Murder
On November 4, 1928, Arnold Rothstein was shot and mortally wounded during a business meeting at Manhattan's Park Central Hotel at Seventh Avenue near 55th Street. He died the next day at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital in Manhattan. The shooting was allegedly linked to debts owed from a 3-day, high stakes poker game which he had participated in the previous month with several associates and acquaintances. Rothstein was said to have had a cold streak, and owed $320,000 at the end of the game. He refused to pay the debt, claiming the game was fixed. The hit was arranged to punish Rothstein for reneging on this debt.
The gambler George "Hump" McManus was arrested for the murder, but later acquitted for lack of evidence.
According to Kevin Cook in his book Titanic Thompson (2010), the poker game was fixed by a gambler, Titanic Thompson (real name Alvin Clarence Thomas) and his associate, Nate Raymond. Due to some complicated side bets, by the end Rothstein owed $319,000 to Raymond (much of which Raymond was due, by secret agreement, to pass on to Thompson); $30,000 to Thompson; and approximately $200,000 to the other gamblers present. McManus owed Rothstein $51,000. Rothstein stalled for time, saying that he would not be able to pay until after the elections of November 1928, when he expected to win $550,000 for successfully backing Hoover for President and Roosevelt for Governor. Thompson testified at McManus's trial, describing him as "a swell loser" who would never have shot Rothstein. According to Cook, Thompson later told some of his acquaintances that the killer had not been McManus, but his "bag-man", Hyman Biller, who fled to Cuba shortly afterwards.
In his Kill the Dutchman! (1971), a biography of Dutch Schultz, the crime reporter Paul Sann suggests that Schultz murdered Rothstein. He says this was in retaliation for the murder of Schultz's friend and associate, Joey Noel, by Rothstein's protégé, Jack "Legs" Diamond.
On his deathbed, Rothstein refused to identify his killer, answering police inquiries with, "You stick to your trade. I'll stick to mine." Rothstein was buried at Ridgewood's Union Field Cemetery in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony.
Read more about this topic: Arnold Rothstein
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