Read Online Island of the Damned by Alix Kirsta - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alix Kirsta
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lengthy investigations into the murder, police and prosecutors drew a blank. The unsolved mystery became a cause celebre , as rumours of incriminating evidence linking Rothstein to Tammany politicians made the rounds. Although Thomas Crain campaigned for the post of Manhattan District Attorney on a promise that within weeks he would “put Rothstein’s murderer behind bars”, it became a cold case. During Fiorello La Guardia’s first 1929 campaign to unseat Jimmy Walker as mayor, he revealed the existence of a promissory note indicating that a New York magistrate Albert Vitale had accepted a $19,600 loan from Rothstein. La Guardia gained plenty of mileage from this discovery, claiming Rothstein’s loan to Vitale was proof of the links between New York politicians and the city’s gangsters. The press seized on the revelation to speculate that enough people in high places would have benefited from Arnold Rothstein’s death.
The second unsolved case involved not a murder but an inexplicable disappearance and presumed murder of a notable member of the judiciary. One summer evening on August 6th 1930, Judge Joseph Crater, a justice of the New York Supreme Court, waved goodbye to friends with whom he had been dining, stepped into a cab on West 45th Street and was never seen again. Judge Crater’s name has remained on the NYPD’s Missing Persons File (No. 13595) until this day. Appointed to the trial court bench by Governor Roosevelt, Crater had been a judge for only four months when he vanished. He had recently returned from a holiday with his wife in Maine, and was due to return there for her birthday. When he failed to turn up, his wife went through his papers at his New York office and discovered that on the day he vanished, he had cashed two cheques totalling over $5,000 and had taken an additional $20,000 in cash from his safe. Despite a grand jury hearing into Crater’s disappearance, involving 95 witnesses and 1,000 pages of written evidence, the investigation failed to produce clues or suspects. Theories behind Crater’s disappearance ranged from him having staged his death to avoid corruption charges, to being murdered by gangsters who were friendly with his then mistress, June Brice, a Broadway showgirl, whom he had seen on the evening he vanished. Further rumours centred on Crater’s financial transactions and connections with Tammany. In April 1930, four months before taking his seat on the bench, Crater had withdrawn $23,000 from his bank. Had he bought his judgeship from a Tammany fixer? Was the money he drew on the day of his disappearance another payoff, to someone who preferred the truth not to emerge? Some believed the mob had killed Crater because they feared he might be about to expose corruption in Tammany Hall; others suspected that Mafioso Frank Costello had arranged the assassination to keep his own Tammany protectors happy. Crater’s mistress, the showgirl June Brice, also mysteriously disappeared two weeks after being subpoenaed by the grand jury which at the time was hearing evidence related to Crater’s disappearance.
A third, especially sinister murder mystery sparked further alarm over the perceived breakdown of the city’s law enforcement. A young divorcee and vaudeville actress, thirty nine year-old Vivian Gordon had agreed to give evidence at a 1931 judicial hearing in New York into police corruption. Several days before Gordon was due to appear in court as a key witness, she was questioned in private by a lawyer involved in the investigation, and admitted to him that she had been falsely arrested eight years earlier and framed on trumped up prostitution charges by police. She named the man responsible for her arrest and subsequent conviction as Andrew McLaughlin, a vice squad patrolman. Gordon then agreed to return and provide further evidence. The night before she was due to appear in court however, Vivian Gordon was found strangled in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, a length of
The second unsolved case involved not a murder but an inexplicable disappearance and presumed murder of a notable member of the judiciary. One summer evening on August 6th 1930, Judge Joseph Crater, a justice of the New York Supreme Court, waved goodbye to friends with whom he had been dining, stepped into a cab on West 45th Street and was never seen again. Judge Crater’s name has remained on the NYPD’s Missing Persons File (No. 13595) until this day. Appointed to the trial court bench by Governor Roosevelt, Crater had been a judge for only four months when he vanished. He had recently returned from a holiday with his wife in Maine, and was due to return there for her birthday. When he failed to turn up, his wife went through his papers at his New York office and discovered that on the day he vanished, he had cashed two cheques totalling over $5,000 and had taken an additional $20,000 in cash from his safe. Despite a grand jury hearing into Crater’s disappearance, involving 95 witnesses and 1,000 pages of written evidence, the investigation failed to produce clues or suspects. Theories behind Crater’s disappearance ranged from him having staged his death to avoid corruption charges, to being murdered by gangsters who were friendly with his then mistress, June Brice, a Broadway showgirl, whom he had seen on the evening he vanished. Further rumours centred on Crater’s financial transactions and connections with Tammany. In April 1930, four months before taking his seat on the bench, Crater had withdrawn $23,000 from his bank. Had he bought his judgeship from a Tammany fixer? Was the money he drew on the day of his disappearance another payoff, to someone who preferred the truth not to emerge? Some believed the mob had killed Crater because they feared he might be about to expose corruption in Tammany Hall; others suspected that Mafioso Frank Costello had arranged the assassination to keep his own Tammany protectors happy. Crater’s mistress, the showgirl June Brice, also mysteriously disappeared two weeks after being subpoenaed by the grand jury which at the time was hearing evidence related to Crater’s disappearance.
A third, especially sinister murder mystery sparked further alarm over the perceived breakdown of the city’s law enforcement. A young divorcee and vaudeville actress, thirty nine year-old Vivian Gordon had agreed to give evidence at a 1931 judicial hearing in New York into police corruption. Several days before Gordon was due to appear in court as a key witness, she was questioned in private by a lawyer involved in the investigation, and admitted to him that she had been falsely arrested eight years earlier and framed on trumped up prostitution charges by police. She named the man responsible for her arrest and subsequent conviction as Andrew McLaughlin, a vice squad patrolman. Gordon then agreed to return and provide further evidence. The night before she was due to appear in court however, Vivian Gordon was found strangled in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, a length of
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