Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series

by David Pietrusza

  McManus died of heart disease at age forty-eight at his summer bungalow at Sea Girt, New Jersey on August 28, 1940. Three hundred friends and relatives attended his funeral at Park Avenue's Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. Three floral cars bearing 100 displays followed his bronze casket to Gate of Heaven Cemetery.

  LIEUTENANT STEPHEN B. MCMANUS retired at forty-seven from the Crime Prevention Bureau in December 1930, drawing a $2,000 annual pension. In March 1934 police arrested George and Steve McManus on bookmaking charges. The two men identified themselves as "John Brown" and "John Gorman." Magistrate Thomas Aurelio freed both as "guilty but not proven," when arresting officer Joseph Gallagher testified he could not identify either as those he overheard in wiretapped conversations handling bets. He died at age sixty-eight on May 30, 1963.

  MAGISTRATE FRANCIS X. MCQUADE, the judge who helped sweep cop-shooting charges against A. R. under the rug, quarreled with Charles Stoneham and John McGraw, and sued Stoneham, charging he siphoned off New York Giants funds as loans to his personal enterprises. Stoneham countersued. At the trial after Stoneham's counsel, Arthur Garfield Hays called McQuade a liar and a perjurer. McQuade's attorney, Isaac Jacobsen, responded, more honestly than prudently, "All these men are of a type-all greedy, fighting menand a rough element was in control of the club." McQuade wasn't restored to his position as Giants treasurer but won three year's worth of back pay ($30,000).

  After resigning from the bench in the wake of the Seabury investigation, he worked briefly as an assistant corporation counsel.

  McQuade later sued the city to recover his pension rights-and, once again, won. He died at his Riverside Drive home on April 7, 1955.

  GEORGE Z. MEDALIE, after serving as attorney for A. R., Legs Diamond, and their drug-smuggling associates, was appointed by Herbert Hoover in February 1931 to succeed Charles H. Tuttle as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. There he gave young Thomas E. Dewey his start as a crime fighter. In September 1945, Dewey, now governor, appointed him to New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals. Medalie, sixty-two, died of acute bronchitis in Albany on March 5, 1946.

  JIMMY MEEHAN, host for A. R.'s disastrous poker game with George McManus and Nate Raymond, later served prison terms for doping racehorses and in 1937 for assaulting and robbing Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Diana Lanzetti, sister-in-law of a United States congressman. In 1946 he was implicated in the embezzlement of $734,000 from Brooklyn's Mergenthaler Linotype Company.

  WILSON MIZNER graduated from opium to morphine addiction after being treated with the latter drug for a back-alley beating. He left New York in the early 1920s to promote the Florida real estate boom, often peddling underwater property. Once, a judge asked if Mizner was showing contempt for the court. "No, your Honor," Mizner replied. "I'm trying to conceal it."

  Mizner drifted to Hollywood to turn out screenplays for Jack Warner, once delivering a carefully wrapped New York City phone book in place of a finished script. Before he died on April 3, 1933, a priest visited his bedside, stating, "I'm sure you'll want to talk to me." Mizner replied: "Why should I talk to you . . . I've just been talking to your boss."

  EUGENE MORAN, jeweler thief, Arrow shirt model, and A. R.'s onetime $1,000-a-week bodyguard, went to work for Dutch Schultz and, in November 1928, just after A. R.'s death, was one of five gunmen who attempted to murder Eddie Diamond. Brother Legs eventually killed them all. Moran was taken for a ride on August 9, 1929 and shot in the head. The Studebaker containing his lifeless body was set afire in the Newark city dump.

  JAMES D. C. MURRAY, George McManus's defense attorney, continued as a criminal defense attorney, eventually representing over 500 clients accused of first-degree murder. He also continued his association with mobsters. In the early 1930s, Dutch Schultz henchman Dixie Davis used Murray to attempt to convince Jimmy Hines to try to block Thomas E. Dewey's appointment as a special prosecutor. Hines should have tried harder.

  In 1954 Murray represented George "The Mad Bomber" Metesky, a disgruntled Con Edison employee who over the years had planted thirty-five bombs in the New York City area. Metesky was indeed mad, and Murray got him off with a sentence to Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Murray continued his practice until the age of seventy-nine. He died five years later, on October 15, 1967, at a Long Island nursing home.

  ANNE NICHOLS never had another success to rival Abie's Irish Rose. She died at age seventy-four on September 15, 1966 in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

  INEZ NORTON, healthily tanned from a Florida vacation, announced in February 1930 that she would appear in Room 349, a Broadway play based on A. R.'s life. It opened on April 15, 1930 at the National Theater, closing after fifteen performances. She continued to seek rich husbands. In the early 1930s columnist Walter Winchell announced she was engaged to San Francisco attorney J. W. Ehrlich. Ehrlich threatened to punch Winchell in the nose.

  In December 1934 Norton met Thomas C. Neal, Jr., son of a retired Chicago banker. Though he was twenty-four and she was thirty-one, love bloomed. When in September 1935 they announced their plan to marry at New York's Little Church Around the Corner, the prospective bridegroom's father flew from Chicago to New York to discuss the matter with the couple, and the wedding was canceled. "Father believes I am too young to get married," said Neal, Jr., "and wants me to give my attention to a business career."

  VAL O'FARRELL, A. R.'s sometime detective, continued operating his agency, specializing during Prohibition years in bailing rich young speakeasy habitues out of legal (and illegal) difficulties. O'Farrell was assisting Nathan Burkan on the Gloria Vanderbilt custody case when he died of a stroke while at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on October 7, 1934. He was fifty-eight.

  FERDINAND PECORA found his ambitions to succeed Joab Banton as district attorney sidetracked by his failure in the Rothstein case. He briefly moved to Washington where he served as counsel to the Senate committee investigating the Wall Street crash. (The highlight of its hearings was the sight of a midget perched on banker J. P. Morgan's lap.) Pecora returned to New York and ran and lost as an independent Recovery Party ticket for district attorney in 1934. He became a Supreme Court justice in 1935. In 1950 he secured the Democrat and Liberal Party nominations for mayor-and still lost to incompetent, mob-connected acting mayor Vincent Impelliteri. Pecora died at age eighty-nine on December 7, 1971 at Polyclinic Hospital.

  NIGGER NATE RAYMOND continued gambling, swindling-and marrying. In April 1929 he planned to wed actress Mayme Love, a plan complicated by his existing marriage to actress Claire Ray. In September 1930, Miss Ray married Charles E. Carnevale, son of a wealthy real estate man who was thereupon shocked to read in the press that the former Mr. and Mrs. Raymond were still Mr. and Mrs. Raymond. In December 1931 Nate filed for annulment.

  In 1931 Raymond was implicated in a con at Havre de Grace racetrack, involving switching two horses, Shem and Akhnahton. Painter Paddy Barrie had disguised three-year-old Akhnahton to look like lightly regarded two-year-old Shem. Raymond bet heavily on Shem/Akhnaton at 52-1, but his exuberance exposed the whole scheme. That November he was ruled persona non grata at all Maryland tracks.

  In January 1932 Raymond received a five-to-ten-year sentence for forgery. He gained freedom quickly, and in 1934 his name surfaced in the FBI's investigation of the Lindbergh kidnapping. Small-time dope addict James Oscar Farrell was peddling a far-fetched account of the crime to heiress Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, owner of the 44.52 carat Hope Diamond; close friend of the late First Lady Florence Kling Harding; alcoholic; and morphine addict. Farrell's tale involved thirty-one individuals, including gangland figures Big Bill Dwyer and Waxey Gordon. Farrell also claimed Gordon's men bumped off Arnold Rothstein-and that Raymond was in Room 349 when A. R. was ventilated.

  Two years earlier, Mrs. McLean had already been swindled for $100,000 by former FBI agent Gaston B. Means and Norman T. Whitaker, a disbarred lawyer, future child molester-and one of America's premier chess players. However, McLean learned from the e
xperience, and had the FBI tape her conversations with Farrell.

  SENATOR WILLIAM H. REYNOLDS, who originally owned Rothstein's Long Beach property, eventually gained title to property on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street-which he sold to Walter Chrysler for construction of the Chrysler Building.

  GEORGE GRAHAM RICE, while in Atlanta Penitentiary, found himself indicted for tax evasion. Acting as his own attorney, he demanded that, among others, Max D. Steuer, Charles Whitman, and the administrator of Rothstein's estate be subpoenaed as defense witnesses. After a vigorous three-hour summation, he won acquittal on October 29, 1931.

  TEx RICKARD, the fight promoter who predicted A. R.'s murder, barely outlived him. He died of appendicitis on January 6, 1929. Jack Dempsey was at his bedside. Rickard had been right to worry about the stock market. Most of his estate vanished when Wall Street crashed that October.

  BALD JACK ROSE, Charles Becker's accomplice in killing Beansy Rosenthal, talked about writing his memoirs, flirted with an unlikely career as an evangelist (often at High Episcopal congregations), and eventually became a caterer on Long Island. A cocktail was named in his honor. It consists of 1 1/2 ounces applejack, 1/2 ounce grenadine, 1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice, and ice cubes. Combine all ingredients, shake vigorously, and strain.

  SUBWAY SAM ROSOFF, among the highest rollers at A. R.'s Brook club, continued building subways, making money, and gambling heavily. For the 1930 Travers Stakes at Saratoga 1930 Max Kalik gave Rosoff "special" 500-to-1 odds on Jim Dandy (the normal odds were a more modest 100-to-1). Subway Sam plunked down $500-Jim Dandy won by eight lengths-and collected five $50,000 checks from Kalik. Rosoff died at age sixty-eight of a "chronic intestinal condition" at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital on April 9, 1951.

  ABRAHAM ELIJAH ROTHSTEIN eventually moved into Beth Israel Hospital, an institution for which he had performed significant philanthropic work, "where," as the New York Times noted, "his kindly nature endeared him to staff and fellow patients. With liberty to come and go as he pleased, the patriarchal Rothstein was considered `part of the hospital' until his final illness." He died at age eighty-two on November 20, 1939.

  ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN's estate was originally appraised, in March 1934, at $1,757,572. Wrangling over its division continued through 1939, by which time the actual value of its assets had plummeted to $286,232. After debts, funeral, and administrative expenses were subtracted, its value fell again to just $56,196. None of this included certain unsatisfied claims, including $409,360 to his widow, $50,000 due to the debtors of E. M. Fuller & Co., $20,000 to Irving Berlin, Inc., and $12,500 to silent film star Alice Terry.

  ESTHER ROTHSCHILD ROTHSTEIN died after a four-and-a-half-month illness at Mount Sinai Hospital June 7, 1936. She was seventy-four.

  CAROLYN GREEN ROTHSTEIN was soon romantically linked to British carpet merchant Robert Behar. They married, but soon separated. In May 1934 she published her memoir, Now I'll Tell (ghosted by Donald Henderson Clarke) that the Fox Film Corporation made into a motion picture improbably starring Spencer Tracy as "Murray Golden"-and featuring a yet-unknown Shirley Temple in a bit part. Reviewers praised Tracy, but the film did only mediocre business. "Mrs. Rothstein," Clarke noted, "was consulted frequently during the preparation of the scenario, at which time she was engaged in getting her own material in shape. A motion picture is not constructed on the plan of a book of facts. In this instance, both the film and the book of facts have been built upon the same material, but the film has been fictionalized, as is necessary." Clarke was right. The film placed even more emphasis of A. R.'s relationship with Carolyn Rothstein, than her own book did, and included a highly fanciful theory regarding her role in his death. In any case, playwright Mark Linder sued Fox, claiming they had plagiarized his failed stage play Room 349 (alternately titled "Bumped Off").

  JACK ROTHSTONE and Fay Lewisohn divorced in October 1934, but he soon repeated his act of eloping with well-to-do young women. In March 1936 Rothstone, forty, eloped with twenty-one-year-old Bernice Levy, daughter of Manhattan Borough President Samuel Levy, also a wealthy attorney, real estate magnate, and philanthropist.

  DAMON RUNYON continued fictionalizing the Broadway of the 1920s and 1930s, and Hollywood eventually made twenty-seven films from his short stories, most notably Guys and Dolls, Little Miss Marker, Lady for a Day, and Pocketful of Miracles. In 1938 Runyon devel oped throat cancer and eventually lost his voice. It was just part of what he would eventually endure: a daughter's mental illness, an I. R. S. investigation for back taxes, the nervous breakdown of his first wife, and the desertion of his second. No wonder that when his son suggested he ask a friend of his father to visit the dying author, the voiceless Runyon typed out: "No one is close to me. Remember that." When Runyon died in December 1946, World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker flew low over Broadway, scattering his ashes over the street the writer loved.

  DUTCH SCHULTZ moved from numbers into slot machines, in partnership with Frank Costello and Dandy Phil Kastel. He soon faced trouble on numerous fronts. Fiorello La Guardia shut down his slots. The federal government prosecuted him (unsuccessfully) for incometax evasion-and, most ominously, he was high on Thomas E. Dewey's list of targets.

  Schultz favored a proactive approach to Dewey: He wanted to kill him. Fellow mobsters Lucky Luciano, Johnny Torrio, and Joe Adonis thought his plan counterproductive. Their alternative: Kill Schultz, before he killed Dewey and created more heat than they could possibly survive. On the night of October 23, 1935, Schultz dined with associates at Newark's Palace Chop House. Gunmen Emmanuel "Mendy" Weiss and Charles "The Bug" Workman entered and shot them all.

  JUDGE SAMUEL SEABURY remained a key supporter of Fiorello LaGuardia. He became an early supporter of anti-Nazi causes and, in 1950, wrote The New Federalism. He died at age eighty-five on May 7, 1958.

  GURRAH SHAPIRO and Lepke Buchalter (see above) went into hiding on July 1937, but Shapiro, nervous and in declining health, couldn't take the fugitive life. In April 1938, he surrendered at the Federal Detention Center on West Street, announcing solemnly, "I'm Jake Shapiro." He spent the rest of his life in prison, first at the Federal Penitentiary near Ann Arbor, Michigan, then in New York State. In increasingly wretched health from diabetes and heart disease, he died at Sing Sing on June 9, 1947. He was just fifty.

  JOSEPH E SHALLECK, Jimmy Hines's attorney and loyal henchman, was disbarred in 1930 for bribing a juror in a federal mail-fraud case. Former Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis handled his appeal, and Shalleck's conviction was overturned by Appellate Court Judge Martin Manton (see above). During the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping, Shalleck reappeared in the public eye, issuing the following statement: "The important mob leaders are doing their very best to bring about the return of the baby." Presumably, he spoke with their permission.

  Joseph Shalleck died at age ninety-two at a Brooklyn nursing home on November 23, 1983.

  STATE SENATOR ANDREW J. SHERIDAN was promised $40,000 for his work in handling the Rothstein estate. In 1935 he settled for $703.59.

  HARRY SINCLAIR, another high-rolling patron of Rothstein's, "loaned" $100,000 to Warren Harding's Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall in return for oil leases on federal land at Teapot Dome, Wyoming. Fall went to jail for accepting the bribe, while a jury acquitted Sinclair of tendering it. However, Sinclair did serve nine months in federal prison for contempt of Congress. He died in Pasadena on November 10, 1956 at age eighty.

  TOD SLOAN, A. R.'s erstwhile partner in John McGraw's pool hall, found a career acting in vaudeville and motion pictures. He died of cirrhosis of the liver on December 21, 1933.

  ALFRED E. SMITH built the Empire State Building, broke with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and backed Republicans Alfred M. Landon and Wendell Willkie for president. He died at age seventy in New York City on October 4, 1944.

  SIDNEY STAJER became involved in a bizarre incident regarding muckracking novelist Upton Sinclair's 1934 run for the California governorship. Sinclair learned hi
s political rivals had spent $15,000 to hire thirty gangsters "for the purpose of organizing the underworld [in New York] in opposition" to Lewis' populist candidacy.

  Wealthy young Sinclair associate Richard Crane Gartz met with Stajer to prevent this. Stajer told Gartz not to worry: The money had gotten into the wrong hands and nothing would probably be done against Sinclair. At first Stajer was unsympathetic to Sinclair, but Gartz won him over. The FBI interviewed Gartz, noting that Stajer

  and other members of the underworld in New York wanted the [the patronage in the] Commissary Department and the Prison Department in California.... Stager [sic] also wanted Mr. Sinclair to refrain from interfering with any of stager's [sic] gambling activities in California . . . Mr. Gartz stated that he informed Stager [sic] that Mr. Sinclair would not promise anything, but that in his opinion Mr. Sinclair would not interfere with the gamblers if they did not commit any overt act or do anything to arouse public opinion which would force Mr. Sinclair to take action.

  Stajer's only conviction was for criminal possession of postal stamps in December 1937. He died in Bellevue Hospital on December 11, 1940 at age forty-seven. Abe Attell claimed that he committed suicide.

  CHARLES A. STONEHAM, New York Giants owner, bucket-shop operator, and high-stakes gambler, died of Bright's disease in Hot Springs, Arkansas on January 6, 1936. The Spalding Official Base Ball Guide remarked delicately that he and "the late John J. McGraw ... were associated in sporting ventures in this country and Cuba." His son, the ineffectual, but less controversial, Horace C. Stoneham maintained control of the Giants until March 1976.