CALLING JUDGE CRATER Chapter Six

 

So what happened after Judge Joseph Force Crater left Billy Haas' Chop House on West 44th Street? Did he get into a cab, or did he walk? Police never found a record of  any taxi carrying Judge Crater that night.  And no drivers ever came forward to admit transporting the "Missingest Man in America". Of course the questions weren't asked until a month later.  It is likely the driver would have simply forgotten the fare, or decided their life would be simpler if they did so.

Joe had reserved a seat for "The Dancing Partner", but if he did not call for the ticket by curtain time, it would have been sold at a discount at the ticket window.  Newspapers at the time said the seat was occupied,  but given that no one asked until a month later, there is no reason the house staff would have remembered who actually sat in that seat, if anybody. Besides, it seems more likely to me the real significance of the events at the Chop House is that Joe's departure was delayed until he had missed the curtain time.

But it also seems logical that a cab idling at the curb on West 45th street, waiting for Joe to make his appearance, and turning away passengers who were not Joe,  would have drawn attention. And the peak demand for taxis would have been thirty minutes earlier. By 8:15pm, many of the taxi's in the Times Square Theater district would have been doing pretty much what the cabs in the photo above are doing - parked and circled in the center of Times Square. The drivers were relaxing, taking a break and talking to fellow drivers, or bringing paperwork up to date.  Or waiting for their target, Judge Joe Crater, to emerge from the Chophouse, looking to catch or be caught by a cab.

So now the focus must be on what happened inside the Chop House. What were William Klein, Sally Ritz and Joe Crater talking about? They might have been talking about their shared interest in Broadway theater. They might have been discussing the bad reviews for The Dancing Partner. But I suspect, William Klein brought up the topic of the court cases Joe had spent two mornings going over at the Central Street Court House. And if so the name of Jack Diamond (above) must have come up. 

The hot headed Jack Diamond  (above) was being squeezed out of Manhattan.  His speakeasy in Times Square, the Hotsy - Totsy Club, had been closed for a year, after Jack had gunned down three men there.  He had already started moving in on liquor distributors around Albany.  Jack was kidnapping drivers and trucking company owners, beating them up, sometimes savagely, in order to gain information. Who was dispatching trucks, who paid the drivers to smuggle booze from Canada?  Within a year he would be on trial upstate for just such an assault.  But finding out who to to beat up, who to threaten, hiring the thugs and muscle to participate in the beatings, that all took money.  And the only place Jack "Legs" Diamond could now get money, was by first looting and then selling off the legitimate businesses Jack had used to launder his Manhattan profits from bootlegging, drugs, gambling and prostitution.

Selling gutted companies to unsuspecting civilians always produces lawsuits. The buyers have been cheated, and they are obligated by their stockholders and/or partners to challenge the fraud in court, to seek reimbursement.   And that is the real reason mobsters buy civil court judges, like Judge Joseph Force Crater.  The story that would later be told, the story I believe, is that Judge Crater had a case before him involving just such a Jack Diamond looted company.  And Jack wanted the case thrown out. And, so goes this story, Judge Crater thought there were too many reformers sniffing around the Center Street Court House to do that again.  

And, so goes this story, Joe had gone to the Chop House to meet William Klein, to deliver the message that there was no deal. Klein had the morality of a successful lawyer, and had no compunction about acting as a go-between between Jack Diamond and Joe Crater.  Joe would have felt safe dealing with Klein, keeping his distance from the well publicized and dangerous "Legs" Diamond. As compensation for the busted deal, Joe handed Klein the $5,100. And he warned Klein he had an insurance policy, the documents in the six file folders, detailing decisions by other judges, in previous cases, decided in Diamond's favor.  But what was the lovely, leggy dancer, Sally Ritz (above), doing there?  I believe her job was tell the cab driver waiting toward 8th Avenue  that the deal with Crater was a "go" or a "no go". By walking out with Klein and Crater, her presence she told the cab driver the deal was off.

I am not suggesting that Sally Ritz (above)  knew she was setting Joe up to be murdered.  Telling her  in advance would have been too risky.  She might have backed out. I think she was told Jack Diamond just wanted to 'rough up' Crater. But I reject the idea that Diamond had that in mind, and I'll get to why in a moment. But  my explanation for events in the Chop House explain the changing stories from both Klein and Ritz. I believe that what was talked about in the Chop House was something other than Broadway gossip. And I believe that Sally was more than window dressing. 

Why am I so certain that this version is accurate? Because of a letter discovered in 2005, by 46 year old Barbara O'Brian , while she was going through the personal property of her great grandmother, Stella Ferrucci-Good, who had died in April of that year at the age of 91.  Inside a metal box Barbara found a yellowed envelope marked, "Not to be opened until after my death".  Well, Stella was now dead, so Barbra opened the envelope and read the letter.  As to the veracity of the story it told, Mrs. O'Brian said, "My grandmother never lied. She was a very serious person. She must have believed it if she wrote it down.”  It may not have been true, but Stella believed it.  In 1930, on the night Joe Crater disappeared, Stella Ferrucci was married to Mr. Robert Good. He worked for the Parks Department, and supplemented his salary on weekends as a lifeguard on Coney Island beach.

Stella wrote that in 1975, on his deathbed in 1975, her husband Robert had confessed a secret. In the mid-1950's, after Robert had risen to a supervisor in the City of New York Parks Department, he had became good friends with twin brothers, Charles and Frank Burns. They were then police detectives, but in 1930, 32 year old Frank was a taxi driver.  And during a social evening with significant alcohol consumption,  Charles and Frank began joking about the New York City Aquarium (above) then under construction at the end of West 8th Street, in Brooklyn  where it met the Coney Island Boardwalk.  Robert was perplexed by the exchange, so the tipsy brothers filled in the details. 

According to this story, 32 year old Frank Burns was the cab driver who picked up Judge Joseph Force Crater on West 45th Street that night.  Frank drove toward Ninth Avenue, where he slowed down so that two more men could jump into the cab. One of them was Frank's brother, Charles Burns, who was a New York City Cop, supposed to be on duty that night at the 60th Precinct, on West Sixth Street, in Brooklyn. The second man was a short 24 year old Jewish mobster and sociopath from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, named Abraham "Kid Twist" Reles.  

Abe Reles (above) was a member of what would later be labeled "Murder Incorporated", but known within the mobs as The Brownsville Boys. They were twenty or so mostly Jewish mobsters, kept on retainer by "Mob Accountant" Meyer Lansky, and under the direct control of Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia AKA "The Lord High Executioner". 

Lansky offered the services of the Brownsville Boys at $1,000 to $5,000 per "hit" to mostly Italian and Sicilian mobsters, nationwide.  Not being Italian or Sicilian  they could scout the intended victim without setting off alarms. The second team would be in the area only long enough to murder the victim, and immediately leave again.  And if they were witnessed in the act, no locals knew their faces or their names. It is estimated The Brownsville Boys murdered at least 30,000 mobsters and witnesses between 1925 and 1940.

"Kid Twist's" preferred weapon was an simple ice pick.  It was silent, easy to carry, and quick. He got so skilled at delivering the death blow via the ear, that some of the victims he confessed to having killed, the medical examiner claimed had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.  While Charles Burns shoved Crater to the floor of the cab, pinning him down, Reles scrambled onto the seat and shoved the thin steel pick directly into the judge's ear, and drove it deep with the heel of his hand.  In an instant,  before he had time to do much more than grunt, Good Time Judge Joseph Force Crater "disappeared efficiently, completely, and forever.”  The Burns brothers told Robert Good they had intended to "rough up" the judge, and claimed he was killed because he resisted. But if that had been true, there would have been no reason to contract with Abe Reles. 

During and after the murder,  said the Ferrucci-Good letter,  Frank Burns drove the cab to the end of  West Eighth Street in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Waiting for them were 2 more members of Murder Inc, Martin "Buggsy" Goldstein and Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss. They had a grave waiting, and while Frank stood guard, the other three buried the judge  "under the boardwalk." 

Except it could not have been there. The boardwalk had been built between 1922 and 1924, over the water and sand.  The Brownsville boys were too professional and too experienced to  have buried their victim in sand, where the body would have been uncovered by the first passing dog.  Crater's  grave must have been in soil, or better yet, under the concrete foundation of a building or a wall. In 1939, a section of the boardwalk between West Eighth and West 15th streets burned in the Steeplechase Park fire, and was rebuilt 280 feet further inland, to provide more access to the ocean for bathers, who had not a been accommodated until 1924. That rebuilding should have exposed any burial under the boardwalk near West 8th Street.  It did not. 

Emil Ellis, who was the lawyer who represented  Stella Crater in her lawsuits against the insurance companies, tells a slightly different story.  He agrees that the murder happened in the cab, but claims the judge's body was transported to New Jersey, where it was devoured in the furnace of a mill Jack Diamond had an interest in.  When Joe was finally declared legally dead in 1937, Stella collected on Joe's 2 life insurance policies.  But after that Emil Ellis sued the insurance companies for Stella, insisting the companies pay the double indemnity clause, which provided that if Joe died as the victim of violence, the payout would be twice the amount of the policy.  Despite lawyer Ellis' determined and diligent work, that never happened.

But I think that was just part of the misdirection which helped cover up the murder of Judge Joe Crater.

                                - 30 - 

CALLING JUDGE CRATER Chapter Two

 

Theatrical lawyer William Klein reached the fulcrum of his life at 1:38 in the morning of Thursday, 11 May, 1905, while he was sleeping in a lower berth on a Pullman car of the Pennsylvania Railroad's Cincinnati Overnight Express - 25 years and one month before his cold dinner with Judge John Force Crater.  The train had departed Manhattan's Penn Station about 10:00 pm on Wednesday, and had reached Harrisburg, Pennsylvania well after midnight. 

"Willie" was traveling to Pittsburgh with his client, Samuel Shubert (above), youngest and most ambitious of the very ambitious Shubert brothers. Messrs. Shubert had already bought or built 13 theaters,.  And Bill Klein was the feisty, pushy, legal hammer which pounded the Shubert's opposition  into dust. Said one Broadway historian, "...to most people a litigation was a breakdown in human relations, to the Shuberts...it was an arm of diplomacy."

Leaving Harrisburg's red brick station (above) at 1:30am, the Express was just picking up speed when it hit that fulcrum. A railroad work crew had hooked their train onto a 100 car westbound freight. Then, the freight was shunted onto a siding above the Susquehanna River, in the Lochiel neighborhood just south of Harrisburg, to clear the track for the Cincinnati Express.  But the unexpected work train extended at least one car onto a curve beyond the "safe zone" of the siding,  And when the Express came barreling out of Harrisburg, picking up speed, its cars swaying as it rounded the curve, it slammed into that single car left hanging out. It was the work train's dynamite car. 

In the resulting explosion, the Pullman cars disintegrated, their elaborate wooden interiors wrenching apart, the berths collapsing, trapping the sleeping passengers.  Kerosene lamps were smashed, and fires were sparked, and almost immediately there was a second tremendous explosion, then another as the dynamite began to cook off. Quickly the entire freight began to burn, as did the Pullman cars. The 29 year old Sam Shubert was trapped in his burning bunk,  By the time another passenger freed him, his  legs were almost charred. 

Wrote a local newspaper, "Horrific explosions shattered the darkness, lighting up the sky like daylight. Passengers were tossed from their berths. Some were flung from the cars. Others died horribly in the burning wreckage. "  Willie Klein was dragged semiconscious from his berth, badly burned on his face, hands and legs. 

The resulting devastation reduced the wooden passenger cars to splinters and kindling, more easily consumed by the flames.  More than a dozen passengers were burned to death. Almost another dozen would die within a few days. Most of the rest would be scarred for life.

There was little left of either train (above). And little left of many of the victims. Sam Shubert survived in agony, with burns over 100% of his body, until he mercifully passed into a coma and died at 9:30 the next morning. 

Their lawyer, William Klein would survive, but with scars. Because of that terrible wreck, there are  few pictures of Bill Klein, giving a hint at the internal scars.  For the rest of his life, Bill, a "Tall, craggy faced, rather homely man, would occasionally look at himself in a mirror and announce, “What an ugly bastard I am."   

Over the next quarter of a century, William Klein laid the bricks of  surviving Shubert brothers Lee and Jacob's  theatrical empire.  As Jerry Stagg noted in his detailed 1968  "The Brothers Shubert, “Not only did he fight their legal battles but he managed their contracts, negotiated them in and out of theater leases, helped smother their scandals, used every device of a devious man to further Shubert interests, and, as a by product, created a large part of today's theatrical law." But the center of that empire would forever be, Times Square.

In April, the year before Sam's death,  the New York City Council renamed Longacre Square as Time's Square, in honor of the new 25 story New York Times building,  which had just opened at the head of the space where Broadway formed a pair of X's across 8th and 7th Avenues.  But by the summer of 1930, three of tallest buildings in the world, and all more than double the height of the Times building,  were under construction in New York City. 

Begun first, in May of 1928,  was the 71 story tall Bank of Manhattan Building (above, center) at 40 Wall Street.  It towered 135 feet above the previous tallest building in the world, the Woolworth Building, completed in 1913.   The Bank of Manhattan had been created by Aaron Burr, authorized  in 1799 to bring clean water to thirsty New York City.  But Burr never invested in pipes.  Instead, by the May of 1930 completion of the bank's new tower, the corporation had become one of the biggest financial firms in the world. The Chairman of the Board who had overseen the previous 8 years of the corporation's growth, "Sunshine" Charlie Mitchell, was later deemed largely responsible for the Stock Market crash.  But the bank survived the Great Depression and thirty years later, would rename itself "CitiBank".  

The second tower, begun in September of 1928, at Lexington Avenue and East 42nd Street, was the  

1,000 foot, 77 story Chrysler Building. It was built by Walter P. Chrysler, intended to secure the future wealth of his children.  To show them  how wealth was secured, after the building was completed at the end of May 1930,  Chrysler refused to pay his architect.  This Art Deco monument to harsh business practices became the tallest building in the world until the completion of the third sky scrapper.  

In January of 1930 construction began for the Empire State Building, on Fifth Avenue, between 33rd and 34th streets. (Above, left. Chrysler building BG center. 40 wall Street, spiral top middle BG. Woolworth, far BG, behind Chrysler)  Rising 1,404 feet in just 410 days, the Empire States's 102 stories would be completed on 1 May, 1931, as a funeral monument to the excesses of the Roaring Twenties.  

There were lots of nails in the coffin of the Jazz Age,  of which the disappearance of Judge Crater was one.  But bigger by far was the November 1930 collapse of the Nashville financial firm of Caldwell and Company.  Because of an intricate tower of debts and loans, the Caldwell banks dragged down dozens of banks all across the south. And that set off a series of financial failures  in St. Louis and then Chicago, and the closing of 1,300 banks nationwide, which turned the panic of 1929 into the Great Depression which would last for a decade.  

Because of that deepening depression, and because of no nearby subway access, the Empire State building struggled to find tenants. The first full year of operation, the unrestricted view from the 86th story observation deck (above) took in as much money as the rent paid for the office space below it - $2 million. The tower became known as the "Empty State Building', just another tombstone to the excess of the Mad Decade.

The dominant Broadway producers  who had controlled American theater since 1910, A,L. Erlanger and E. F. Albee,  both died in March of 1930.  Rising to take their place now were the Shubert brothers,  J.J.(above left)  and Lee (above, right), They owned half the theatres on Broadway and  a  hundred others from London to Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles  In the words of  Howard Tubman,  for the New York Times in 1964, "...they were merchants in show business...They drove hard bargains...They made money—lots of it."  Even during the Great Depression.

During the 1930 season - beginning in August - there were 31 theaters with 500 or more seats, in the Broadway Theatre district - not counting vaudeville houses - all built since 1910  In 1930 they presented 230 shows, limiting the average run of a play to just 7 weeks.  Besides indicating the time it took for a show to "break even", this turnover required a constant stream of investors, always with new money they were willing to risk a loss in the hopes of the occasional big hit.

While the stock market was booming, Broadway investors were easy to find.  Come November of 1929, that source of cash suddenly evaporated.   But there were still three groups of professionals eager to invest in short run cash business ventures, to whom "finishing in the red" was not only profitable, but preferable - the bootlegger, the pimp and the gangster.

Broadway was not their business. But money made dirty because it came from an illegal  "Speakeasy" or a brothel could be used to rent stage lightning for "The Ballyhoo of 1930" or costumes for "The Dancing Partner".  Passing through these mundane exchanges, at a profit or a loss, it was now laundered. Clean and legal, it could return as kickbacks to the investor,  who also owned "a piece" of the lighting or costume rental company.  This was where the world of lawyers like Willie Klein and "Good Time" Joe Crater met the world of gangsters like Jack "Legs" Diamond and  Dutch Schultz  - backstage in the Broadway theatres, chasing showgirls.  

The women who survived in this crossover world for any length of  time, like upscale prostitute girlfriend of "Legs" Diamond, Vivian Gordon, and showgirl Sally Lou Ritz,  who dined with Judge Crater the night he disappeared, and the legions of other women who sacrificed themselves for the opportunity to dance or sing, could do so only as long as they were of interest to the men.  It was not about intimacy, you could even say it was rarely about sex. It was always about power.

Jerry Stagg provides a description - albeit solely male - of this junction of worlds from the Shubert Brother's perspective. In Chapter Six of "The Brothers Shubert" he writes, "Jake (above, left) was the "cruder" of the two, and legion are the tales of his assignations - in dressing rooms, in telephone booths, in corridors, behind scenery flats, and, of course, in hotel rooms and apartments. Lee (above right)...calculated that time was money, made his office a convenient place. To one side of it...he had an apartment complete with bedroom. To the other side of his office was a small meagerly furnished room...which also contained a bed.   A former secretary... remarked, "It was a traffic problem. You see the bedroom was for stars and important people. The room - well that just for girls. The room got most of the action."  

It was a dangerous and violent place to be. And in 1930, it was the only place in New York city, where women were tolerated close to power

- 30 -   

CALLING JUDGE CRATER Chapter Six

 

So what happened after Judge Joseph Force Crater left Billy Haas' Chop House on West 45th Street? Did he get into a cab, or did he walk? Police never found a record of  any taxi carrying Judge Crater that night.  And no drivers ever came forward to admit transporting the "Missingest Man in America". Of course the questions weren't asked until a month later.  It is likely the driver would have simply forgotten the fare, or decided their life would be simpler if they kept their mouth shut.

Joe had reserved a seat for "The Dancing Partner", but if he did not call for the ticket by curtain time, it would have been sold at a discount at the ticket window.  Newspapers at the time said the seat was occupied,  but given that no one asked until a month later, there is no reason the house staff would have remembered who actually sat in that seat, if anybody. Besides, it seems more likely to me the real significance of the events at the Chop House is that Joe's departure was delayed until he had missed the curtain time.

But it also seems logical that a cab idling at the curb on West 45th street, waiting for Joe to make his appearance, and turning away passengers who were not Joe,  would have drawn attention. And the peak demand for taxis would have been thirty minutes earlier. By 9:15pm, many of the taxi's in the Times Square Theater district would have been doing pretty much what the cabs in the photo above are doing - parked in the circled in the center of the square. The drivers were relaxing, taking a break and talking to fellow drivers, or bringing paperwork up to date.  Or waiting for their target, Judge Joe Crater, to emerge from the Chophouse, looking to catch or be caught by a cab.

So now the focus must be on what happened inside the Chop House. What were William Klein, Sally Ritz and Joe Crater talking about? They might have been talking about their shared interest in Broadway theater. They might have been discussing the bad reviews for The Dancing Partner. But I suspect, William Klein brought up the topic of the court cases Joe had spent two mornings going over at the Central Street Court House. And if so the name of Jack Diamond (above) must have come up. 

The hot headed Jack Diamond  (above) was being squeezed out of Manhattan.  His speakeasy in Times Square, the Hotsy - Totsy Club, had been closed for a year, after Jack gunned down three men there.  He had already started moving in on liquor distributors around Albany.  Jack was kidnapping drivers and trucking company owners, beating them up, sometimes savagely, in order to gain information. Who was dispatching trucks, who paid the drivers?  Within a year he would be on trial upstate for just such an assault.  But finding out who to to beat up, who to threaten, hiring the thugs and muscle to participate in the beatings, that all took money.  And the only place Jack "Legs" Diamond could now get money, was by first looting and then selling off the legitimate businesses Jack had used to launder his Manhattan profits from bootlegging, drugs, gambling and prostitution.

Selling gutted companies to unsuspecting civilians always produces lawsuits. The buyers have been cheated, and they are obligated by their stockholders and/or partners to challenge the fraud in court, to seek reimbursement.   And that is the real reason mobsters buy judges, civil court judges, judges like Judge Joseph Force Crater.  The story that would later be told, the story I believe, is that Judge Crater had a case before him involving just such a Jack Diamond looted company.  And Jack wanted the case thrown out. And, so goes this story, Judge Crater thought there were too many reformers sniffing around the Center Street Court House to do that again.  

And, so goes this story, Joe had gone to the Chop House to meet William Klein, to deliver the message that there was no deal. Klein had the morality of a successful lawyer, and had no compunction about acting as a go-between between Jack Diamond and Joe Crater.  Joe would have felt safe dealing with Klein, keeping his distance from the well publicized and dangerous "Legs" Diamond. As compensation for the busted deal, Joe handed Klein the $5,100. And he warned Klein he had an insurance policy, the documents in the six file folders, detailing decisions by other judges, in previous cases, decided in Diamond's favor.  But what was the lovely, leggy dancer, Sally Ritz (above), doing there?  I believe her job was tell the cab driver waiting toward 8th Avenue  that the deal with Crater was a "go" or a "no go". By walking out with Klein and Crater, she told the cab driver the deal was off.

I am not suggesting that Sally Ritz (above)  knew she was setting Joe up to be murdered.  Telling her  in advance would have been too risky.  She might have backed out. I think she was told Jack Diamond just wanted to 'rough up' Judge Crater. But I reject the idea that Diamond had that in mind, and I'll get to why in a moment. But  my explanation for events in the Chop House explain the changing stories from both Klein and Ritz. I believe that what was talked about in the Chop House was something other than Broadway gossip. And I believe that Sally was more than window dressing. 

Why am I so certain that this version is accurate? Because of a letter discovered in 2005, by 46 year old Barbara O'Brian , while she was going through the personal property of her great grandmother, Stella Ferrucci-Good, who had died in April of that year at the age of 91.  Inside a metal box Barbara found a yellowed envelope marked, "Not to be opened until after my death".  Well, Stella was now dead, so Barbra opened the envelope and read the letter.  As to the veracity of the story it told, Mrs. O'Brian said, "My grandmother never lied. She was a very serious person. She must have believed it if she wrote it down.”  It may not have been true, but Stella believed it.  In 1930, on the night Joe Crater disappeared, Stella Ferrucci was married to Mr. Robert Good. He worked for the Parks Department, and supplemented his salary on weekends as a lifeguard on Coney Island beach.

On his deathbed in 1975, Stella wrote, her husband Robert had confessed a secret. In the mid-1950's, after Robert had risen to a supervisor in the City of New York Parks Department, he had became good friends with twin brothers, Charles and Frank Burns. They were then police detectives, but in 1930, 32 year old Frank was a taxi driver.  And during a social evening with significant alcohol consumption,  Charles and Frank began joking about the New York City Aquarium (above) then under construction at the end of West 8th Street, in Brooklyn  where it met the Coney Island Boardwalk.  Robert was perplexed by the exchange, so the tipsy brothers filled in the details. 

According to this story, 32 year old Frank Burns was the cab driver who picked up Judge Joseph Force Crater on West 45th Street that night.  Frank drove toward Ninth Avenue, where he slowed down so that two more men could jump into the cab. One of them was Frank's brother, Charles Burns, who was a New York City Cop, supposed to be on duty that night at the 60th Precinct, on West Sixth Street, in Brooklyn. The second man was a short 24 year old Jewish mobster and sociopath from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, named Abraham "Kid Twist" Reles.  

Abe Reles (above) was a member of what would later be labeled "Murder Incorporated", but known within the mobs as The Brownsville Boys. They were twenty or so mostly Jewish mobsters, kept on retainer by "Mob Accountant" Meyer Lansky, and under the direct control of Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia AKA "The Lord High Executioner". 

Lansky offered the services of the Brownsville Boys at $1,000 to $5,000 per "hit" to mostly Italian and Sicilian mobsters, nationwide.  Not being Italian or Sicilian  they could scout the intended victim without setting off alarms. The second team would be in the area only long enough to murder the victim, and immediately leave again.  And if they were witnessed in the act, no locals knew their faces or their names. It is estimated that The Boys murdered at least 30,000 mobsters and witnesses between 1925 and 1940.

"Kid Twist's" preferred weapon was an simple ice pick.  It was silent, easy to carry, and quick. He got so skilled at delivering the death blow via the ear, that some of the victims he confessed to having killed, the medical examiner claimed had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.  While Charles Burns shoved Crater to the floor of the cab, pinning him down, Reles scrambled onto the seat and shoved the thin steel pick directly into the judge's ear, and drove it deep with the heel of his hand.  In an instant,  before he had time to do much more than grunt, Good Time Judge Joseph Force Crater "disappeared efficiently, completely, and forever.”  The Burns brothers told Robert Good they had intended to "rough up" the judge, and claimed he was killed because he resisted. But if that had been true, there would have been no reason to contract with Abe Reles. 

During and after the murder,  said the Ferrucci-Good letter,  Frank Burns drove the cab to the end of  West Eighth Street in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Waiting for them were 2 more members of Murder Inc, Martin "Buggsy" Goldstein and Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss. They had a grave waiting, and while Frank stood guard, the other three buried the judge  "under the boardwalk." 

Except it could not have been there. The boardwalk had been built between 1922 and 1924, over the water and sand.  The Brownsville boys were too professional and too experienced to  have buried their victim in sand, where the body would have been uncovered by the first passing dog.  Crater's  grave must have been in soil, or better yet, under the concrete foundation of a building or a wall. In 1939, a section of the boardwalk between West Eighth and West 15th streets burned in the Steeplechase Park fire, and was rebuilt 280 feet further inland, to provide more access to the ocean for bathers, who had not a been accommodated until 1924. That rebuilding should have exposed any burial under the boardwalk near West 8th Street.  It did not. 

Emil Ellis, who was the lawyer who represented  Stella Crater in her lawsuits against the insurance companies, tells a slightly different story.  He agrees that the murder happened in the cab, but claims the judge's body was transported to New Jersey, where it was devoured in the furnace of a mill Jack Diamond had an interest in.  When Joe was finally declared legally dead in 1937, Stella collected on Joe's 2 life insurance policies.  But after that Emil Ellis sued the insurance companies for Stella, insisting the companies pay the double indemnity clause, which provided that if Joe died as the victim of violence, the payout would be twice the amount of the policy.  Despite lawyer Ellis' determined and diligent work, that never happened.

But I think that was just part of the misdirection which helped cover up the murder of Judge Joe Crater.

                                - 30 -