultz heard about it. He brought it to
6:47
the commission, the governing council of
6:49
the major organized crime families that
6:51
had formed in the early 1930s.
6:54
His proposal was direct. Dewey has to
6:57
[music] go. We take him out now before
6:59
he builds the case.
7:01
The room went quiet. You touch a
7:03
prosecutor in this city, every cop in
7:05
America comes down on all of us. Lucky
7:08
Luciano was not speaking out of
7:10
sentiment. He was speaking out of
7:12
arithmetic.
7:14
The commission voted. Schultz's proposal
7:17
was rejected. The decision reached
7:19
across the table and across the city
7:22
within [music] days.
7:24
If Dutch Schultz was going to move on
7:25
Thomas Dewey anyway, the commission had
7:28
a problem.
7:30
And the commission, historically, solved
7:32
its problems.
7:33
On the night of October 23rd, 1935,
7:37
Dutch Schultz was at the Palace Chop
7:39
House in Newark, New Jersey.
7:41
He was meeting with several associates.
7:43
He stepped away from the table briefly.
7:46
Two men entered the restaurant. They
7:49
were not there to eat.
7:51
Three of Schultz's associates were shot
7:53
at the table. Schultz himself was shot
7:56
in the men's room. The bullet entered
7:59
his side.
8:00
>> [music]
8:00
>> It did not kill him immediately. He was
8:03
taken to Newark City Hospital, where he
8:06
remained conscious,
8:07
>> [music]
8:07
>> barely, for nearly 22 hours. During
8:10
those hours, he [music] talked. A
8:13
detective named Luke Conlon sat beside
8:16
the bed and wrote [music] down
8:17
everything he said.
8:19
What Schultz said in those final hours
8:22
has become one of the stranger documents
8:25
in American criminal history. He was
8:27
[music] delirious. He was in
8:29
extraordinary pain. He moved between
8:32
coherence and something else entirely.
8:36
Detective Conlon recorded it all. Some
8:39
of what Schultz said was name-dropping,
8:42
people, places, old grievances. Some of
8:45
it was prayer. Some of it was the kind
8:48
of language that happens when the mind
8:50
breaks loose from the body. [music]
8:52
A boy has never wept, nor dashed a
8:55
thousand Kim. [music]
8:57
Oh, mama, mama, mama, I want to pay. Let
9:00
them leave me alone.
9:02
>> [music]
9:02
>> He died on October 24th, 1935.
9:06
He was 33 years old.
9:08
>> [music]
9:09
>> The trial that Thomas Dewey had been
9:11
building never happened. The case
9:13
against Dutch Schultz, the one built on
9:16
witness testimony and the numbers
9:17
operation, died with [music] him.
9:20
But Dewey kept going. He would go on to
9:23
prosecute Lucky Luciano the following
9:25
year.
9:26
He would become governor of New York. He
9:29
would run for president of the United
9:31
States twice.
9:33
The man who was supposed to be the
9:34
target outlived his would-be killer by
9:37
[music] decades. The Palace Chop House
9:40
murders were eventually attributed to a
9:42
team working for the Mangano crime
9:44
family,
9:44
>> [music]
9:45
>> acting on commission orders.
9:47
The triggerman most often cited in
9:49
historical accounts is Charles Bug
9:52
Workman. [music]
9:52
Workman was convicted of the murder in
9:55
1941.
9:56
>> [music]
9:56
>> He served 23 years.
9:59
He was released in 1964.
10:02
He said very little publicly.
10:05
He outlived almost everyone involved.
10:08
Dutch Schultz left behind an estate that
10:10
was nearly impossible to account for. He
10:13
had kept almost no records of his own
10:16
finances, a habit that had helped him
10:18
survive the tax trials, and made life
10:21
very difficult for everyone who came
10:23
after.
10:24
There are stories, persistent,
10:27
unverified, almost certainly
10:29
embellished, about a buried treasure
10:31
somewhere in the Catskill Mountains. A
10:33
strongbox,
10:35
a fortune hidden before the end came.
10:38
No one [music] has ever found it. Some
10:41
people are still looking.
10:43
His real name was Arthur Flegenheimer.
10:47
He chose a different name because he
10:49
understood [music] something that most
10:50
men in his business missed. A name is a
10:53
reputation.
10:55
A reputation [music] is power.
10:58
Dutch Schultz spent his entire adult
11:00
life building something that courts,
11:02
[music] prosecutors, and federal agents
11:04
could not take from him. And in the end,
11:07
it was not the law that brought him
11:09
down.
11:10
It was his own proposal, his own plan,
11:14
his own voice in that room saying the
11:17
wrong thing to the wrong people. The
11:20
last documented record of Dutch Schultz
11:22
is Detective Luke Conlon's transcription
11:25
of his final words.
11:27
22 hours of fragmented speech, names,
11:31
numbers, prayers. [music]
11:33
The document is preserved. The questions
11:36
it raises are not answered inside it.
11:39
>> [music]
11:39
>> The file on Arthur Flegenheimer was
11:42
closed on October 24th, 1935.
11:45
The city moved on.
11:47
The machine kept running.
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