TRANSCRIPT
♪♪♪ [ Indistinct shouting, glass shattering ] -In the 1920s, Prohibition caused unprecedented social upheaval throughout America and brought untold riches to a select group of kingpin mobsters.
Legend has it, Dutch Schultz, a member of New York City's gangster elite, left more than 50 million dollars' worth of gold and precious gems buried somewhere in Upstate New York.
Targeted by mob assassins at the height of his power, Schultz would die before he could reveal the true location of his infamous treasure.
-Dixie Davis saw the 2-foot-by-3-foot steel box on Dutch Schultz's desk loaded with riches, and he asked Dutch, 'What is that for?'
And Dutch said, 'This is where I'm keeping all my riches.'
-[ Beeping ] -Nearly a century later, a new generation of searchers comes online.
-Oh, I got a nice signal. -In a tech-powered world, Schultz's fortune lives on as a holy grail for treasure hunters around the globe.
-Careful when you come over this tree you don't trip.
-Today, three separate teams set off on unique paths in pursuit of the buried prize.
-Can we get down there?
-Professional treasure hunters Steve Zazulyk and Ryan Fazekas bring decades of experience to their search.
-We have ground-penetrating radar.
We can do high-definition imagery.
We can do heat sensing.
-This map came off of Google.
-Weekend sleuths Rob Macedonio and Erika Borkenhagen hope to strike it lucky as they follow a promising lead they found online.
-We're here because this is the only geographical location that makes sense.
-There is a 1927 house on... -Ross Getman and his daughter Grace use their impressive research skills to hunt for Dutch's treasure.
-Now we have the advantage of technology and reconstructing history.
-Generations of treasure hunters have thrown their lot into the search for Dutch's hidden wealth, but more than 80 years later, not a single trace has been found... -[ Detector beeping ] -...until now.
-Holy cow! -Oh, my God!
-'Gangster's Gold.' -No one's gonna believe this.
♪♪♪ -So, yeah, I'm pretty sure we're right where we gotta be.
-Hotel's here. Right?
And, uh -- Oh, here's Frank.
The man is here!
Okay. Perfect. Frank! -What's up, guys?
-How's it goin', buddy? -You made it.
-Made it. -My name is Steve Zazulyk, and I'm a professional treasure hunter, and I travel throughout the world basically looking for treasure.
And I've been fortunate enough to be on some of the most amazing treasure hunts in the world.
-Steve and I work well together. We complement each other.
It gets tiring out there, and it's great to have a shoulder to lean on and somebody to work with.
-So, this is an awesome property.
Back here, we think that there's a cave where Dutch Schultz hid his bootlegging liquor and possibly treasure.
-Nice!
-Steve and Ryan begin their search at the ruins of a hotel along the Hudson River outside Yonkers.
Their investigation has led them to believe Schultz may have used the abandoned site to hide his elaborate bootlegging operations from the law.
-We've got the map that's gonna lead us right back there, and hopefully we can... -Diligent research has uncovered a vintage street map of Yonkers that helps the team pinpoint their search.
-I'm Frank Lopergolo. I am a -- Besides being a retired police officer, I am a geotech engineer.
I do underground locating.
-Frank's got a company with really high-end GPR equipment.
He typically will go throughout the United States and find, you know, certain locations with buried tunnels and all kinds of really old stuff.
That is freakin' amazing. Look at this.
-The secret cache left by Dutch Schultz was thought to contain the spoils of a lifetime spent fighting for complete dominance of New York's criminal underworld.
-Dutch Schultz was originally named Arthur Flegenheimer.
He was born in 1902 in the Lower East Side of New York City to German Jewish parents, and like a lot of new immigrants, he lived in absolute poverty and in a sort of rather vile environment.
There weren't exactly helicopter parents around, so he joined a youth gang, and the thing that Schultz noticed was that these gangsters, unlike most of the men in the neighborhood, seemed to have money, they had panache, so, to them, crime really did pay.
He, uh, started burglarizing apartments.
He wasn't a very good burglar, though, and he got caught, and at age 17, he was incarcerated.
And interestingly enough, though, this actually served as a bit of an education for him.
Then, you know, he simply latched onto a business which was selling lousy beer.
His marketing technique was basically to go to speakeasies and say, 'Would you like to buy my beer?
Your alternative is to be severely beaten and have your speakeasy smashed to pieces.'
So he really benefited from that and became known as the Beer Baron of the Bronx.
-Steve and Ryan believe the abandoned hotel, destroyed by fire, allowed Schultz to situate his operations far from prying eyes.
-It's unbelievable that we're in Yonkers, New York, and that this place is, like, hidden.
Like, if you didn't know it was here, like, you wouldn't even be able to find it.
-Yeah, this is it. -Oh, wow. Check that out.
-And it's not that people haven't been looking for it.
It's just that they haven't been finding it.
-Hey. Look at this. Look at the wall.
And both of us have the drive.
That's what's really key for us, is we've got the drive to find treasure.
-What's the deal with this thing?
Why are we looking for a cave entrance down here?
-Dutch Schultz kept all of his booze in here, so if it's a spot where you're gonna hide stuff, if he trusts his booze here, he could've had anything in here.
[ Big band playing 'When the Saints Go Marching In' ] [ Whistling, lively conversations ] -At the stroke of midnight on January 17, 1920, the party was officially over as Prohibition went into effect.
♪♪♪ -Prohibition was now the law of the land, and this was the rather well-meaning but ill-fated attempt to ban alcohol in the United States.
And into this void came gangsters who were very happy to supply what a lot of Americans wanted.
-Dutch Schultz would fight his way to become one of the most powerful and ruthless gangsters of the Prohibition era.
-Oh, he was good, far as I'm concerned.
I don't know about anybody else.
He was good. He was -- He was -- He was good. Good.
I got along with him good. He -- -Was he funny? Was he -- -Yeah, yeah, he had a lot of jokes and stuff, yeah.
He was a good family man, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
But if you stepped on his toes, you were in trouble.
-Ex-New York gangster Stanley Grauso, the last living member of Dutch Schultz's gang, worked as an enforcer for the mobster in the 1930s.
-We went to Vegas for his 103rd birthday.
So, he'll be 104 this year.
-As Prohibition took hold, New York was overrun by powerful gangs.
Bootlegging profits soared, and authorities were overwhelmed.
Kingpin mobster Lucky Luciano convinced rival mobs to work together under a collective known as The Syndicate, marking the birth of organized crime in America.
-What Lucky Luciano did was dividing up organized-crime gangs into what he called families, and this is sort of a reflection of the Sicilian heritage, family-oriented.
So we're gonna call these gangs 'families.'
Initially, there were five families.
They were the major gangs in New York City and New Jersey.
And each one had a sort of carefully delineated territory.
-The Gambino family ran Queens and Brooklyn.
The Genovese family took Manhattan.
The Lucchese family had a presence in The Bronx.
The Profaci and Bonanno families shared Brooklyn.
And the outsider, Dutch Schultz, ruled over The Bronx and Harlem.
-In our days, you could step on anybody you want 'cause there were no mobs.
Everybody was for their selves.
There wasn't such a thing as a godfather.
There were five families.
There were no godfathers.
That's what the federals wanted people to believe so they can whack the Five Families.
Make them think they were gangsters.
And which there were only -- -They were only businessmen. -Yeah, that's so.
-They all had their jobs to do, right?
-Yeah.
'This is your territory. That's your territory.'
South, west. Everybody -- You don't go to north or south. You stay in your own.
If you start moving, then there's trouble.
-And according to legend, Dutch used to settle arguments with a baseball bat, that somebody would give him a mildly offensive insult or there'd be some tiff in the -- you know, the patrons, and he would wave in there with his bat and settle all the problems.
-He was a cheapskate.
He wore two-dollar suits, by his own admission, and Lucky Luciano used to make fun of him in the press saying, 'Oh, Dutch Schultz, he's a slob.
He wears two-dollar suits with the threads comin' out of 'em.'
Lucky Luciano, of course, was the new modern-day gangster who would wear 30-dollar suits.
I'm Bruce Alterman.
I'm a fourth-generation private investigator.
My grandfather, Harry Alterman, had told me stories when I was young about Dutch Schultz.
So ever since I was 6 years old, I've heard this name Dutch Schultz, but it turned out later in life I learned about Dutch Schultz's treasure.
And I'm not talking just off the top of my head.
I'm talking from facts given firsthand by Dixie Davis, the lawyer for Dutch Schultz, who in a 1939 article, he said that he saw the steel box of treasure.
♪♪♪ And he asked Dutch, 'What is that?'
And Dutch said to Dixie Davis, 'This is where I'm going to keep all my riches.'
[ Hinges creak ] It's a box approximately 2-feet by 3-feet, made of steel.
Full of diamonds.
[ Diamonds clinking ] Full of gold coins.
[ Coins clinking ] Full of 1,000-dollar bills that have gold backs on them.
[ Lid slams ] And it's just a matter for someone now to find it.
♪♪♪ -One of the items that Dutch allegedly put into this metal box, in addition to cash and some jewelry, were Liberty bonds.
Now, these were bonds that were issued during the First World War that helped the United States government finance the war.
The fact that Dutch Schultz's Liberty bonds were never redeemed is seen as proof that he actually had some sort of treasure and that it's never been found, because you would assume that if somebody stumbled across a metal box with a million dollars' worth of Liberty bonds, that they would immediately cash it in.
-Bruce believes the value of the treasure has only increased over time.
-They estimated it back then to be worth $7 million in 1935.
I estimate today, if you were to uncover it, that same treasure chest would be worth $150 million.
♪♪♪ -Inspired by the legend and lore of Dutch's cache, generations of treasure hunters have journeyed to the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York.
♪♪♪ -Yeah, it's so crazy. I've never even heard about this guy... -Oh. -...when Al Capone, you know, is so much more famous.
-Well, he's more famous, or more widely known, but this guy was a true mobster. -Yeah. Right?
My name's Erika. -I'm Rob.
And we're the ones who are gonna find Dutch Schultz's lost treasure.
He had a... Packard, I think it was, or a Studebaker or something like that.
And he drove his car... -Rob and Erika have come armed with a secret weapon -- a mysterious hand-drawn map to the treasure.
-I'm a volunteer firefighter and a full-time truck driver, so I don't get a lot of spare time, so when I do, I like to go out treasure hunting and the potential of finding amazing, wonderful things.
-So, I love Rob, you know? He's like a brother to me.
So when I got the call, you know, to find this treasure, I'm like, 'You know, if there's anybody in the area who's gonna find this treasure, it's gonna be Rob.'
-And if we look at our map, okay?
We have a pine grove, which is also listed right here.
And this is supposedly the original map drawn by the Dutch, for Lulu, who was entrusted to safeguard his treasure because at the time, he was getting ready to go to jail... -Right, right. -...for tax evasion.
-Ostensibly linked to Schultz's personal bodyguard, Lulu Rosenkrantz, the map has long been central to the treasure's lore.
Rob and Erika, intent on testing its veracity, push deeper into the Catskills' forest.
-This is where the treasure should have been buried.
'X' marks the spot.
We're standing right about here on this current train bed, but right here's where our pine trees are, and I think that's where we're gonna start and we're gonna check it out.
-And we have to go right through there.
-We'll go right through there.
-We're here because all the research says that he knew this area.
-Are you sure this is the only way in?
-Yes, I'm positive -- ow -- that this is -- ow!
We're currently in Boiceville, New York.
It's east of Phoenicia, which is the spot that was rumored to be Dutch Schultz's getaway.
It's the place where he liked to go.
-For decades, scores of treasure hunters' hopes and dreams have played out in the Catskill wilds surrounding the town of Phoenicia, and to this day, it remains a hotspot on the trail to Schultz's riches.
-He came up to Phoenicia. Everyone loved him in Phoenicia.
He'd come up to the Phoenicia hotel and buy everyone dinner.
Everyone knew him. He'd stay around here.
He loved the people. The people knew him.
He was very familiar with everything because he had his distilleries out in the notches of these mountains.
So he was well-acquainted with the area.
-To keep the taps flowing, Schultz set up commercial bootlegging operations deep in the Catskills, far from New York City and its droves of Prohibition officers.
Under cover of night, his fleet of trucks would trundle into the city, the precious cargo secured by his growing army of strongmen.
-According to the owner of Devil's Tombstone campground, he gave permission for the treasure hunters to come dig on his land as long as he got half the worth of the treasure.
Well, he woke up one day to a giant backhoe on his property digging a 20-foot-by-10-foot hole, and he was at his wit's end saying, 'Everybody get out of my campground!
You made it look like the moon!'
-Back in Yonkers, the search continues for a hidden cave tied to Dutch's treasure.
-Now, what about up top?
Do you think you might be able to get a GPR reading?
-It's a lot of rock, but we can probably get a shot inside.
-That would be awesome. I mean, if we could actually verify that this is the cave that went to the hotel, that would be epic.
-Now, I wanna show you something.
Take a look at this wall. Take a look at this structure.
You see by the rockwork, we know this thing is period.
It's at least period.
And then go down there and look at that building built on top of that wall.
What's that remind you of?
-Some little -- Some type of house. I have no idea.
-Like a guard shack or a gun turret?
-It makes perfect sense.
You got a guy up there with a machine gun.
Right? I can just see it.
Guys up there. Nobody can come through.
-Alright. Let's get up top with the GPR and see what we can find. -Sounds good.
Let's do it. -Sounds good.
-Right along here, we should be able to see right where we were.
-Yeah. Exactly. I think we might have to work the roadway and then work it back up into there.
-Frank boots up the GPR unit and begins to scan the area.
The team hopes the technology will find evidence of a cave potentially used by Schultz to stash his riches.
-Are you getting anything at all?
-I am.
-Ground-penetrating radar sends thousands of radio waves deep into the earth every second.
An onboard antenna records these waves as they interact with materials underground, creating an intricate 3-D scan of what lies beneath.
-Come on over and check it out.
This is your road surface. And what you see here is open.
About 12 feet to 15 feet. -Look at that, eh?
-Now, that's one swipe, but at the right depth, it's open.
Like, it's incredible that he would have brought that out right away right over the spot, right over the spot where we were below.
And on the screen I saw it.
It -- It -- The screen showed a cave below at exactly the right spot where the hotel was.
-And the tunnel came up, and the booze and everything else would have gone right down through down below.
-That was Dutch's man cave. That was Dutch's man cave.
Everybody's got one. That was Dutch's.
-In October 1929, the worst stock-market crash in the history of the United States brought financial ruin to millions across the nation.
-The Black Friday, the stock-market crash.
The trouble started. That was when the -- Who's jumping out of windows. [ Stammering ] [ Chuckles ] All that.
-This had not just an economic impact -- because obviously a lot of people were impoverished -- it had a huge sociological impact.
People weren't spending money.
They weren't putting it in the bank.
They weren't putting it in the stock market.
They were often literally putting it under their mattress.
-The Dutch was smart. He didn't play the stock market.
He put it under the mattress.
He put the money under the mattress.
-People didn't trust the banks.
They put all their wealth in a box and buried it.
There were stores selling these safes at the time specifically called 'burial safes.'
-I'm willing to bet if there is, in fact, a treasure that it's going to bear a lot of cash and a lot of gold because during the Great Depression, gold hoarding was a big deal, and I think we're gonna find more gold than anything if we do find anything.
-He loved gold coins because they were untraceable.
They were easy to transport. Easy to pay people.
So if someone received a payment from Dutch Schultz, he would give them two or three gold coins and say, 'Here.'
And you can transform it. You can melt it.
You can put it into different shapes.
It's easily transferable.
And loves gold. Everyone.
-In terms of what we're talking about, we're talking about millions.
If it was $7 million in 1935 dollars, it might be $40 or $50 or $60 million today.
-I like that number.
-It all boils down to where did Dutch Schultz put his head on April 12, 1935?'
-What's that supposed to mean?
-Well he left where he had had the iron chest.
My name is Ross Getman. I like true-crime mysteries.
And I think of myself as a bounty hunter.
This isn't about vision and fantasies and nothing better to do.
This is about a love of library research and a confidence that the right historical research can solve cold cases, even dating to 1935.
-In 1935, Dutch Schultz stood trial for tax evasion in Syracuse, New York.
Ross and his daughter Grace live in Syracuse and are convinced the treasure is buried nearby.
-...planes, trains, and they had a decoy automobile.
And that was... -That sounds like the plot of a bad spy movie.
-No. It sounds like the plot of a good gangster movie.
-My name's Grace Getman. I'm a junior.
And I live in Syracuse, New York.
That mad man you just talked to is my father.
-Well, he left where he had had the iron chest, and then he went to Syracuse, um... but he didn't show up for a couple of days later.
He and Lulu -- Lulu was the only one he trusted... -In a mystery like this one, you really need someone who can do the research, find the facts, and have actual information.
I mean, if you show up in the middle of the woods with a metal detector, great, but where does that really get you?
You need to know where to be.
-What instead you want to do is focus on where Dutch was when he and Lulu were transporting the iron chest, leaving on April 11, 1935, and showing up without the chest a couple of days later.
-My father might be a big fan of researching and finding out the 'facts,' but I'm more of a 'get 'er done' type of person, so I am beyond ready to go out there, use that metal detector, and get this thing done.
-Wow. Man!
-You must be Travis.
-Hey. How you guys doing? Yeah. -How you doing?
-With the Yonkers site coming up dry, Steve and Ryan have come to Concordia College in Bronxville, New York, to search for a rumored tunnel built by Dutch and his gang.
-So, tell us a little bit about this.
-Well, this is one of our dorms now, but allegedly once upon a time it was owned by the gangster Dutch Schultz.
I lived here for a couple of semesters, and so I'm a little familiar with the place.
Supposedly there's a tunnel that goes from this house straight over there to Ward House.
-Wow. -But even older than that, it was supposed to be a tavern apparently.
-Oh my. Okay.
So we got a tavern over here. -Right.
-We got Dutch over here.
Cops coming in. Zoom out the tunnel.
-Right. -Right? Very cool.
♪♪♪ -Frank uses the GPR to scan for evidence of the alleged bootlegging tunnel.
♪♪♪ -I'm showing a perfectly straight line.
Every 4 or 5 feet, I've got a void.
It may have caved in, but a perfectly straight line to consistently have soft soil, void soil?
I think we may have the remnants of a tunnel.
-Really? And it's a straight line?
-From the edge of this well, straight along that flower bed, along the edge of that sidewalk to those stairs.
And that's where I lose it, at the stairs.
And maybe we'll pick it up on the other side.
-So then we ask Frank, 'Okay. What can we do to confirm this?'
And he goes, 'Let's go back to this place, the other side, to see if it's on this side, too.'
-See if it's gonna line up.
♪♪♪ -Every pass I've made so far.
-Oh, my gosh. Look at this. Look at this.
-Wow!
-Dead on. -And it's perfect.
-It's right on that line that we had across the street.
The line across the street's a little shaky.
This line is dead on every single time.
-That's incredible. -You've got yourself a tunnel.
-Oh, my God. That's incredible!
-Whoa!
So, now they're saying that quite possibly -- We've been talking to the historians about this... -Okay. Yeah.
-...and they're saying that this treasure could be worth $150 million.
-What? -Right?
And it could be right here.
-Could be right under there?
-Yes. -Oh, man!
[ Big-band music playing ] [ Lively conversations ] -This is the day we have long hoped for.
Let us drink to a full liberation of the American people!
-Happy days are here again!
-When the 18th Amendment was repealed and Prohibition ended in 1933, Dutch Schultz's bootlegging empire quickly dried up.
-As it became increasingly obvious that Prohibition was on its last legs, any gangster with any brains started sniffing out new opportunities.
Schultz sensed there was some huge money to be made in something called the numbers racket.
This was basically just an illegal lottery, and it was hugely popular in low-income areas and enormously popular in Harlem, among, you know, African-Americans.
-Dutch Schultz. Why did he come to Harlem?
Greed and proximity.
My name is Jacob Morris, and I'm the director of the Harlem Historical Society.
Of course, the popularity of the people on the street playing the numbers, that was a tremendous revenue stream.
-And all it essentially was, was for a few pennies, you would get 'a policy slip,' which is the rough equivalent of a lottery ticket.
The policy slip would have usually a three-digit number on it.
If your number 'hit,' meaning your number was selected, you would win a small prize, like $10, $20.
-10 bucks in the middle of the Great Depression was like having a $500 bill now.
[ Laughs ] That -- You know, you could do something with that.
-Hello. -Hi.
-Got your number ready? -Yes, sir.
-What's your number? -418. 412. 475.
Quarter each.
-Policy slips would be collected by runners.
The runner would take the money and the policy slips to a 'policy banker.'
And this is sort of a fancy name for basically a gangster who ran the operation.
-People have rumored that the take, the profit on this policy game was $60,000 per week, maybe more.
And sometimes it would gross as much as $300,000.
-He sensed an opportunity when most other gangsters just turned their noses up at it and became unbelievably wealthy and powerful as a result.
-He had 10 banks, and everybody had to work for him.
Nobody owned nothing.
He owned -- He took -- He took possession of everything.
-Now, for the last time, are you gonna keep out of our territory or not?! -I'm not.
-At barely 20 years old, Stanley began working for Schultz as a strongman... -But I don't -...collecting protection money from the mobster's many victims.
-How I met The Dutch was in the Bronx.
So, The Dutch told me, 'What would you like to do?
I'm handling the numbers. You know anything about them?'
I said, 'Yeah, I used to have a book joint in New York.'
I ran a five-and-dime joint.
I said, 'Yeah, I know a lot about the payoffs and everything.'
So, 'Okay, I want you to work as an enforcer that -- to take care of things.'
See, them days, you wanna whack somebody, you do it.
You know, nobody have to say nothing.
-One of the only people to resist Dutch was a fascinating woman named Stephanie St. Clair.
She was an African-American woman.
This is quite unusual in gangster circles at the time.
She was fabulously wealthy. She allegedly had 40 runners.
So she was a tough nut to crack.
And Schultz tried to initially charm her in his weaselly, oily fashion.
-So he went to -- He went to the Madam and says, 'Make sure that none of your boys move in.
They gotta work under me.'
-He tried to intimidate her, and that didn't really work, either.
And to Schultz's astonishment, she fought back.
-The war between, um, Madam St. Clair, with Bumpy Johnson as her general... -Right.
-...and Dutch Schultz and his forces went on for a couple of years. -Battling. Yes.
-So you're talking about 300 Tommy guns against a few revolvers up here in Harlem.
You know what's gonna win. Dutch Schultz is gonna win.
-When you're that kind of a guy, right?
Kind of a guy that -- Right? -A killer.
He supposedly killed 200 people by himself.
-I mean, ruthless. -Ruthless.
Absolutely ruthless. Right? -Yes.
They said you could spit at him, you could call him names, but if you steal a dollar, you're dead.
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -I got this feeling... that we're... gonna find something.
Wow. Wow. I got this really -- -So it would have been like -- From the outside, I think further down.
-Yeah.
-Crevasse down there.
Possibly in here?
-Yeah. There's a lot of rooms down here.
-Oh, lookit, lookit, lookit. Look at that.
-That's -- What?
-Like. look at this, the -- It's completely been sealed up.
-Yeah. -It's right here.
-This is it. -For sure.
It's exactly where we were because when Frank was out there with the GPR, I kind of walked it, I stepped it, and, I mean, it's obvious.
Lookit. -It's right -- I know.
-There's your tunnel.
Like, it's out of a movie. It's out of a movie.
When you're looking at the wall, there's stone, there's brick that's been placed in there and stone.
And it's in the perfect shape of a tunnel... where we got the GPR hit on the outside.
No doubt about it there was a tunnel there.
-Excited by their discovery, the team imagines how Dutch might have used the hideout.
-And even this trap door here, this could have been used for the pickup trucks and that that were transporting the moonshine and the booze back in the day.
-You're right. You're absolutely right.
-They back up. They load up the moonshine.
The Prohibition. Out the door.
-Hear the cops upstairs, whip through the tunnel.
And nobody -- nobody has put this together.
-Yeah. No. -Wow.
You got yourself a tunnel there. For sure.
-That's where the tunnel is.
-My heart started racing, and I was like, 'I can't believe that we're seeing the tunnel.'
And I could just envision Dutch Schultz running through there, with, you know, the cops showing up or whoever, and escaping out the other side through the well.
-It's surreal. It really is.
-While Steve and Ryan move on from the site at Concordia College, Rob and Erika make their own major discovery.
-Oh, wow! Look at this! -It's massive!
-Wow! That is awesome! -That's crazy!
-I wasn't expecting to find this here.
-No. -You want to know what it is?
-What?
-Look what we got here on our map.
What's that say right there?
It's a still site. -Still -- Yeah.
-It's a still site.
This is a still. -This is the still?
-This is where they made moonshine, I'll bet you anything.
-Wow!
-They heaved this thing in here, and they were -- they were cooking shine right here.
-Wow! Right here next to the river and everything.
-Uh-huh. Fresh water source. Out of the way.
There's the pine grove right back there that we just came through.
Now, we've got what?
We've got a foundation over here, which we checked out.
That was on the map. -That was correct.
-We've got the road leading in. -Yeah.
-We've got the train tracks. We've got the old train bed.
-We found the pine trees. -Okay.
Everything is pretty much here on this map that says, you know, it should be here with the exception of the Schultz treasure.
-It's proof that this map... -It is.
-...you know, is legitimate. -I think we're onto something.
-That's insane. -We're onto something.
-This is awesome.
-Tim! The man! -How are ya?
Welcome to Foxfire. -Fantastic.
-How was your trip? -It was okay. A little traffic.
-Bruce pursues a lead he discovered while researching Johnny 'Kid' Troy, a champion boxer connected to Schultz's inner circle.
-We just moved to the Catskills not too long ago, my wife and I.
And, you know, having grown up, you know, and all the stories that my grandfather had -- never kind of put it together.
Then when we moved here, that's all people talk about, is Dutch Schultz, Dutch Schultz.
So, recently, I was going through a bunch of my grandfather's old, um, journals and articles.
He did a lot of writing when he was younger.
And started to come across the word 'The Baron' all the time.
-Dutch Schultz, the Beer Baron of the Bronx.
-Yeah. -Who else? None other.
-So, I didn't know a whole lot about it, but it started putting some connections together.
So it seems that my grandfather was a bit of muscle for Dutch Schultz.
And we got these, uh, pictures that I found kind of interesting.
They were, you know, a picture of his famous moon car, which was what, you know -- family legend has he used when he had to do some protection for Dutch Schultz.
-Probably armored at the time with lead.
-I imagine. I mean, it looks pretty big.
Then this is what really kind of got me.
If you were to take a look at this picture, this looks like some of the creeks around these parts.
And, you know, rumor has it that the treasure is buried somewhere up in around Phoenicia.
-What fascinates me about this picture right here is that your grandfather is a bodyguard for Dutch Schultz, and he's just taking a picture of Stony Clove Creek for no reason at all other than there's a vehicle in the background and there's a shoreline.
-Yeah. -It wasn't done back then.
People didn't take scenery photos and waste their film.
It was very expensive.
And it's not a very scenic picture.
-No. -It has to mean something.
-Yeah. -Now, my contention is that they transported the heavy steel box and they buried it along Stony Clove Creek.
So, viewing this picture now, it's my opinion that we have a link to Dutch Schultz's treasure like no one else.
And if, uh, we can match up the location in that picture... -Right on.
-...with a location present day, I would say let's break out the metal detectors because no one has had a lead like that in the time that we've encountered.
-With the incarceration of Stephanie St. Clair in the early 1930s, the longtime battle between Schultz and the Madam of Harlem ended.
With his formidable rival behind bars, Dutch now had complete control of the Harlem numbers racket.
-And to the astonishment of his fellow gangsters, he starts making an unbelievable amount of money.
There's one estimate that put his annual take at 10 to 12 million dollars -- just from numbers.
And this is 1930s figures, so you have to multiply that by about 8 to get a modern equivalent.
And this put Schultz on the map.
This put him into the criminal stratosphere.
-Despite his notoriety and immense influence as a kingpin mobster on the streets of New York City, Dutch Schultz was entirely unaware of the powerful government forces gathering against him.
-In the early 1930s, Dutch Schultz acquired his most formidable adversary.
And, interestingly enough, it wasn't a fellow gangster.
It was a straight-shooting lawyer named Thomas Dewey.
-Dewey had it up to here with him.
See, because... The Dutch wanted power.
When he found out that Dewey was after him and wanted to send him away and all that, that's when the fireworks started.
-From the beginning, Dewey faced an almost hopeless job -- clearing out gangsters and racketeers whose hold upon the city had been tightening thorough years of Tammany rule.
-Mr. Dewey, you have been given the most difficult task, but the opportunity of helping the people of this city.
-Thomas Dewey was born in Michigan, went to Columbia Law School, and was very much a straight arrow, very hardworking man, very determined to crush organized crime, and set his sights on Dutch Schultz.
-And The Dutch says, 'Look.
You tell Dewey I'm running this.'
-Alright -- -Then Dewey -- -Listen to what he has to say. -Quiet.
And The Dutch had to find a way to get rid of Dewey, because he's the one that's gonna -- Yeah. Yeah. And that's how it started.
-Schultz actually went through two different tax trials.
First trial is in Syracuse, New York, in early 1935.
And lo and behold, no one really wants to testify against him.
Go figure.
So, all these witnesses don't testify, the jury says they can't reach a verdict.
♪♪♪ -Dutch's first trial ended in a hung jury, but a retrial was promptly ordered to be held within three months.
As the threat of jail time crept ever closer, the need for Dutch to protect his riches became urgent.
Bruce Alterman believes Schultz struck a deal with Willie Sutton, the most notorious jewel thief in America, buying scores of stolen diamonds to stash within the confines of his steel box.
♪♪♪ -Well, we're on 47th Street in New York City, home of Mitch Egenberg's Eligere, and he's an expert in setting diamonds and precious jewels into settings.
And we're gonna find out what the diamonds looked like and what potentially could be in Dutch Schultz's treasure chest.
-I would hope he was smart enough to disassemble all the jewelry, 'cause once you take the diamond out of the jewelry, it's a non-traceable stone.
Alright. So, here were looking at an old mitered stone, and this stone is $50,000, this stone is $80,000.
There's $130,000 here.
-Those are from the '30s? That's what I'm looking for.
-These are all from the '20s and the '30s.
-We know that there were Rosenthal diamonds that were heisted by famous jewel thief Willie Sutton and fenced through Dutch Schultz.
And he dealt primarily with jewels, you know, because jewels were light.
They were, uh, much lighter than gold.
-Easy to move around. -Easy to move around.
Pretty much untraceable at the time, and now.
If Willie said that he heisted $150,000 of diamonds in just one heist, what are they gonna be worth today?
-A value of $150,000 in the '30s today could easily be worth anywhere from a million and a half to two and a half million dollars.
These stones, if they exist, I hope I'm the guy that finds them.
-Well, there is a 1927 house on Klein Island out in the middle of Seneca River.
Let's check out that 1927 house before it collapses.
-During Prohibition, various islands in Upstate New York were used by gangsters to conduct their illicit activities in complete secrecy.
Ross believes Klein Island near Syracuse may have been one of these hideouts for Schultz.
-Look at that.
1927. Now ready to collapse in on itself.
What we need to do is find a safe way, with the permission of the owner, to explore the inside of the place to see whether there's any sign of life in the '30s here.
-Uh, that doesn't look too safe. -Yeah, no.
-Are you sure you want to go inside?
-It's amazing that it's still standing.
-Eh, I wouldn't really call it standing.
-Way too dangerous to go in.
-Yeah, that does look a little dicey.
-But there must be spots that -- If we use a GoPro with a flash, it'll illuminate it.
-Well, what did Dutch use his island hideaways for?
-Well, what they would do is they'd have the privacy to drink, which was illegal, gamble, which was illegal, um... -Certainly knew how to have fun.
-And this is the only island around, and this was the only house on the island.
I've tried to get in touch with the owner, um, who built it in 1927, but he hasn't gotten back to me.
He's pretty reclusive.
-Hey! -Gentlemen! How you doing?
Welcome to Foxfire! -Sirs!
-Hey. How you doing? -Excellent.
-Bruce and Tim share the details of the photograph with Steve and Ryan.
-Now, if you look at this picture, we have a 1935 vehicle next to Stony Clove Creek.
Nobody's gonna bring a 300-pound steel box up a steep mountain.
-No. -They're going to take a hand truck and wheel it in a few hundred feet.
It's all level. And that's the location.
And, you know, if we're gonna have a shot at it, there's just no way we want other people around there.
-Mum's the word. -Mum's the word for sure.
-When you see that photo, like, me inside, I'm just like -- I want to, like, target exactly where that photo was taken and start there.
That's where I want to go.
-I think you guys need me as much as I need you.
-Yeah, for sure. -You need my information.
I need your treasure-hunting abilities.
-Bruce is intent on convincing Steve and Ryan to join forces with him.
They must put their current work on hold to pursue the lead discovered in the photo album.
-Like, what do you think, Ryan? -Yeah, I think we should not spend any more time at those other locations.
-Yeah, we don't want to waste any time, if you, like -- You've got me convinced.
-And then you'll get the G30 jet.
You'll get the Ferrari.
And I want the high-rise condo the Russian guy.
[ Laughter ] On the 101st floor in New York City.
-Okay. Sounds good to me. -Okay? Then we'll have a party.
-Sure.
♪♪♪ So, someone told us about a guy. His name's Phil.
He's a local in the area, and I think that he'll be able to give us some information, and I really want to talk to this guy.
-Hey. How you doing? -I'm alright.
-Are you Phil? -Yes, I am.
-Beautiful. You're the man we want to talk to.
-Okay. -This is Ryan.
-Hey, Ryan. -Great to meet you.
-Pleased to meet you.
-Could this have been a bootlegger road?
-I was told by an old-timer who's since passed that this road used to be open and that the reason the road was closed was because of bootlegging.
So they decided to cease to maintain it because, um, they wanted to discourage the bootlegging.
So your, uh, area of interest could well be just that little bit of narrow, overgrown abandoned road.
-And it's just up here? -Yeah. If you -- As you're going up over that ridge, it's either on this side -- I think it's on this side, about where that pole is.
♪♪♪ -We talked to the old man Phil, and the road leading in here, he told us the stories and how the hotel and the railroad and the rum-running all was going through here.
So it just seems like an obvious spot for us to detect.
-Because the jury couldn't reach a verdict in Syracuse, that means a second trial is held.
The second trial is scheduled for Malone, New York, which is a small little town in rural New York.
And Schultz, for once in his life, you know, puts on a charm offensive.
-He went up to Malone a week before the trial and paid for everyone's dinner, paid for everyone's debts, the whole town.
So when they finally selected a jury pool, of course, it was all his friends already.
For a week. I mean, if a guy's gonna pay off your car, if a guy's gonna give you a gold coin, if a guy's gonna buy the whole restaurant dinner, you're not gonna call him guilty.
You're gonna call him a hero.
-And guess what. The Malone jury acquits him.
The judge is just, you know, completely beside himself and basically just, you know, rants and raves.
♪♪♪ And, meanwhile, in New York City, Thomas Dewey is still on the case.
-Angered by Schultz's acquittal, Dewey steps up his attack on the gangster.
-Dutch Schultz really starts to fixate on Thomas Dewey.
Schultz becomes very obsessive about this one guy, this one prosecutor going after him.
-Dewey had Dutch up against the legal ropes, likely facing years in prison.
[ Gavel banging ] -So Schultz decides, you know, to go on the lam.
He's hiding in Connecticut for a while, trying to keep a lot of things together.
-So, in 1935, when I hid The Dutch, it was in August.
I hid him in the Stratfield Hotel.
I said, 'Look, when you call, ask for Tom White at the Stratfield Hotel.
Then I'll tell you how to get here.'
So when The Dutch got there with all his hoods, I made sure that he wound up with the suite, the Citizen Suite.
It extends from Main Street to Chapel Street.
A whole block.
Six big rooms, he had.
-As the pressure mounts, Dutch hatches a plan to get rid of Dewey for good.
And true to the gangster code, he seeks permission from his mobster peers at the Syndicate.
-Then they had a meeting.
That when they found out that The Dutch wanted to wipe out Dewey, Lucky says 'No.
You know, if you wipe out Dewey, we all could go drop our pants.
We would be all out of business because, as you know, he's a big man.
And the federals and everybody is working for him.
He will wipe out all our places.'
-And that's when Dutch Schultz supposedly went off the handle at the meeting -- which was never done.
They were very cordial men.
Lucky Luciano had a very nice tailored suit.
They all sat down very nicely.
Except Dutch Schultz blew up, exploded, turned over a table, and started screaming at them, which really went against their grain, 'cause they didn't like Dutch Schultz anyway.
No one liked Dutch Schultz.
He was a cheapskate, he was a braggart, and he was a bully.
And he said to them, 'I don't need the Syndicate to carry out this hit.
I'll do it myself.'
-That's when The Dutch got hot.
He says, 'I'll kill him myself.'
That's when they went after him.
They wiped The Dutch. They get rid of him.
Because this guy is -- Oh, you know -- If he got -- So, he killed The Dutch himself -- The Dutch killed Dewey himself.
Whew!
-And that's when, later, they had a secret meeting without him.
Before him, they were the Big Eight.
Then the Big Seven met and said, 'Dutch Schultz cannot survive. We need to assassinate him.'
-He had a place, uh, in New Jersey called The Palace Chop House.
In the back, he had his office.
-So, he sets up operations, and he will meet there for meals and to go over business with his cronies.
So, on the night of October 23, 1935, there's four men at the back table in the Palace Chop House.
All of a sudden, the Palace Chop House proprietor notices these two men come charging in.
-We're talking about Charles 'The Bug' Workman and Mendy Weiss, two killers from Murder, Incorporated.
-And they told the bartender, 'Quiet.'
You know, the bartender knew what the deal was.
So when they went and they seen that The Dutch wasn't at the table... -Workman goes into the washroom, sees a guy standing there, and shoots him.
-He shoots Dutch Schultz in the torso with rusty bullets, which he purposely had rusted.
In case he did not hit a vital organ, the rust from the bullet would kill his victim.
-Both men at this point start spraying bullets at the three remaining guys at the table.
-Dutch then stumbles out of the bathroom, bleeding profusely, and his head was on the table in that famous photo.
-Schultz is taken to the hospital, and he starts babbling.
He's developing peritonitis, and police think this is a golden opportunity.
They think he might reveal some mob secrets.
So they install a stenographer by his bed to take down everything that Schultz says.
Unfortunately, most of what Schultz says is a bizarre stream of consciousness, this rambling, weird, sort of hallucinatory sort of monologue.
And he just existed like this for a couple of days, just rambling and babbling and babbling.
♪♪♪ -Armed with fresh insight from the old photograph and know-how from locals, Steve and Ryan bring their search to a creek bed running through the Catskills.
-Like, if you see any old trees -- Like, do around the bases of any old trees or anything like that.
You can tell this is -- whole area is old.
[ Detector beeping ] [ Detector pinging ] I got a nice signal here.
Guaranteed it's a freaking pull-tab.
[ Rapid beeping ] ♪♪♪ Holy cow. You're not gonna believe what I just saw!
Oh, my God! -What?
♪♪♪ -Is that what I think it is?
-It's a coin. This is unbelievable.
-No one's gonna believe this.
♪♪♪ -That's a coin. That's a gold coin.
That's a gold coin. -Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
-Oh, my... -Here. Take it, take it, take it.
♪♪♪ Is it? -It's a gold coin. 1903.
-Is there a possibility that somehow or another that -- I don't know -- the fricking thing was somewhere in here and it opened?
And these things would have went down with that flood?
Is that possible? -Yeah, for sure.
Maybe he's buried it close to the edge of the river?
And just from erosion it smashed it open.
-Ryan, look at this thing. Look at that fricking coin!
-It's unbelievable. Unbelievable.
Who would've thought?
-I don't know. I'm still shaking. I'm still -- I think I actually am -- I got some heart palpitations, actually.
So I gotta calm down a little bit.
-The coin Steve and Ryan discovered is known as a Liberty Head Gold Eagle, a $10 coin used in America throughout the Prohibition era.
♪♪♪ Dutch Schultz died from his injuries on October 24, 1935, less than 24 hours after being gunned down at The Palace Chop House by Syndicate assassins.
With the death of Schultz, Stanley Grauso quit the Mob and struck out on his own, working as a loan shark from the Stratfield Hotel in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
-When he got killed, they knew who I was.
So I couldn't move.
And I quit. And I quit.
I quit, and I'm a family man again.
[ Laughs ] Maybe a few places I played cards or something like that.
And then -- That's where I had trouble with my wife -- divorce.
'Cause I -- She was afraid that something would happen to me.
She didn't want to get involved.
So she said, 'You either quit...' She ripped down all the telephones.
'Either you quit, or I'm divorcing you.'
'Go ahead. Go divorce. I'm enjoying myself.'
[ Laughter ] ♪♪♪ -Weekend warriors Rob and Erika endured thorns and scorching heat in pursuit of Schultz's treasure, but for now, luck has evaded them.
-Yeah. -A site this big, it's gonna be really difficult.
It's gonna take a lot of people and a lot of equipment to come through such a big place and narrow down a 2-foot-by-3-foot-by-18-inch-tall box.
-Yeah. Take a lot of people and a lot of digging.
-Father-daughter duo Ross and Grace failed to make any big finds, but they remain confident their research will one day lead them to Dutch's mother lode.
-With the 80, 90 years passing, there is an urgency to -- to try and unearth our past.
-The gold coin is a career-altering find.
Steve and Ryan hope it brings them one step closer to the legendary treasure of New York mobster Dutch Schultz.
♪♪♪ -We know it -- it's not the treasure.
We know there's -- there's way more to be found, but at least we're in the right area.
It's kind of like a breadcrumb.
It's leading us down a trail to possibly the big hit.
-We not only need to search this area, but we have to do it fast before other people find out.
So, yeah, the hunt's on.
