Abraham "Bo" Weinberg (January 7, 1900 – September 9, 1935) was a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
mobster who became a
hitman
Contract killing is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or persons. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of payment, monetary or otherwise. Either party may be ...
and chief lieutenant for the
Prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...
-era gang boss
Dutch Schultz
Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Simon Flegenheimer; August 6, 1901October 24, 1935) was an American mobster. Based in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s, he made his fortune in organized crime-related activities, including bootlegging and the nu ...
. As Schultz expanded his
bootlegging operations into Manhattan during Prohibition, he recruited Abe Weinberg and his brother
George
George may refer to:
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* George (given name)
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* George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George
* George Washington, First President of the United States
* George W. Bush, 43rd Presiden ...
into his gang. Abe Weinberg would become one of Schultz's top gunmen during the Manhattan Bootleg Wars and was a suspect in the later high-profile gangland slayings of
Jack "Legs" Diamond,
Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, and mob boss
Salvatore Maranzano
Salvatore Maranzano (; July 31, 1886 – September 10, 1931) was an Italian-American mobster from the town of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, and an early Cosa Nostra boss who led what later would become the Bonanno crime family in New York City. ...
.
Background
In 1933, Schultz was indicted for tax evasion. Rather than face the charges, Schultz went into hiding and Weinberg assumed control of his criminal operations. When Schultz returned from hiding and won acquittal on the charges against him, he became suspicious of Weinberg, as it was rumored that Weinberg had been secretly negotiating with mob boss
Lucky Luciano
Charles "Lucky" Luciano (, ; born Salvatore Lucania ; November 24, 1897 – January 26, 1962) was an Italian-born gangster who operated mainly in the United States. Luciano started his criminal career in the Five Points gang and was instrumenta ...
and
Murder, Inc.
Murder, Inc. (Murder, Incorporated) was an organized crime group, active from 1929 to 1941, that acted as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicatea closely connected criminal organization that included the Italian-American Mafia, the ...
boss
Louis Buchalter
Louis Buchalter, known as Louis Lepke or Lepke Buchalter, (February 6, 1897March 4, 1944) was an American mobster and head of the Mafia hit squad Murder, Inc., during the 1930s. Buchalter was one of the premier labor racketeers in New York City ...
to retain control of the Schultz organization.
On April 23, 1935, Bo Weinberg married Anna May Turner. According to the 1930 U.S. Census and the 1925 New York Census she was born in either 1915 or 1916, not in 1912 as stated in the marriage record.
Disappearance
On September 9, 1935, Bo Weinberg left a
Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Buildin ...
nightclub and was never seen again. Conflicting reports emerged about the manner of his death. Gangland lore held that Schultz had personally executed him with a .45 automatic in a Midtown hotel room, while Schultz' lawyer
Dixie Davis
J. Richard Davis (1905 – December 30, 1969), also known as Dixie Davis, was the lawyer for mobster Dutch Schultz.
Biography
Davis was born in New York City in 1905 and grew up in Tannersville, New York after his father, a tailor named Dav ...
reported witnessing Schultz' bodyguard
Lulu Rosenkrantz shoot Weinberg in the back of a car after a night of drinking; Davis later maintained that the shooting could have been accidental. Schultz himself informed Weinberg's brother George that "We hadda put a kimono on Bo," Schultz' code phrase to indicate that Weinberg's corpse had been encased in cement and dropped into the
East River
The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...
.
Sann, Paul. Kill the Dutchman!
See also
*List of people who disappeared
Lists of people who disappeared include those whose current whereabouts are unknown, or whose deaths are unsubstantiated. Many people who disappear are eventually declared dead ''in absentia''. Some of these people were possibly subjected to enfo ...
In popular culture
Bo Weinberg would be portrayed in the following films:
*''Billy Bathgate
''Billy Bathgate'' is a 1989 novel by author E. L. Doctorow that won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle award for fiction for 1990, the 1990 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 1990 William Dean Howells Medal, and was the runner-up for the 1 ...
'', 1991, based on the 1989 historical fiction novel of the same name by E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction.
He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama. They included ...
; portrayed by Bruce Willis
Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955) is a retired American actor. He achieved fame with a leading role on the comedy-drama series ''Moonlighting'' (1985–1989) and appeared in over a hundred films, gaining recognition as an action hero a ...
, in which Weinberg is depicted as having his feet encased in cement before being dropped alive into the East River.
*''Gangster Wars
''The Gangster Chronicles'' is a 1981 American crime drama television miniseries starring Michael Nouri, Joe Penny, Jon Polito, Louis Giambalvo, Kathleen Lloyd, Madeleine Stowe, Chad Redding, Markie Post, Allan Arbus, James Andronica, Robert Da ...
'', 1981, by Dana Goldstone
Dana may refer to:
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* Dana (given name)
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* Dana (surname)
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** James Dwight Dana (1813–1895), scientist, zoological author abbreviation Dana
Nickname or stage name
* Dana ...
*''Hit the Dutchman
Hit means to strike someone or something.
Hit or HIT may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Fictional entities
* Hit, a fictional character from ''Dragon Ball Super''
* Homicide International Trust, or HIT, a fictional organization i ...
'', 1991, by Matt Servitto
Matthew Joseph Servitto (born April 7, 1965) is an American actor known for his role as Special Agent Dwight Harris on ''The Sopranos'' and Trask Bodine on ''All My Children'' (1989-1990), Deputy Brock Lotus on the Cinemax series ''Banshee'' and ...
*''Hoodlum
A hoodlum is a thug, usually in a group of misfits who are associated with crime or theft.
Early use
The earliest reference to the word "hoodlum" was in the December 14, 1866, ''San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin'' after the Hoodlum Band was ...
'', 1997, by Joe Guzaldo
Joe or JOE may refer to:
Arts
Film and television
* ''Joe'' (1970 film), starring Peter Boyle
* ''Joe'' (2013 film), starring Nicolas Cage
* ''Joe'' (TV series), a British TV series airing from 1966 to 1971
* ''Joe'', a 2002 Canadian animated ...
References
Further reading
*Lacey, Robert. ''Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life''. London: Century, 1991.
External links
Birth record
Birth record on FamilySearch.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Weinberg, Abraham
1900 births
1930s missing person cases
1935 deaths
20th-century American Jews
Missing gangsters
Missing person cases in New York City
Murdered Jewish American gangsters
People murdered in New York City
Male murder victims
Prohibition-era gangsters
Russian Jews