The Elizabeth Carteret Hotel was one of the largest hotels in the city of Elizabeth. Located at 1156 East Jersey Street, it had over two hundred rooms with baths and advertised its air-conditioned coffee shop. On the ground floor was a luxurious ballroom where dances and social events were held. Today a senior citizen center, at the time the Elizabeth Carteret building was at the forefront of luxury and an attractive place for underworld figures to stay, what with its proximity to Newark and New York City.
Late afternoon in April of 1933 Hassel and Greenberg were relaxing in their suite on the eighth floor of the hotel. Across the hall was Waxey Gordon. Hassel and Greenberg were surrounded by highball glasses and bottles of liquor. Sometime just after 4 p.m., shooting started. Gordon later recounted, “I heard a noise around 4:15 in the afternoon that sounded like breaking glass or someone dropping dishes. I then beat it as quick as I could, for I know that if I had been in that room I would have got the works too.”[26] Another hotel guest ran downstairs to the front desk and told them to call the police. Within minutes detectives swarmed the building.
The suite where Hassel and Greenberg were staying had a code and an electronic lock that could only be opened by the front desk. Detectives believed the shooter was either someone already in the room or someone known to the two men. Theories abounded. One investigation “disclosed that the killings were perpetrated by persons who either were seeking to murder one Irving Wexler, also known as Waxey Gordon, or killed Hassel and Greenberg, who were known to be henchmen of Gordon’s, in a gang war waged between Gordon and his followers and rival factions in the so-called ‘beer racket.’”[27]
Police had another theory and in 1935 arrested a young mobster by the name of Frankie Carbo. Frankie had previously been arrested for the murder of Mickey Duffy, who had previously been implicated in the Rising Sun brewery shooting. Carbo was arrested and charged with Hassel’s and Greenberg’s murders, but the charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence.
Another possible suspect, named fairly recently by two authors in Pennsylvania, was Joe Stassi, a Newark gangster who would go on to work at hotels for the mob in pre-Castro Cuba. Before he died, Stassi told one of the authors that he knew Hassel and that Meyer Lansky was behind the shooting. But Stassi had a closer connection: he was living in a room just below Hassel and Greenberg at the hotel. He also had the means and motive, if ordered by Lansky, to murder the two men. Stassi confessed that he was there when the murder was ordered and intimated that he may have carried it out, though he never came right out and implicated himself.
Hassel and Greenberg may have been merely the latest in a string of gangland hits that seemed to be occurring as Prohibition was in the process of winding down. Just a month before Hassel was killed, one of his close associates and former Jersey Shore beer baron, Al Lillien, was shot and killed on a flight of steps leading up to the old Hammerstein mansion in Atlantic Highlands. And after the Hassel and Greenberg killings another murder rocked Newark, the victim a notorious mobster also alleged to have threatened Hassel, Greenberg, and Gordon over their operations.
1. Though some sources spell it Longie, for consistency’s sake this book references Zwillman’s nickname as Longy, throughout.
2. Mark A. Stuart, Gangster No. 2: Longy Zwillman, the Man Who Invented Organized Crime (Washington, DC: Lyle Stuart, 1985).
3. Myron Sugerman, personal interview with the author regarding New Jersey organized crime, Newark, New Jersey, February 7, 2017.
4. Ibid.
5. Stuart, Gangster No. 2.
6. Warren Grover, Nazis in Newark (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 42.
7. Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Abner Zwillman, Part 1 of 3.” May 21, 1935–October 25, 1955. BUFILE 62-36085. https://vault.fbi.gov/Abner%20Zwillman/Abner%20Zwillman%20Part%201%20of%207.
8. Stuart, Gangster No. 2.
9. US Congress, Hearings Before the Select Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Washington, DC, 1951.
10. Irina Reyn, ed., Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take On the Garden State (New York: Touchstone, 2007), 166.
11. Myron Sugerman, personal interview with the author regarding New Jersey organized crime, Newark, New Jersey, February 7, 2017.
12. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Abner ‘Longie’ Zwillman FBI Files.”
13. Asbury Park (NJ) Press, “State Ready to Aid Vote Probe,” November 19, 1932, 3.
14. Today Waverly is Muhammad Ali Avenue, and Jesse Allen Park is the lot where the Third Ward Political Club used to stand.
15. Stuart, Gangster No. 2.
16. US Congress, Hearings Before the Select Committee To Investigate Organized Crime In Interstate Commerce (1951).
17. Reyn, Living on the Edge of the World, 166.
18. Grover, Nazis in Newark, 45.
19. Martha Glaser, The German-American Bund in New Jersey, 1st ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974), 33.
20. Rising Sun Brewing Co. v. United States, 55 F.2d 827 (1932).
21. Gerald Tomlinson, Murdered in Jersey (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 35.
22. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Dry Agent Is Slain in Raid on Brewery,” September 20, 1930, 1.
23. Philadelphia Inquirer, “Suspect Seized Here in Murder of Dry Agent,” September 22, 1930, 4.
24. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Special Agent in Charge, Newark Field Office, Top Hoodlum Program Weekly Summary, Anthony “Ham” Dolasco Herman ‘Red Cohen, 1960.
25. (Wilmington, DE) Morning News, “Fugitive in Slaying of Dry Agent Caught,” October 20, 1933.
26. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “Waxey Gordon Is a Coward Just like the Rest, Says Sullivan,” May 23, 1933, 3.
27. Tona Frank v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (Supreme Court Appellate Division- First Department 1934), available online at https://books.google.com/books.
Chapter 4
Dutch, Longy, Jerry, and the Boot
Arthur Flegenheimer was a gangster’s gangster. The brash policy kingpin and beer baron, who went by the moniker Dutch Schultz, was a New York crime figure who managed to bump up against most of the major underworld figures of the day, as well as law enforcement. One of his most heated rivalries was with Thomas Dewey. As special prosecutor in New York City, Dewey made it his mission to root out organized-crime elements in town. Among his top targets was Schultz. Dewey had previously successfully prosecuted Zwillman associate Waxey Gordon, and now his sites were set on the empire of Schultz, who had managed to escape conviction on two previous trials.
Dewey sent out word that he wanted Schultz arrested on sight. In August of 1935 Dewey officially started the investigation into Schultz’s doings. The investigation promised to build a “million dollar microscope to trace an estimated $1,000,000,000 exacted yearly in the metropolis through vice and racketeering.”[1] Schultz—who at the time was celebrating the birth of his son in upstate New York, near the scene of his tax trial, where he was acquitted, much to the chagrin of authorities—decided to relocate to Newark in the late summer of 1935 and started taking potshots against the prosecutor. In a breach of mob protocol, Schultz sent out word that he wanted Dewey killed. This did not sit well at all with the syndicate. Luciano, Lansky, Lepke Buchalter, and others feared that any attempt, successful or not, on Dewey would have significant repercussions for all of their operations. Schultz needed to either back down or be removed from the situation, permanently.
While in Newark, Dutch Schultz was a regular at the Palace Chop House, located at 12 East Park Street, in downtown. His regular meal was steak and fries. In the early evening of October 23, 1935, Schultz walked into the Palace, flanked by his two bodyguards, Bernard “Lulu” Rosenkrantz and Abe Landau. They walked past the long bar and sat down in the back of the restaurant. A bail bondsman, Max Silverman, came in to collect some money from Schultz and walked out just before 8 p.m. Schultz was then joined at his table by the affable Otto “Abbad
abba” Berman.
After 10 p.m., a bartender at the front of the house was stirring some coffee when the front door opened. “A heavy set man walked into the barroom and I heard a voice order, ‘Don’t move, lay down.’ I could hardly discern his face as he pulled his topcoat up to hide it. I saw him place his hand on his left shoulder and whip out a gun from a holster. I didn’t wait any longer. I dropped to the floor and lay behind the bar.”[2] The man he couldn’t identify was Emanuel “Mendy” Weiss, who had arrived with fellow gangster Charles “the Bug” Workman.
The two gunmen had been expecting to find Schultz sitting with three other men at the table. But when they entered, they were only able to make out three of the four men in the back room. And so Workman had Weiss stay in the front as he walked into the washroom. He didn’t even look at who was in there, figuring it had to be one of Schultz’s men, and shot the man with a .45. The other three men at Schultz’s table—Berman and his bodyguards Rosenkrantz and Landau—didn’t even know Weiss was there until they heard the shots from the washroom. Lulu Rosenkrantz went for his gun but was stopped before he could return fire. Weiss blasted the three men with his shotgun as Workman came out of the washroom with his .38 and .45, firing across the table as well, knocking each of the three men to the ground. When Weiss and Workman went over to look at their victims, they realized that Schultz was not among them. Workman went back into the washroom to find Dutch Schultz bleeding on the floor. “Schultz was hit with a rusty steel-jacketed .45 slug that crashed into his husky body just below the chest, on the left, and tore through the abdominal wall into the large intestine, gall bladder, and liver before lodging on the floor near the urinal he had been using when the door opened.”[3]
Weiss ran outside the bar, but Workman was still looking over Schultz, who miraculously was still alive. But so were his bodyguards. Rosenkrantz started shooting at Workman, and then Landau followed suit; though both were seriously wounded, they managed to stagger up and toward Workman, who ran outside to find the getaway car had left without him. He took off on foot into the balmy October night.
Schultz managed to claw his way out of the washroom and over to a table. “He didn’t say a cockeyed thing. He just went over to a table and put his left hand on it kind of to steady him and then he plopped into a chair, just like a souse would.”[4] When the police arrived, they found Schultz still slumped in the chair, head hanging over the table. But he was conscious enough to tell them his name and that he didn’t know who had shot him. Three ambulances arrived and carted the men to Newark City Hospital, which by then had filled with police, certain the men who had attempted to assassinate Schultz would likely try again.
Police officers and detectives took turns questioning Schultz and his men, but information was piecemeal at best. Schultz, growing annoyed, told the police to get out of his room and bring him an ice-cream soda. Though seriously wounded and in pain, Schultz managed to keep his defiant attitude against authority. But his fever was climbing, and he started to speak, irrational outburst punctuated with rare moments of clarity. The police sent for a court stenographer to record the Dutchman’s last words. The full account is long, but a small sampling of his musings gives a feel for what the police, stenographer, and family members heard in the last conscious minutes of the underworld kingpin.
I know what I am doing here with my collection of papers, for crying out loud. It isn’t worth a nickel to two guys like you or me, but to a collector it’s worth a fortune; it is priceless. I am going to turn it over to . . . Turn your back to me please, Henry. I am sick now. The police are getting many complaints. Look out. Hey, Jack; hello, Jack. Jack, Mamma. I want that G-note. Look out for Jimmy Valentine, for he is an old pal of mine . . . Look out! Mamma, Mamma. Look out for her. You can’t beat him. Police, Mamma! Helen, Mother, please take me out . . . The Chimney Sweeps. Talk to the Sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please help me up, Henry. Max, come over here . . . French Canadian bean soup . . . I want to pay, let them leave me alone.[5]
Before long, Schultz fell into a coma and was pronounced dead at 8:35 p.m. on October 24, 1935. He had been preceded in death by Otto Berman and Landau, who had succumbed to their injuries earlier that same day. Schultz’s last words became subject for a number of novelizations and works of prose over the years. Most notably William S. Burroughs used Schultz’s ramblings as the jumping-off point for his screenplay The Last Words of Dutch Schultz, which was to use Schultz’s ramblings as a constant soundtrack to the film. In 1993 hip-hop group The Disposable Heroes of Hiphopricy released a spoken-word album featuring Burroughs speaking Schultz’s last words, laid over a hip-hop beat.[6]
At the time police had a list of suspects and eventually caught up to Weiss and Workman, the two gunmen. But Longy Zwillman was also brought in for questioning by Newark police, as well as by the FBI. Each agency took a turn questioning Zwillman, but he insisted he had no knowledge of Schultz’s murder. The authorities felt that the kingpin of the Newark rackets should have some inkling as to who had been planning such a brazen gangland hit on such a high-profile target, right in Longy’s backyard, no less. Two nights before the shooting, Dutch Schultz had been seen in the Blue Mirror nightclub, a known Zwillman hangout. And according to a source that night, Doc Stacher had had one of his associates go out and make sure his gun was ready in case there was any trouble. There had definitely been tension in the air in Newark with Schultz escalating his war of words on the authorities. And if a plan had been in motion with Zwillman’s knowledge, Stacher would almost certainly have been privy to it.
In the early 2000s, before his death, Newark mobster Joe Stassi gave an interview to a reporter for GQ in which he claimed to have inside knowledge of the Schultz killing. Stassi said that the mob called for Schultz’s death in part because of his vow to retaliate against Thomas Dewey but also because of his temper and out-of-control ways, which many in the “new mob” saw as an out-of-date way of doing business. The cowboy days of Prohibition were over, and the new era of the businessman gangster was beginning. Stassi maintained that he was the one who set the deal in motion, recruiting Workman and Weiss for the killing. But he claimed that he personally received the order from Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Longy Zwillman.[7]
In the aftermath of the Schultz killing, and with the swift move away from the era of Prohibition, Zwillman was juggling a lot of balls in the air. His move into legitimate businesses were still weighted by a lot of baggage from the Prohibition years. In the interim he had managed to improve his personal life, marrying Mary Mendels Steinbach on July 7, 1939. But the ghosts of the Prohibition-era gangsters still hung on, despite his efforts to distance himself.
Just a month after his marriage, Zwillman was called before a federal grand jury investigating the activities of Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, notorious New York mobster and head of the hit squad Murder, Inc. Buchalter had been indicted in 1937 and so fled. Authorities had looked for him for two years, finally discovering that he had never left New York; he was apprehended in August of 1939. The federal grand jury believed fellow gangsters had been aiding and abetting Buchalter’s flight from justice, Zwillman among them. Before the judge Zwillman was “particularly adamant in his refusal to testify when asked about the nature of his work and for whom he worked in 1933,”[8] garnering a citation for contempt.
The judge overseeing the grand jury sentenced Zwillman to six months in prison for refusing to testify but allowed Longy out on a ten thousand dollar bail. Longy’s lawyers appealed the sentence, and within a month it was ruled that he was within his right to refuse to testify to the grand jury. Zwillman was a free man, and the victory over the government enhanced his already-growing reputation among the underworld. It also made Zwillman the focus of even more law-enforcement scrutiny.
In an FBI memo to Director J. Edgar Hoover, a local agent at the time relayed a conversation he’d had with a US district judge who’d asserted that “Newark has been a little bit neglected by the [Justice] Department, and
the result of that is that all these gangsters have now all come over here.”[9] As a result, the FBI, in conjunction with local law enforcement, started paying closer attention to the Newark racketeers, though, unbeknownst to the feds, some in the Newark police department were on Zwillman’s payroll.
According to FBI files, Zwillman “branched out in control of slot machines, cigarette vending machines, gambling, numbers rackets, and several restaurants and cafes.”[10] This diversification only increased after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. By 1938 his portfolio of legitimate business included the Star Bowling and Billiard Academy, Borok’s Furniture Company, the United Brewing Company, and a 40 percent stock holding in the USA Yeast Company. He moved into other areas of the liquor industry as well, investing in liquor distributorships and wholesalers like J&J Distributing and Browne Vintners, the latter a firm run by Longy’s old partner Joseph Reinfeld, who had parlayed his ties with Canadian liquor merchants during Prohibition into a prosperous legitimate business.
Real estate and development was another sector Longy viewed as a wise business investment. He had the nightclubs, the Blue Mirror and the Casablanca, as well as the Tavern Restaurant in Newark. Zwillman added Club Greenacres in Miami Beach to his portfolio, as well as Hotel Versailles in Long Branch and Colony Surf Club, both on the Jersey Shore. His operations also extended out west to Las Vegas, where less-legit operations included skimming casino profits from the Fremont Hotel on Fremont Street in downtown Vegas. His bagman was a New York City theatrical producer who arranged entertainment for many of the casinos and hotels in Vegas. On his return to New York he would bring cash back for Longy. Longy’s longtime friend Doc Stacher was also involved with the Fremont. In fact, an informant told the FBI that “almost all of the gambling casinos take their orders from Meyer Lansky and Joseph ‘Doc’ Stacher.”[11]
Garden State Gangland Page 6