Max Weisberg, 79; Numbers Savant Made Career as Bookie

Max Weisberg, an unrepentant bookmaker with a savant’s knack for numerals who twice persuaded Minnesota juries that he was too simple-minded to understand the nature of his crimes, died Thursday in a nursing home in St. Paul, Minn. He was 79.

Weisberg had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and treated at Regions Hospital in St. Paul before he was transferred to the nursing home, said his longtime defense attorney, Ron Meshbesher.

An endearing, familiar pear-shaped figure on St. Paul’s downtown streets, where he once sold flowers from a cart, Weisberg attracted a legion of loyal gamblers and the scrutiny of law enforcement agents. Police repeatedly rousted him from the home where he hid tens of thousands of dollars in betting receipts stuffed in his shirt and pants pockets and squirreled away in rusted cans and torn boxes.

Weisberg served several prison terms for gambling offenses, but in the end, doggedly hung onto the dilapidated house, which collected dust and federal liens alike.

“Max may have had a lower-than-average IQ, but he was above average in almost every other area of his life. Everybody just loved the guy,” said Meshbesher, who twice persuaded local juries in recent years that Weisberg’s borderline-retardation 71 intelligence rating made him incapable of realizing that taking bets was a crime.

Meshbesher argued that Weisberg’s computer-like ability to process numbers was the only saving grace in a deficient intellect similar to the addled savant played by Dustin Hoffman in the film “Rain Man.”

As a result of the jury findings, the Ramsey County attorney decided not to charge Weisberg even after police seized $125,000 in suspected betting receipts from his home in 1999.

As a child, Weisberg was committed in the 1940s to a state school for the mentally retarded, but he escaped and returned to St. Paul, where he became an avid bettor whose accurate recall of numbers led to an underground career as a bookmaker. Known to police as “Maxie Flowers” for his floral stand, Weisberg was arrested repeatedly during the 1950s and 1960s, serving several local and federal prison terms. His legal battles gained national attention.

Weisberg always returned to the home his parents bought in the 1950s, where he lived with his brother Solly. Neither man married, and Solly died in 1997. Max Weisberg continued to operate his betting parlor there, taking wagers as late as last year, no longer worried about police raids, Meshbesher said.

A bout with colon cancer and other health problems finally led Weisberg to halt the enduring criminal career that police and prosecutors had been unable to tame. “He just got too sick to take bets,” Meshbesher said.

He is survived by a sister, Helen Finesilver of Artesia.