Race to find missing millions of the Mafia’s beer baron
Two professional treasure hunters say they are close to the ‘ holy grail’... the $ 150m stash of Prohibition- era mobster Dutch Schultz
MOB BOSS Dutch Schultz was washing his hands in the men’s room of the Palace Chop House tavern in Newark, New Jersey, when assassin Charles “Bug” Workman burst in, unleashing his machine gun. Shot in the liver, stomach, colon and spleen, Schultz staggered into the restaurant and collapsed on a table.
Rushed to hospital, the mobster clung to life for almost 24 hours. As a police stenographer recorded his last words, Schultz, aged 33, made an extraordinary confession: he had secretly buried a vast fortune.
Since his murder in October 1935 treasure hunters have searched in vain for his diamonds, jewels, gold and bearer bonds – until now. After 85 years, Dutch Schultz’s fortune, the holy grail of American buried treasure and worth an estimated $ 150million, may finally have been found. Professional detectorists Steve Zazulyk and Ryan Fazekas, of Toronto, Canada, following a five- year investigation, have discovered gold coins they believe came from Schultz’s secret stash.
“We’re very close to finding the rest of his treasure,” says Zazulyk, who found two rare gold coins dated 1903 just a few miles from the Palace Chop House where Schultz ran his criminal operation.
“We’ve found a secret tunnel beneath Schultz’s home in Bronxville, New York, and though we haven’t dug down yet we’re betting there’s some valuables buried there. And we have the locations of places in the woods where we’re pretty confident Schultz buried his fortune. We believe there’s a cache of diamonds acquired by Schultz from infamous jewel thief Willie Sutton, stolen from New York diamond dealer Rosenthal, which could be worth more than $ 150million today.
“We’re hoping to have our hands on them very soon. The gold coins we found show that we’re looking in the right location: that wasn’t common pocket change in 1935. Just days ago we unearthed pre- war shovels and tools we believe were used to bury the gold coins we found. We’re convinced we’re extremely close to the treasure.”
Manhattan- born Dutch Schultz – real name Arthur Flegenheimer – rose to power as a Prohibition- era beer baron, and ruthlessly built a crime empire with a numbers racket in New York’s Bronx and Harlem.
THE MOB kingpin is said to have personally killed 200 people. Pursued by federal prosecutors for tax evasion – the same crime that doomed Al Capone – Schultz devised a scheme to protect his illgotten gains. “He had seen many of his contemporaries put away for various terms in prison, only to come out without a dime and with their former territories taken over by rival thugs,” says historian John Conway. “He was determined to avoid a similar fate.”
Schultz, who was immortalised on the big screen by Dustin Hoffman in the 1991 film Billy Bathgate, also starring Nicole Kidman as his moll, secured his illicit fortune in iron boxes or steel suitcases, and buried them in the wilds of the Catskill mountains near his hideout in Phoenicia in upstate New York.
But even after being acquitted on tax charges Schultz was still pursued by lawmen, and decided to kill dogged prosecutor Thomas Dewey. Fellow mob bosses Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky warned Schultz that killing a federal prosecutor would bring law enforcement down on all their rackets, but Schultz hit back: “I don’t need your permission.”
Luciano and Lansky, with an eye to taking over Schultz’s lucrative operations,
‘ Schultz secured his illicit fortune in iron boxes or steel suitcases and buried them in the wilds’
BIG SCREEN BEER BARON: Dustin Hoffman and Nicole Kidman in Billy Bathgate