JUSTICE STORY: Death of millionaire playboy Serge Rubinstein one of NYC’s enduring whodunits

He was an infamous swindler, a scalawag and an all-around scoundrel — and those were among the nicer things people had to say about Serge Rubinstein.

So when the millionaire Manhattan playboy and convicted draft dodger met a grisly demise at the hands of an unknown assailant in the wee hours of Jan. 27, 1955, it wasn’t easy finding anyone among the friends, foes and floozies in his vast social circle who was genuinely saddened by the news. Or surprised.

New York Daily News front page on Friday, Jan. 28, 1955. (New York Daily News Archive) (New York Daily News Archive/New York Daily News)

Rubinstein, 46, was found dead on the bedroom floor of his Fifth Ave. mansion overlooking Central Park clad in expensive silk pajamas, his wrists and ankles bound with cord and his mouth covered with adhesive tape.

The cause of death was manual strangulation, and whoever squeezed the life out of the notorious bon vivant had choked him hard enough to break two bones in his throat.

The room had been ransacked, with dresser drawers pulled out, Rubinstein’s clothes tossed about and the bed in disarray. All signs pointed to a robbery gone awry — and neither the cops, the papers or those who knew the victim well were having it.

Rubinstein had made way too many enemies for such a simple motive, and his sensational death instantly sparked a massive NYPD investigation into one of the city’s most intriguing whodunits.

It was even money whether the culprit was a jilted lover, a jealous husband or an angry business competitor, but one Rubinstein pal had his own theory.

“I bet it was a mob job — a syndicate job and a paid killing,” stock broker Stanley T. Stanley told reporters, adding that Rubinstein had recently been threatened.

“The man had many enemies … but he was not fearful. He was the type who never worried about violence.”

Serge Rubinstein squired Betty Reed around at Nino’s La Rue, a night club, in the days before his death. (NEWS foto/New York Daily News)

Newspaper readers were already well versed in Rubinstein’s colorful history and shady exploits long before he was killed. He was born in Russia and educated in England, and his father was said to have been a financial adviser to Czar Nicholas II and Grigori Rasputin.

By the time Rubinstein emigrated to the U.S. — on a forged Portuguese passport — he had parlayed his natural grasp of economics and thirst for risk taking into a small fortune by buying and offloading distressed companies. Oh, and manipulating foreign currencies, which wasn’t exactly legal.

While his money bought him friends in high places — his campaign contributions earned him a dinner at the White House with the Roosevelts — he became a target of the feds due to his constant attempts to evade the military draft during World War II.

The high-living financier was finally convicted in 1947 and served two years in a Pennsylvania prison, during which time his wife divorced him and the government began building a deportation case that would dog him for the rest of his life. He was also indicted for stock fraud in 1949, but was acquitted.

Denny Morrison (left) husband of former Daily News journalist Florabel Muir, Miss Pat Wray and Serge Rubenstein at party in the Warwick Hotel. (Hal Mathewson/New York Daily News)

The notoriety — and his reputation as a big spender who loved the nightlife — made him a quasi-celebrity in New York, where he spent his days cutting deals and his nights squiring a bevy of young beauties to the finest restaurants and night clubs in town. It wasn’t unusual for Rubinstein to open the morning papers and see himself on the gossip pages, clad in a sharp tux and sharing a bottle of bubbly with a comely dame du jour.

It was, in fact, how Rubinstein spent the last night of his life.

After dinner and dancing at a nearby club, Rubinstein took his date, a pretty brunette model named Estelle Gardner, back to his six-story house on Fifth and 62nd St. for a nightcap at about 1 a.m.

Gardner told cops she left about a half-hour later and took a cab home. Rubinstein then slipped into his dark-blue pajamas and tried to woo Patricia Wray, a secretary he had been seeing regularly, but she refused to come over.

That was the last anyone heard from Rubinstein. At 8 a.m., his butler found the body, and a squad of 50 detectives interviewed more than 500 of the victim’s friend and acquaintances over the next several days in what quickly proved to be a frustrating case.

There was no forced entry in the six-story mansion, which Rubinstein shared with his 78-year-old mother and 82-year-old aunt, both of whom lived in upstairs floors. Several servants lived in the house, including the butler, but they hadn’t seen or heard anything.

The Daily News, of course, went with a hot angle and focused on his supposed harem. “QUIZ BEAUTIES IN STRANGLING OF RUBINSTEIN,” the cover headline blared, accompanied by photos of him enjoying the good life with two young women.

At least five girlfriends, including Gardner and Wray, were brought in for questioning — a “parade of pretties” as The News put it — but police knew there was no way a woman could have yanked the stocky Rubinstein out of bed, tied him up and then choked him to death. At least not without help.

Brought in for questioning by police (left to right), Estelle Gardner, Barbara Gaylord Cook, Betty Reed, and Pat Wray. (NEWS fotos/New York Daily News)

Attention soon turned to two shady businessmen who had recent run-ins with Rubinstein — who had complained to cops after being assaulted on the streets by strangers and having rocks thrown through his windows. But both men had solid alibis for that night.

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Just as the case was growing cold, nearly a month after the murder cops acting on a tip picked up a petty thief named Herman Scholz, who came up with a whopper of a tale that promised to solve the mystery.

Scholz, 50, said he had been plotting to kidnap Mafia kingpin Frank Costello for ransom but then switched the target to Rubinstein. Scholz, who said he had enlisted several “underworld types” for the job, never followed through — but he was sure the people he’d recruited were the ones who bungled the snatch and killed Rubinstein.

Herman Scholz brought in for questioning. (NEWS foto/New York Daily News)

Detectives unfortunately came to realize Scholz was a bit off his rocker, and they were back to square one.

Scholz was busted anyway, though — for stashing a large cache of weapons in his home that included a machine gun.

It would be the only arrest to come out of the Rubinstein murder, which remains unsolved 65 years later.

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