The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN’S FINAL PAYOFF by Damon Runyon

Arnold Rothstein was the most prominent underworld figure in 1920s New York. A suave and urbane gambler, Rothstein (b. 1882) was known variously as New York City’s “Big Bankroll”, “The Brain” or simply “AR”. In 1919, he achieved notoriety as the man who bribed the Chicago White Sox baseball team to throw the World Series. During the Roaring Twenties he accumulated a fortune by financing most of the East Coast rackets, but on 4 November 1928, during a poker game at the Park Central Hotel, someone shot Arnold Rothstein. “I won’t talk about it”, he told police from his hospital bed, “I’ll take care of it myself.” He died two days later without naming his killer. Police believed that Rothstein welshed on $300,000-worth of gambling debts to a group of men including George “Hump” McManus. McManus was duly indicted for murder, at a series of hearings attended by the writer and journalist (Alfred) Damon Runyon (1884-1946). Runyon’s reports, filed to the New York American, read like an electric charge, with their characteristically racy language, laced with jargon and slang from the street. Material from this and similar cases involving organized crime informed Runyon’s best-known collection Guys and Dolls (1932), later the basis of a hit musical (1950) and film (1955).

New York City, 19 November 1929

If the ghost of Arnold Rothstein was hanging around the weather-beaten old Criminal Courts Building yesterday-and Arnold always did say he’d come back after he was dead and haunt a lot of people-it took by proxy what would have been a violent shock to the enormous vanity of the dead gambler.

Many citizens, members of the so-called “blue ribbon panel”, appeared before Judge Charles C. Nott, Jr, in the trial of George C. McManus, charged with murdering Rothstein and said they didn’t know Rothstein in life and didn’t know anybody that did know him.

Arnold would have scarcely believed his ears. He lived in the belief he was widely known. He had spent many years establishing himself as a landmark on old Broadway. It would have hurt his pride like sixty to hear men who lived in the very neighborhood he frequented shake their heads and say they didn’t know him.

A couple said they hadn’t even read about him being plugged in the stomach with a bullet that early evening of 4 November a year ago, in the Park Central Hotel.

Well, such is fame in the Roaring Forties!

They had accepted two men to sit on the jury that is to hear the evidence against McManus, the first man to pass unchallenged by both sides being Mark H. Simon, a stockbroker, of No. 500 West 111th Street, and the second being Eugene A. Riker, of No. 211 West 21st Street, a traveling salesman.

It seemed to be a pretty fair start anyway, but just as Judge Nott was about to adjourn court at four o’clock, Mark H. Simon presented a complication. He is a dark complexioned, neatly dressed chap, in his early thirties, with black hair slicked back on his head. He hadn’t read anything about the case, and seemed to be an ideal juror.

But it appears he is suffering from ulcers of the stomach, and this handicap was presented to Judge Nott late in the day. James D. C. Murray, attorney for McManus, George M. Brothers, Assistant prosecuting attorney, in charge of the case for the State, and three other assistants from District Attorney Banton’s office, gathered in front of the bench while Mark H. Simon was put back in the witness chair and examined.

The upshot of the examination was his dismissal from service by Judge Nott, which left Riker, a youngish, slightly bald man, with big horn specs riding his nose, as the only occupant of the jury box. Judge Nott let the lonesome looking Riker go home for the night after instructing him not to do any gabbing about the case.

The great American pastime of jury picking took up all the time from ten-thirty yesterday morning until four o’clock in the afternoon, with an hour off for chow at one o’clock. Thirty “blue ribboners”, well-dressed, solid looking chaps for the most part, were examined and of this number Murray challenged a total of fourteen. Each side had thirty peremptory challenges. Attorney Brothers knocked off nine and four were excused.

George McManus, the defendant, sat behind his attorney eyeing each talesman with interest but apparently offering no suggestions. McManus was wearing a well-tailored brown suit, and was neatly groomed, as usual. His big, dark-toned face never lost its smile.

Two of his brothers, Jim and Frank, were in the court room. Frank is a big, fine-looking fellow who has a nifty tenor voice that is the boast of the Roaring Forties, though he can be induced to sing only on special occasions.

Only a very few spectators were permitted in the court, because there wasn’t room in the antique hall of justice for spare chairs after the “blue ribboners” were all assembled. A squad of the Hon. Grover Whalen’s best and most neatly uniformed cops are spread all around the premises, inside and out, to preserve decorum.

Edgar Wallace, the English novelist and playwright, who is said to bat out a novel or play immediately after his daily marmalade, was given the special privilege of the chair inside the railing and sat there listening to the examination of the talesmen, and doubtless marveling at the paucity of local knowledge of the citizens about a case that he heard of over in England. Mr Wallace proved to be a fattish, baldish man, and by no means as young as he used to be.

A reflection of the average big towner’s mental attitude toward gambling and gamblers was found in the answers to Attorney Murray’s inevitable question as to whether the fact the defendant is a gambler and gambled on cards and the horses, would prejudice the talesmen against him. Did they consider a gambler a low character?

Well, not one did. Some admitted playing the races themselves. One mumbled something about there being a lot of gamblers in Wall Street who didn’t excite his prejudice.

Attorney Murray was also concerned in ascertaining if the talesmen had read anything that District Attorney Banton had said about the defendant, and if so, had it made any impression on the talesman? It seemed not. One chap said he had read Banton’s assertions all right, but figured them in the nature of a bluff.

Do you know anybody who knew Rothstein-pronounced “stine” by Mr Brothers, and “steen” by Mr Murray-or George McManus? Do you know anybody who knew either of them?

Do you know anybody who knows anybody connected with (a) the District Attorney’s office? (b) the Police Department? Were you interested in the late political campaign? Ever live in the Park Central? Ever dine there? Know anybody connected with the management? Did you ever go to a race track?

Did you ever read anything about the case? (This in a city of over 4,000,000 newspaper readers, me hearties, and every paper carrying column after column of the Rothstein murder for months!) Did you ever hear any discussion of it? Can you? Suppose? Will you? State of mind. Reasonable doubt-

Well, by the time old John Citizen, “blue ribboner” or not, has had about twenty minutes of this he is mighty glad to get out of that place and slink home, wondering if after all it is worth while trying to do one’s duty by one’s city, county and state.

20 November 1929

A client-or shall we say a patient-of the late Arnold Rothstein popped up on us in the old Criminal Courts Building in the shank o’ the evening yesterday. He came within a couple of aces of being made juror No. 8, in the trial of George C. McManus, charged with the murder of the said Rothstein.

Robert G. McKay, a powerfully built, black-haired broker of No. 244 East 67th Street, a rather swanky neighborhood, was answering the do-yous and the can-yous of James D. C. Murray as amiably as you please, and as he had already passed the State’s legal lights apparently in a satisfactory manner, the gents at the press tables were muttering, “Well, we gotta another at least.”

Then suddenly Robert G. McKay, who looks as if he might have been a Yale or Princeton lineman of say, ten years back, and who was sitting with his big legs crossed and hugging one knee, remarked in a mild tone to Murray, “I suppose I might say I knew Arnold Rothstein-though none of you have asked me.”

“Ah,” said Attorney Murray with interest, just as it appeared he was through with his questioning.

“Did you ever have any business transactions with Rothstein?”

“Well, it was business on his part, and folly on mine.”

“Might I have the impertinence to ask if you bet with him?”

McKay grinned wryly, and nodded. Apparently he found no relish in his recollection of the transaction with “the mastermind,” who lies a-mouldering in his grave while the State of New York is trying to prove that George McManus is the man who tossed a slug into his stomach in the Park Central Hotel the night of 4 November, a year ago.

Attorney Murray now commenced to delve somewhat into McKay’s state of mind concerning the late Rothstein. He wanted to know if it would cause the broker any feeling of embarrassment to sit on a jury that was trying a man for the killing of Rothstein, when Judge Charles C. Nott, Jr, who is presiding in the trial, remarked, “I don’t think it necessary to spend any more time on this man.”

The late Rothstein’s customer hoisted his big frame out of the chair, and departed, a meditative expression on his face, as if he might still be considering whether he would feel any embarrassment under the circumstances.

They wangled out six jurors at the morning session of the McManus trial, which was enlivened to some extent by the appearance of quite a number of witnesses for the State in the hallways of the rusty old red brick Criminal Courts Building.

These witnesses had been instructed to show up yesterday morning with the idea that they might be called, and one of the first to arrive was “Titanic Slim”, otherwise Alvin C. Thomas, the golf-playing gambling man, whose illness in Milwaukee caused a postponement of the trial a week ago.

“Titanic Slim” was attended by Sidney Stajer, a rotund young man who was one of Rothstein’s closest friends, and who is beneficiary to the tune of $75,000 under the terms of the dead gambler’s will. At first the cops didn’t want to admit “Titanic Slim” to the portals of justice, as he didn’t look like a witness, but he finally got into the building only to learn he was excused.

The photographers took great interest in the drawling-voiced, soft-mannered, high roller from the South, and Sidney Stajer scowled at them fiercely, but Sidney really means no harm by his scowls. Sidney is not a hard man and ordinarily would smile very pleasantly for the photographers, but it makes him cross to get up before noon.

The State’s famous material witness, Bridget Farry, chambermaid at the Park Central, put in an appearance with Beatrice Jackson, a telephone operator at the same hotel. Bridget was positively gorgeous in an emerald-green dress and gold-heeled slippers. Also she had silver stockings and a silver band around her blonde hair. She wore no hat. A hat would have concealed the band.

Bridget, who was held by the State in durance vile for quite a spell, is just a bit stoutish, but she was certainly all dressed up like Mrs Astor’s horse. She sat with Miss Jackson on a bench just outside the portals of justice and exchanged repartee with the cops, the reporters and the photographers.

Bridget is nobody’s sap when it comes to talking back to folks. Finally she left the building, and was galloping lightly along to escape the photographers, when her gold-heeled slippers played her false, and she stumbled and fell.

An ambulance was summoned posthaste, as the lady seemed to be injured, but an enterprising gal reporter from a tab scooped her up into a taxicab, and departed with the witness to unknown parts. It is said Bridget’s shinbone was scuffed up by the fall.

Some of the State’s witnesses were quite busy at the telephone booths while in the building getting bets down on the Bowie races. It is a severe handicap to summon a man to such a remote quarter as the Criminal Courts Building along toward post time.

21 November 1929

Twelve good men, and glum, are now hunched up in the jury box, in Judge Nott’s court, and they are all ready to start in trying to find out about the murder of Arnold Rothstein.

But the hours are really tough on a lot of folks who will figure more or less prominently in the trial. Some of the boys were wondering if Judge Nott would entertain a motion to switch his hours around and start in at four p.m., the usual hour of adjournment, and run to ten-thirty a.m., which is a gentleman’s bedtime. The consensus is he wouldn’t.

George Brothers, one of District Attorney Banton’s assistants, who is in charge of the prosecution, will probably open the forensic fury for the State of New York this morning, explaining to the dozen morose inmates of the jury box just what the State expects to prove against the defendant, to wit, that George McManus is the party who shot Arnold Rothstein in the stomach in the Park Central Hotel the night of 4 November, a year ago.

You may not recall the circumstances, but McManus is one of four persons indicted for the crime. Another is Hyman Biller, an obscure denizen of the brightlights region of Manhattan Island, who probably wouldn’t be recognized by more than two persons if he walked into any joint in town, such is his obscurity.

Then there is good old John Doe and good old Richard Roe, possibly the same Doe and Roe who have been wanted in forty-nine different spots for crimes ranging from bigamy to disorderly conduct for a hundred years past. Tough guys, old John and Richard, and always getting in jams. McManus is the only one on trial for the killing of Rothstein, probably for the reason he is the only one handy.

22 November 1929

“Give me a deck of cards,” said “Red” Martin Bowe plaintively, peering anxiously around Judge Nott’s court room in the dim light of yesterday afternoon, as if silently beseeching a friendly volunteer in an emergency.

“Get me a deck of cards, and I’ll show you.”

You see Red Martin Bowe had suddenly come upon a dilemma in his forty-odd years of traveling up and down the earth. He had come upon a fellow citizen who didn’t seem to savvy the elemental pastime of stud poker, and high spading, which Martin probably thought, if he ever gave the matter any consideration, is taught in the grammar schools of this great nation-or should be.

So he called for a deck of cards. He probably felt the question was fatuous but he was willing to do his best to enlighten this apparently very benighted fellow, Ferdinand Pecora, the chief representative of Old John Law on the premises, and to show the twelve good men, and glum, in the jury box just how that celebrated card game was conducted which the State of New York is trying to show cost Arnold Rothstein his life at the hands of George McManus.

But no deck of cards was immediately forthcoming. So Martin Bowe didn’t get to give his ocular demonstration to the assembled citizens, though a man came dashing in a little later with a nice red deck, while even Judge Nott was still snorting over Martin Bowe’s request.

Possibly if Mr Pecora can show a night off later some of the boys who sat in the back room yesterday might be induced to give him a lesson or two in stud poker. Also high spading.

Martin Bowe is a big, picturesque looking chap, who is getting bald above the ears, and who speaks with slow drawl and very low. In fact all the witnesses displayed a remarkable tendency to pitch their voices low in marked contrast with their natural vocal bent under ordinary circumstances and the attorneys had to keep admonishing them to talk louder.

“Gambler,” said Bowe, quietly, and without embarrassment, when asked his business. Then he went on to tell about the card game that will probably be remarked for many years as Broadway’s most famous joust. It began on a Saturday night and lasted into the Sunday night following. Martin said he previously played five or six hours at a stretch, and then would lie down and take a rest. He stated:

“It started with bridge, then we got to playing stud. The game got slow, and then some wanted to sport a little so they started betting on the high spade.”

“I lose,” remarked Bowe calmly, when Pecora asked how he came out. McManus was in the game. Also Rothstein, “Titanic”, Meyer Boston, Nate Raymond, “Sol-somebody”. A chap named Joe Bernstein was present, and several others he didn’t remember, though Sam Boston later testified Bernstein was “doing something and he wasn’t playing”. It is this Bernstein, a California young man, who “beat” Rothstein for $69,000 though Bernstein was never actually in the play. He bet from the outside.

As near as Bowe could recollect, Raymond, Rothstein, McManus and Bernstein were bettors on the high card. He heard McManus lost about $50,000. Rothstein was keeping a score on the winnings and losings. McManus paid off partly in cash and partly by check, while Rothstein was putting cash in his pocket, and would give out IOUs. Bowe said he heard Rothstein lost over $200,000. The redoubtable “Titanic” won between $20,000 and $25,000 from McManus. Pecora asked: “What about Meyer Boston?”

“He wins.”

Under cross-examination by James D. C. Murray, Bowe said he had often known McManus to bet as much as $50,000 on one horse race and never complain if he lost. He said:

“It’s an everyday occurrence with him. He always paid with a smile.”

After the game, he said, Rothstein and McManus were very friendly; they often ate together at Lindy’s. Rothstein won something from McManus in the game, but Bowe didn’t know how much.

It was a rather big day for the defense. In his opening address to the jury, George Brothers, assistant district attorney, didn’t seem to offer much motive for the possible killing of Rothstein by McManus other than the ill feeling that might have been engendered over the game in which they both lost.

That, and the fact that McManus fled after the killing, seemed his strongest points, while Attorney Murray quickly made it clear that part of the defense will be that Rothstein wasn’t shot in room No. 349 at all, and that he certainly wasn’t shot by George McManus.

Murray worked at length on Dr Charles D. Norris, the city Medical Examiner, trying to bring out from the witness that the nature of the wound sustained by Rothstein and the resultant shock would have prevented Rothstein from walking down three flights of stairs, and pushing open two or three heavy doors to reach the spot in the service entrance of the hotel where he was found, especially without leaving some trace of blood.

During the examination of the doctor, the expensive clothes that Arnold Rothstein used to wear so jauntily were displayed, now crumpled and soiled. The white silk shirt was among the ghastly exhibits, but the $45 custom-made shoes that were his hobby, and the sox were missing. Dr Norris didn’t know what had become of them.

The jurors, most of them business men on their own hook, or identified in salaried capacities with business, were a study while Martin Bowe and Sam Boston were testifying, especially Bowe, for he spoke as calmly of winning and losing $50,000 as if he were discussing the price of his morning paper.

You could see the jurors bending forward, some of them cupping their hands to their ears, and eyeing the witness with amazement. That stud and high spade game had been mentioned so often in the papers that it had come to be accepted as a Broadway fable. Probably no member of the jury, for none of them indicated in their examination that they are familiar with sporting life, took any stock in the tales of high rolling of the Broadway gamblers.

But here was a man who was in the game, who had lost $5,700 of his own money, and who knew what he was talking about. It was apparent the jurors were astounded by the blasé manner of Bowe as he spoke of McManus dropping $50,000 as “an everyday occurrence,” and even the voluble Sam Boston’s glib mention of handling hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly in bets on sporting events impresses them.

28 November 1929

Nothing new having developed in the life and battles of Juror No. 9, or the Man with the Little Moustache, the trial of George McManus for the murder of Arnold Rothstein proceeded with reasonable tranquility yesterday.

Just before adjournment over Thanksgiving, to permit the jurors to restore their waning vitality with turkey and stuffin’, the State let it out rather quietly that it hasn’t been able to trace very far the pistol which is supposed to have ended the tumultuous life of “the master mind” a year ago.

On a pleasant day in last June-the 15th, to be exact-it seems that one Mr Joe Novotny was standing behind the counter in his place of business at No. 51 West Fourth Street, in the thriving settlement of St Paul, Minnesota, when in popped a party who was to Mr Joe Novotny quite unknown, shopping for a rod, as the boys term a smoke-pole.

Mr Novotny sold the stranger a.38-calibre Colt, which Mr Novotny himself had but recently acquired from the firm of Janney, Sempler & Hill, of Minneapolis, for $22.85. The factory number of the Colt was 359,946. Mr Novotny did not inquire the shopper’s name, because it seems there is no law requiring such inquisitiveness in Minnesota, and Mr Novotny perhaps didn’t wish to appear nosey.

No doubt Mr Novotny figures the stranger was a new settler in St Paul and desired the Colt to protect himself against the wild Indians and wolves that are said to roam the streets of the city. Anyway, that’s the last Mr Novotny saw of pistol No. 359,946, and all he knows about it, according to a stipulation presented by the State of New York to Judge Nott late yesterday afternoon, and agreed to by James D. C. Murray, attorney for George McManus, as Mr Novotny’s testimony.

It may be that some miscreant subsequently stole the gun from the settler’s cabin in St Paul or that he lent it to a pal who was going to New York, and wished to be well dressed, for the next we hear of No. 359,946 is its appearance in the vicinity of Fifty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, Manhattan Island, where it was picked up by one Bender, a taxi jockey, after the shooting of Arnold Rothstein. A stipulation with reference to said Bender also was submitted to Judge Nott.

The State of New York would have the jury in the trial of George McManus believe it was with this gun that Rothstein was shot in the stomach in room 349 in the Park Central Hotel, and that the gun was hurled through a window into the street after the shooting. It remains to be seen what the jury thinks about this proposition.

It is not thought it will take any stock in any theory that the gun walked from St. Paul to the corner of Fifty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue.

If the settler who bought the gun from Mr Novotny would step forward at this moment, he would be as welcome as the flowers in May. But those Northwestern settlers always are reticent.

It was around three o’clock in the afternoon when Mr James McDonald, one of the assistant district attorneys, finished reading the 300 pages of testimony taken in the case to date to Mr Edmund C. Shotwell, juror No. 2, who replaced Eugene Riker when Mr Riker’s nerves bogged down on him.

It was the consensus that Mr Shotwell was in better physical condition than Mr McDonald at the conclusion of the reading, although at the start it looked as if Mr McDonald would wear his man down with ease before page No. 204.

Juror No. 9, who is Norris Smith, the man with the little moustache, whose adventures have kept this trial from sinking far down into the inside of the public prints long ere this, sat in a chair in the row behind the staunch juror No. 2, which row is slightly elevated above the first row. Juror No. 9, who is slightly built and dapperly dressed, tweaked at his little moustache with his fingers and eyed the press section with baleful orbs.

What juror No. 9 thinks of the inmates of the press section would probably be suppressed by the censors. And yet, without juror No. 9, where would this case be? It would be back next to pure reading matter-that’s where.

Juror No. 9 was alleged to have been discovered by newspaper men bouncing around a Greenwich Village shushery and talking about the McManus trial, though he convinced Judge Nott that he hadn’t done or said anything that might impair his status as a juror in the case. Finally it was learned juror No. 9 was shot up a bit in his apartment at No. 420 West Twentieth Street on 29 February 1928, by a young man who was first defended by James D. C. Murray, now McManus’s counsel.

30 November 1929

Draw near, friend reader, for a touch of ooh-my-goodness has finally crept into the Roaring Forties’ most famous murder trial. Sc-an-dal, no less. Sh-h-h!

And where do you think we had to go to get it?

To Walnut Street, in the pleasant mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina. Folks, thar’s sin in them hills!

Here we’d been going along quietly for days and days on end with the matter of George McManus, charged with plugging Arnold Rothstein with a.38, and the testimony had been pure and clean and nothing calculated to give Broadway a bad name, when in come a woman from the ol’ Tarheel State speaking of the strangest didoes.

A Mrs Marian A. Putnam, she was, who runs the Putnam grill in Asheville, a lady of maybe forty-odd, a headliner for the State, who testified she had heard loud voices of men, and a crash coming from the vicinity of room 349 in the Park Central Hotel the night “the master mind,” was “settled”. And that later she had seen a man wandering along the hallway on the third floor, with his hands pressed to his abdomen and “a terrible look on his face”.

Well, there seemed nothing in this narration to mar the peaceful trend of events, or to bring the blush of embarrassment for this city to the cheek of the most loyal Broadwayer. Then James D. C. Murray took charge of the witness and began addressing the lady on the most tender subjects, and developing the weirdest things. Really, you’d be surprised.

Handing the lady a registration card from the Park Central Hotel and assuming a gruff tone of voice several octaves over the perfunctory purr that has been the keynote of the trial to date, Murray asked, “Who are the Mr and Mrs Putnam indicated by that card as registered at the Park Central on 28 October 1928?”

“ I am Mrs Putnam.”

“Who is Mr Putnam?”

Mrs Putnam hesitated briefly, and then replied, “A friend of mine to whom I am engaged.”

There were subdued snorts back in the court room as the spectators suddenly came up out of their dozes and turned off their snores to contemplate the lady on the witness stand.

Mrs Putnam wore a rather smart-looking velvet dress, with a gray caracul coat with a dark squirrel collar, and a few diamonds here and there about her, indicating business is okay at the Putnam grill.

But she didn’t have the appearance of one who might insert a hotsy-totsy strain into the staid proceedings. She looked more like somebody’s mother, or aunt. She described herself as a widow, and here she was admitting something that savored of social error, especially as the lady subsequently remarked that “Mr Putnam” had occupied the same boudoir with her.

The spectators sat up to listen and mumbled we were finally getting down to business in this trial.

Murray now produced a death certificate attesting to the demise of one Putnam, who died in 1913, the attorney asking, “The Mr Putnam who occupied the room with you wasn’t the Mr Putnam who died in 1913, was he?”

At this point Mrs Putnam seemed deeply affected, possibly by the memory of the late Mr P. She gulped and applied her handkerchief to her eyes, and the spectators eyed her intently, because they felt it would be a thrill if it transpired that the deceased Putnam had indeed returned to life the very night that “the master mind” was shot.

But it seems it wasn’t that Mr Putnam, and Mr Murray awoke some very antique echoes in the old court room as he shouted, “Who was it?”

Well, Mrs Putnam doubtless restrained by a feeling of delicacy, didn’t want to tell, and Judge Nott helpfully remarked that as long as she didn’t deny she was registered at the hotel, the name didn’t seem important. Murray argued Mrs Putnam’s fiancé might be a material witness for the defense, so Judge Nott let him try to show it.

Finally Mrs Putnam said the man’s name was Perry. He is said to be a citizen of Asheville, and what will be said of Mr Perry in Asheville when the news reaches the sewing circles down yonder will probably be plenty. Not content with touching on Mr Perry to Mrs Putnam, the attorney for the defense asked her about a Mr Elias, and then about a Mr Bruce, becoming right personal about Mr Bruce.

He wanted to know if Mr Bruce had remained with Mrs Putnam one night in her room at another New York Hotel, but she said no. Then Murray brought in the name of a Mr Otis B. Carr, of Hendersonville, N C, and when Mrs Putnam said she didn’t recall the gentleman, the attorney asked, “Did you steal anything out of a store in Hendersonville?”

Mrs Putnam said no. Moreover, in reply to questions, she said she didn’t steal two dresses from a department store in Asheville and that she hadn’t been arrested for disorderly conduct and fined five dollars. Before Murray got through with her some of the listeners half expected to hear him ask the lady if she had ever personally killed A. Rothstein.

Mrs Putnam couldn’t have made the State very happy, because she admitted under Murray’s cross-examination that she had once denied in Asheville, in the presence of Mr Mara, one of the district attorney’s assistants, and County Judge McCrae, of Asheville, that she ever left her room in the Park Central the night of the murder.

She said her current story is the truth. Mr Murray asked her if she hadn’t said thus and so to newspapermen in Asheville. She replied, “I did”.

A young man described as Douglas Eller, a reporter of an Asheville paper, was summoned from among the spectators in the court room and brought up to the railing, where Mrs Putnam could see him. The lady was asked if she knew him, and she eyed him at length before admitting she may have seen him before. Mr Eller retired, blushing slightly, as if not to be known by Mrs Putnam argues one unknown in Asheville.

Murray became very curious about the Putnam grill in Asheville. Didn’t she have curtained-off booths? She did, but her waitresses could walk in and out of them at any time, a reply that Mrs Putnam tossed at Murray as if scorning utterly the base insinuation of his question.

Did she sell liquor? She did not. She had been shown pictures of Rothstein and McManus and Biller, but she couldn’t recognize any of them. She was mighty reluctant about telling the name of a lady friend with whom she dined in her room the night of the killing, but finally admitted it was a Mrs Herman Popper. She explained her reluctance by saying, “I don’t want to get other people mixed up in this”.

3 December 1929

The most important point to the State in the trial of George McManus yesterday seemed to be the key to room 349 in the Park Central Hotel, which, according to testimony, was found in a pocket of an overcoat hanging in the room.

This overcoat bore the name of McManus on the tailor’s label in the pocket.

The prosecution will, perhaps, make much of this as tending to show the occupant of the room left in a very great hurry and didn’t lock the door, besides abandoning the overcoat, though Detective “Paddy” Flood said the door was locked when he went there with a house detective to investigate things.

It was Detective Flood who told of finding the key. He was relating how he entered the room and found, among other things, an overcoat with the name of George McManus on the label. He was asked, “What other objects did you find?”

“A handkerchief in the pocket of the overcoat with the initials ‘G. Mc’. There were other handkerchiefs in the drawer in the bedroom and a white shirt.”

“Did you find anything else in the coat?”

“A key, in the right-hand pocket, for room 349.”

“A door key.”

“Yes.”

Aside from that, the testimony brought out that “the master mind,” as the underworld sometimes called Arnold Rothstein, died “game.”

Game as a pebble.

In the haunts of that strange pallid man during his life, you could have had ten to one, and plenty of it, that he would “holler copper”, did occasion arise, with his dying gasp.

Indeed he was often heard to remark in times when he knew that sinister shadows hovered near-and these were not infrequent times in his troubled career, living as he chose to live, “If anyone gets me, they’ll burn for it”.

And cold, hard men, thinking they read his character, believed they knew his meaning. They felt he was just the kind when cornered by an untoward circumstance, that would squeal like a pig. It shows you how little you really know of a man.

For when the hour came, as the jury in Judge Nott’s court room heard yesterday, with the dismal snow slanting past the windows of the grimy old Criminal Courts Building-when Arnold Rothstein lay crumpled up with a bullet through his intestines, knowing he was mortally hurt, and officers of the law bent over him and whispered, “Who did it?” the pale lips tightened, and Rothstein mumbled, “I won’t tell and please don’t ask me any more questions”.

Then another “sure thing” went wrong on Broadway, where “sure things” are always going wrong-the “sure thing” that Rothstein would tell.

But as the millionaire gambler lay in the Fifty-sixth Street service entrance of the Park Central Hotel that night of 4 November 1928, with the pain of his wound biting at his vitals, and the peering eyes of the cops close to his white countenance, he reverted to type.

He was no longer the money king, with property scattered all over the Greater City, a big apartment house on fashionable Park Avenue, a Rolls-Royce and a Minerva at his beck and call, and secretaries and servants bowing to him. He was a man of the underworld. And as one of the “dice hustlers” of the dingy garage lofts, and the “mobsters” high and low he muttered, “I won’t tell”.

A sigh of relief escaped many a chest at those words, you can bet on that.

Detective Flood, who knew Rothstein well, was one of those who bent over the stricken man.

Patrolman William Davis, first to respond to the call of the hotel attendants, also asked Rothstein who shot him, but got no more information than Flood.

The head of the millionaire gambler was pillowed on a wadded-up burlap sack when Davis reached the scene, which was important to the State in trying to show that Rothstein was shot in the hotel, in that it had been said that Rothstein’s overcoat was put under his head.

Before the session was completed, the tables in the court room were covered with exhibits of one kind and another taken by Flood and other officers from room 349 in the Park Central.

There was a layout of glasses and a liquor bottle, and ginger ale bottles on a tray. But, alas, the liquor bottle was very empty. Also the State had the dark blue overcoat with the velvet collar that was found in a closet of room 349, said overcoat bearing a tailor’s label, with George McManus’s name on the label.

Likewise, handkerchiefs found in the room were produced and these handkerchiefs were elegantly monogrammed. One was inscribed “g Mc M.,” another like “G. M. A.” with the “G” and “A” in small letters, and the “M” big. A third was monogrammed “J. M. W.” with the “J” and “W” in small letters on either side of the large “M” while the fourth bore the marking “J. M.”

A white shirt with collar attached, some race tracks slips, and a window screen with a hole in it, were spread out for the jurors to see. Also the.38-calibre pistol, which one Al Bender, a taxi driver, picked up in Seventh Avenue.

This is supposed to be the pistol with which Rothstein was shot, and the screen is supposed to be the screen through which the pistol was hurled out into the street after the shooting, though the point where the pistol was picked up is quite a hurling distance from room 349.

While Flood and some other officers were in the room Hyman Biller, a cashier at the race track for McManus, and under indictment with McManus for the murder of Rothstein, came in with Frank and Tom McManus, brothers of George, and remained about twenty minutes.

It was the failure to hold Biller on this occasion that brought down much criticism on the heads of the Police Department, for Hymie was never seen in these parts again.

The lights were burning in room 349 when Flood got there. Four glasses stood on the table which is the basis of the indictment returned against McManus, and Biller, and the celebrated John Doe and Richard Roe. The State claims four men were in the room when Rothstein was summoned there by a message sent by McManus to Lindy’s restaurant. [43]

Vincent J. Kelly, elevator operator at the Park Central, testified he was working on the service elevator the night Rothstein was shot, and saw Rothstein in the corridor, holding his hands across his stomach, and didn’t see him come through the service doorway, through which he must have passed to make good the State’s contention he came from upstairs.

He heard Rothstein say, “I’m shot”.

Thomas Calhoun, of Corona, Long Island, thirty-two, a watchman on the Fifty-sixth Street side of the hotel at the time of the murder, saw Rothstein at ten forty-seven standing in front of the time office at the service entrance. Calhoun ran and got Officer Davis.

He heard Rothstein say something to the policeman about taking his money, and it was his impression that Rothstein had his overcoat over his arm and that it was put under his head as he lay on the floor, which impression was not corroborated by other testimony.

Through Calhoun, Attorney Murray tried to develop that Rothstein might have come through the swimming pool by way of Seventh Avenue. While cross-examining Calhoun, Murray suddenly remarked, testily, “I object to the mumbling to the District Attorney”.

He apparently had reference to Mr Brothers, of the State’s legal display. Everybody seemed to be a bit testy yesterday, except the ever-smiling defendant, McManus, who just kept on smiling.

Calhoun heard Rothstein say, “Call my lawyer, 9410 Academy”.

Thomas W. McGivney, of No. 401 West 47th Street, who was also near the service entrance, testified he had taken Rothstein’s overcoat off his arm and placed it under his head. Rothstein’s overcoat hasn’t been seen since the shooting.

McGivney, a stout looking young man with a wide smile, and a rich brogue, gave the spectators a few snickers, but by and large it wasn’t an exciting day one way or the other.

Although George McManus was indicted for murder, Judge Nott eventually ruled there was insufficient evidence against him and ordered the jury to return a verdict of not guilty. Arnold Rothstein’s murder was never solved. One theory holds that he was killed by members of a new crime cartel because Rothstein controlled so many rackets. The whereabouts of his fortune remained undiscovered, but AR’s criminal empire was quickly carved up by his minions, including Jack “Legs” Diamond.