CALLING JUDGE CRATER Chapter One

 

It was just after nine on a hot, humid Wednesday evening,  6 August 1930.  A few hundred feet west of Eighth Avenue, two men and a woman walked out of Billy Haas's Chophouse, a restaurant at 332 West 45th street.  The trio paused for a few moments to chat on the narrow sidewalk.  Then one of them, a dapper, six foot tall middle aged man with a perpetual smirk (above) stepped into a waiting cab.

He weighed a fit 185 pounds, and was wearing a dark brown double-breasted coat and matching trousers, a bow tie, a Masonic ring and a gold wristwatch, a pair of pearl-gray pinstriped spats and all set off by a straw panama hat tipped at a jaunty angle, After the car headed into the night toward Ninth Avenue, Judge Joseph Force Crater dropped off the face of the earth, never to be seen again. The shockwaves would reverberate for years.

Just a year earlier, on 3 September, 1929 the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a measure of the $109 billion American economy,  hit an all time high of 381.17 points.  Unemployment was at 3%. Then came Black Thursday - 24 October - when "The Dow" dropped 38 points, followed by Black Tuesday -  29 October - when it lost another 30 points. Over those 5 days $11 billion, 25% of the nation's wealth, simply evaporated.  Unemployment jumped to 8.5%.  Thanks to a slight rebound, on 6 August, 1930, the Dow closing was at  234.38.  No one was panicking yet. The Wall Street experts expected a full recovery by the middle of 1931. Then the bottom fell out. 

Judge Joseph Force Crater was, until Jimmy Hoffa, “the missing-est man in America”, AKA, "The Most Missingest Man in New York".  One biographer has described him as a man with multiple personalities:  He was a respected and successful lawyer - earning $75,000 a year, the modern equivalent of a million dollars. He was also a talented pianists, a Tammany Hall politician, and a devoted husband.  But he was also “Good Time Joe”, who under the sad pseudonym of "Joe Crane" and displayed a penchant for liquor and an endless hunger for showgirls. After he disappeared, rumors said he had committed suicide or (more likely) run off with a show girl, or that he had died in bed with a prostitute or was killed for reneging on a debt.

After he was reported missing an old prospector and a country store owner (above, left) reported seeing him digging for gold east of San Diego, California.  He was also reported shooting craps in Atlanta, on a steamer in the Adriatic and running a bingo game in North Africa.  Elevator operators, responding to call lights on vacant floors, would amuse their riders by sticking their head out and asking, " Judge Crater?" Theatrical producers would spice up a dull hotel lobby scene by adding a bell boy wandering about, calling, "Phone call for Judge Crater. Judge Crater call your office."  Groucho Marx's best exit line for a burlesque routine was to announce, "I'm going out to look for Judge Crater".  But for all the hoopla over his disappearance, nobody even reported him missing for three weeks.

Joseph Force Crater and his wife  Stella, spent the July of 1930,   as they had most summers during their 14 years of marriage, at their cabin ten miles north of Augusta, Maine, in the pretty little village of Belgrade Lakes (above).  The Supreme Courts - or trial courts -  of New York were out of session at the time,  and the newly appointed Judge only had to make 2 trips back to the city that summer. Once in the third week of July, and again in the first week of August, both times after a phone call.

The judge (above, left) left on Sunday, 3 August, telling Stella he had to go back this time just for a day or two to “straighten those fellows out”.  But he promised to be back in Maine by her birthday, Saturday, 9 August.  In fact he had already ordered her present, a new canoe.

Joe took the overnight train to New York City, arriving on the afternoon of Monday, 4 August, 1930 at Grand Central Station (above), just in time for the start of a humid heat wave of ninety degrees plus temperatures.

Joe went immediately to their two bedroom co-op at 40 Fifth Avenue where he cleaned up and told the maid she could take a few days off.  But he asked her to return on Thursday, 7 August to clean up after he had left again for Maine.

That night, 4 August, 1930,  Judge Crater took in a Broadway show and then had a late dinner at the Abbey Club.  It was a new speakeasy in the basement of the Hotel Harding at 205 West 46th Street near 8th Avenue, The popular emcee was an openly gay drag queen, Gene Malin (above), and The Abbey was a notorious gangster and "pansy" bar,  as well as a Tammany Hall hangout.  It was just another example of the open social horizons about to be crushed by the economic depression already tightening its grip on people's throats. 

On Tuesday, 5 August, Joe again stopped by his office in the Foley Square Courthouse (above). He then had lunch with two Appellate Court Judges he had argued in front of before.  Then he stopped by his stock brokers' office where he instructed him to cash out 2 accounts. Late into the evening he played poker with friends, probably at the Abbey Club, again. 

At about 11:00 am on Wednesday, 6 August,  Crater returned to the Foley Square Courthouse (above), where he began collecting files, eventually filling 6 cardboard folders.  He also ordered his secretary Joseph Mara,  to collect 2 checks from his stock broker and cash them at the bank. The total was $5,150 in cash.  He left with the files and the cash in two locked briefcases and with the 6 cardboard boxes of other files, headed back for his Fifth Avenue apartment.   

After showering ,Judge Crater then caught a cab for dinner at a Times Square restaurant called Billy Haas’ Chophouse, with his friend, the successful theatrical lawyer William Klein and the 22 year old showgirl Sally Lou Ritz (above, right).  Sally was one Crater’s mistresses, as well as Klein's. But for this evening Klein was apparently acting as  Joe's "beard".  The trio ate cool lobster cocktails and cold chicken for dinner.

The judge had ordered a single ticket for the 9:00 pm show at the Belasco Theater, at 111 West 45th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues. It was only a three block walk from the Chop House, a little over a half a mile.  For a fit man like Crater, an easy jaunt.

The show was "The Dancing Partner" staring Lynne Overman and Irene Purcell.  Joe Crater had seen the show during tryouts in Atlantic City just the month before.  According to Edward Cushing, the reviewer for the Brooklyn Eagle, the play and the production, "...lacks the grace, the deftness, the spontaneity that might have made it palatable...". 

The only piece of the play to draw favorable reaction from the audience was a single scene near the end, staged in the interior of an airplane. The set swayed side-to-side as clouds could be seen passing by the windows.  The effects got applause, the script did not.  So why did Judge Crater want to sit through this play again? 

His decision might have been influenced by the price. The spreading depression had forced producers to slash prices to a dollar or even 50 cents for a balcony seat.  Joe also may have been interested in one of the actresses in the play.  But we will never know. Thanks to the lackluster production, and the deepening depression, the play would close on the first day of November after only 119 performances. But it lasted longer than the story that after the Chop House, Joe was going to the theater.

The story that Judge Crater left the Chophouse in a taxi was established when the New York City Police interviewed Bill Klein and Sally Ritz, 6 weeks later.  But that story simply made no sense. If Joe Crater was heading to the Belasco Theatre, at 111 west 45th street, he was only  1,100 feet away.   At the average walking speed of 3 miles an hour, or 264 feet per minute, Crater would have arrived at the theater in less than 5 minutes.  And anyone familiar with the mid-town Manhattan street grid would know, traffic on even numbered streets runs east, and on odd numbered streets run west.  Why would the Judge take a taxi headed in the opposite direction from the theater?

Besides the price of the cab ride, there was the time factor. The curtain on "The Dancing Partner" had already gone up at 9:00pm. When they left the Chophouse, Judge Crater was already fifteen minutes late. Taking a taxi would have required him to travel a block west, then a block north or south, then five or six blocks east, then a block north or south before a final block westbound. With midtown traffic in 1930 being only slightly less crowded than it is today, that stop and go trip would have taken at least half an hour in a hot cab.  And although Joe tried to avoid exercise - Stella said he hated to swim -  the quicker and cheaper walk should have presented no challenge. 

When presented with this conundrum at their second interview, both Klein and Ritz insisted they had never claimed Joe took a cab. They had said that they took the cab. Joe walked. Bill Klein now said 

"He was standing near the restaurant, smiling. He said he was going to Westchester for a swim, and was going to Maine the next day to see his wife.”  When they last saw Judge Crater, they both now said, he was walking eastbound on West 45th Street. That was the most logical story. The most likely explanation for the confusion was that the police detectives had made a simple mistake in writing down their notes.  And it is possible it was a simple mistake. 

As long as you forget the part about the man who hated to swim, now taking a cab to either a hotel at Bowery and Broome streets (above) once called the Westchester, which had last been a Tammany Hall  hangout twenty years earlier, or a ride 30 miles north to the town of Westchester, New York. 

So a little after nine on this hot humid evening, the three friends, Joseph Crater, Sally Lou Ritz and Bill Klein stepped out of Billy Haas' Chophouse. They spoke for a few moments before Judge Crater disappeared into the night, on his way to the theatre - either in a cab or on foot - either to see a bad play he had already seen, or to take swim, when he hated to swim.

Before he had even gone missing, something about Missing Person File # 13595, the disappearance of Judge Joseph Force Crater , was already very wrong. 

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VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty - One

 

In the afternoon of  Saturday, 16 May, 1863, the mountain boys were nervously waiting, just beyond the northern crest of Champion Hill  hill. They were a thousand miners from Lumpkin, Habersham, White, Town, Rabun, Union and Faninn counties. They could not see the gathering Yankee host. But they knew the enemy was coming. And they knew their bodies were going to receive the assault.   

They were the sons of  the 29'ers -  prospectors who had clawed a million dollars worth of gold dust from the gravels of the Chattahoochee, the Tallulah and Tugaloo rivers and some 500 hard rock mines across the Georgia Appalachians. 

That wealth had belonged to the Cherokee nation, but white lawyers and politicians engineered the speedy dispatch of those inconvenient natives down a trail of tears, in exchange for a share of the riches earned on the stolen lands.  

And now, atop the hill, their sons, the 52^nd Georgia infantry, were waiting to pay not only their own invoice but also the debt of their fathers.

At the bottom of the hill were the Union men of the 31^st Illinois regiment, and according to their diary, they had also begun the day, waiting. “About ten o'clock in the morning... the men spread their cartridges to dry in the sun, in an old field about five miles from Champion Hill.” It was not until late morning that musketry and cannon fire was heard, and 45 year old Lieutenant Colonel “Jack” Reese ordered his regiment into formation. “The men hastily gathered up their (dry) ammunition and seized their muskets, and the regiment followed the head of the column at double-quick...”

John “Jack” D. Reese was originally from the corn fields around Champlain. But in 1858 he and his wife, Marry, had moved south to Perry County, in little Egypt, where he was elected sheriff. When war broke out Jack was quick to volunteer, and was chosen Colonel of the regiment because of his experience in the Mexican war. He had seen no combat, but he had risen to the respected rank of 2^nd Lieutenant.

The 1st Brigade of the  3^rd division's,  under General John Eugene Smith (above), included the 31^st Illinois, as well as the 20^th, 45^th and 124^th Illinois, and the 23^rd Indiana. It was placed on the far left of the union battle line, opposite the north face of Champion Hill.  

As soon as his artillery was ready, Black Jack Logan sent most of his men up the forested slope and ravines. But the men of the 1^st brigade, designated the division reserve, lay on their bellies, “...while the hostile shells whistled and shrieked and exploded above them.”

The men of the 52^nd Georgia often referred to themselves as The Fifth – so over sized was their regiment. They had been inducted into the Confederate Army in March of 1862. And in the 3^rd year of the war, their companies were still the size of regiments and bore romantic titles - The Habersham Guards, the Cleveland Volunteers, the Lumpkin Bodyguards, the Hiawassee Rangers, the Beauregard Braves, the Allegheny Rangers, and the Fannin Rifles. And their Colonel, 34 year old lawyer Charles Duval Phillips, was the second son of one of the wealthiest families in Marietta. In January he had led them in their spirited defense of Chickasaw Bayou. Their causalities that day had been light, and they were proud of their accomplishment, and certain of their ability to face down the Yankees.

It was somewhere between 2:30 and 3:00pm before Hoosier Brigadier General Marcellus Monroe Crocker (above)  finally got the order to send his 7th division forward. Remembering Grant's reprimand when McClernand had failed to issue ammunition before his men had crossed the Mississippi River, Major General James Birdseye McPherson, XVII corps commander, made certain his troops received their cartridges and caps from the wagons parked around the Champion house, before releasing them to the attack.

And then, at last it was the attack Grant had been seeking since 10:00a.m., with every unit pressing the rebel line at the same moment. The XVII corps' 3^rd Division under Logan, on the right flank. To their left was Hovey's battered 12^th division from McClernand's VIII Corps, advancing again on the Confederate line they had been battling all day. To their right, striking the rebel line in the elbow where it bent to the south, was another XVIII Corps division under Crocker. And striking the eastern slope of Champion Hill was Prussian Brigadier General Peter Joseph Osterhaus' 9^th division. By pressing everywhere, Pemberton's line must give somewhere. In fact it gave everywhere.

All day Pemberton had been feeding first General Stevensons battalion's and then General Bowen's men, piecemeal into the battle for the junction of the Ratliff and Clinton roads. 

This had been slowly sucking the balance of Pemberton's army north, toward its only safe escape route - the Baker's Creek bridge. Had General Loring thrown his division into the assault, the rebels might have held the Yankees back until nightfall. Or, the sacrifice of another 7,000 men, might have destroyed the only cohesive division the army had left.

Ignoring his commander's orders, and then his demands and then his pleas, “Give 'em Blizzards” Loring (above) refused to release a single regiment to retrieve Pemberton's honor. Instead, by 4:00p.m., two thirds of the army was weary, bloodied and outflanked. The battalions began to lose cohesion. It was a fighting retreat which threatened to become a rout. Only Loring's division held its formations and slowly began to slowly shuffle south, looking for an escape route over the swollen Bakers Creek.

The un-engaged Georgia 52^nd regiment stood firm, while a few hundred yards to their front a battery of five cannon appeared on their road. In limber were the four 6-pound bronze still smoking Napoleon cannon and a single iron rifled 6-pound gun of the “Cherokee Artillery”, under 39 year old French-Belgium Captain Maximilian Van Den Corput. Having been engaged moments earlier and been forced to withdraw, Captain Corput was resting his winded horses atop the hill, when a target presented itself to the gunners. An entire Yankee battalion appeared just beyond a ravine to their front. Corput ordered 2 guns to unlimber and open fire.

Clawing their way to the crest of Champion's Hill, the Yankees of John Smith's 1^st brigade had paused to reform, and found themselves suddenly under artillery fire from their right. Smith immediately saw the threat and the opportunity. Although his troops were the 3^rd Division's reserve, feeling the larger battle was already turning in Yankee favor, Smith ordered his men to angle right and charge the guns. 

Immediately their vanished into a ravine. As they reappeared within a few yards of the battery, the 2 guns fired a round of grapeshot. But it was badly timed and largely missed the blue coats. The Yankee battalion then fired a volley directly into Corput's battery, killing most of the horses, and almost half the gunners.

Corporal Wesley Connor, of Corput's battery, told his diary, “...many of the cannoneers (sic) had failed to stick to their guns, and the Yanks were close upon us, Captain Corput told his men to take care of themselves, and we were not long in putting the order into execution. I felt so mortified that I stopped once or twice to make sure that I was not the first to leave the guns.” Their division commander was kinder, noting the 42% casualty rate had proven the batteries devotion.

Five hundred yards to the rear, Colonel Charles Philips witnessed the loss of the battery and impulsively decided to take it back. He sent his thousand men charging at the double quick forward, into the 20^th, 31^st, 45^th and 124^th Illinois and the 23^rd Indiana regiments.

The Yankees had time to prepare for their arrival. Said the diary of the 31^st, “...there was crossing of bayonets and fighting hand to hand. Sergeant Wick, of Company B, used his bayonet upon his foe, and Sergeant Hendrickson, of Company C, clubbed his musket in a duel with one of the men in gray.”

An Iowa soldier summed up the situation  all along the battle line, when he said, “We killed each other as fast as we could."

Colonel Phillips was leading the charge, but after a few minutes he was shot in the head and hands. He collapsed into the desperate mass, and it was several minutes before his second in command, Major John Jay Moore was even informed. The major then tried to issue an order to retreat, but the melee continued.  

The entire fight lasted for less than half an hour, during which time at least 750 officers and men of the 52^nd Georgia regiment were killed, wounded or captured. The few survivors would continue to appear on the rolls of the Confederate army as the 52^nd Georgia regiment. But during that half hour their bravado ceased to exist.

The Yankees of Smith's brigade also paid a price. The 20^th Illinois suffered 22 killed, 107 wounded and 7 missing. The 124^th Illinois lost 63 men killed and wounded. The 23^rd Indiana had 4 officers and 14 men killed. The 45^th Illinois suffered 5 dead – in total approximately 140 dead men in blue.

One unnamed member of the staff of the 52^nd Georgia survived the disaster, and spurred his horse to escape. “At least a dozen dead battery horses had to be leaped in that lane. Suddenly the lane turned at left-angles, and stretched a half-mile down towards Baker's Creek. Down this lane with race-horse speed the rider flew, while minnie-balls whizzed around too close to the ear to be musical, and raising the dust on the ground before the rider. But thanks to good fortune both rider and horse escaped."

As the army began to collapse around him, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton turned to the small cabal of staff officers and said, “I call upon you gentlemen to witness that I am not responsible for this battle. I am but obeying the orders of General Johnston.”

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VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty

 

In the center of the Federal line, General Alvin Hovey's 12^th division was in trouble. By about 2:30pm on Saturday, 16 May, 1863, his 1^st brigade had been badly mauled during their three hour fight atop Champion Hill.  With them now driven off the crest, Hovey threw his 2nd^rd brigade, under the nearsighted 30 year old Colonel George Boardman Boomer, back up the hill, to breakup the enemy assault down the hill,  he was certain would follow. 

Pomeroy Martin remembered how , “Gallantly they went up the Hill.” And behind them Hovey lined up the bloodied 1^st brigade survivors and every cannon he had - the 16th Ohio light, the 2nd Ohio and Battery A of the 1st Missouri Light – 18 guns in total. At the moment, they held their fire, fearful of injuring Boardman's troops. But for a few long minutes those guns and the exhausted 1^st battalion were the only protection for the vital federal wagon supply train parked around the Champion house.

Years later the 2nd brigade's second in command, 36 year old dentist Colonel Benjamin Devor Dean, of the 26^th Missouri, recalled, “...the 10th Iowa and 93rd Illinois immediately engaged the enemy... Colonel Boomer...seeing the enemy approaching on our right flank, ordered the 26th Missouri to meet them, which it did on the double quick... getting possession of a deep ravine which the enemy was trying to secure.” For ten minutes or so the 26^th stood up against a larger 52^nd Georgia regiment. But the engagement cost the 26^th Missouri 2 officers and 16 enlisted killed, and 3 officers and 66 enlisted men wounded.

Watching from the the bottom around the Champion house, gunner Pomeroy Martin saw that “...the whole line... was pressed back slowly, as the rebels were massing all their forces to crush us here. But now...batteries reached further around to the right, poured in an enfilading fire, which was so terrific as to check effectually the rebel advance, and they gave way and fled in confusion.” The cannon to the right, were from General Logan's division.

At the same time, rebel General Seth Barton (above), in command of the 1^st brigade, on the extreme left flank of the rebel line atop Champion Hill, perceived a need for action. He could see Logan's division stumbling up the slope toward him, and decided it would be better to strike the Yankees while they were discombobulated than to passively wait for them to slam into his men. 

Barton posted a fragment of the 52^nd Georgia regiment with the 4 Parrott rifled cannon of Corput's battery to defend the only bridge over Baker's Creek (above). Certain these men could hold the vital position, Barton then drove the 40th, 41st, and 43rd Georgia regiments down the slope, hoping to fall unexpectedly on the Yankee's.

The initial wave, masked by the forested slopes until they were almost on top of the Yankees, drove in the first blue line, but “...enforced by (the Yankee) second and third lines”, wrote Barton later, “my farther advance was checked..” The troops Barton was hitting were part of Logan's 3^rd Brigade, under 42 year old Brigadier General John Dunlap Stevens - the 8^th and 81st Illinois, and the 20^th and 32nd Ohio regiments. The Federals outnumbered Barton's Georgia soldiers, and were able to bring flanking fire on their attack, forcing the Georgians to to pull back. Under fire, Barton adjusted his line and threw his troops forward again.

Sergeant Osborn Oldroyd, in the 20^th Ohio, remembered the rebels “succeeded in driving us a short distance” But then the Buckeyes made their own adjustments, stopped the Georgians a second time and forced them to pull back a few yards into the trees for safety.

When first ordered to advance up the heavily wooded slopes of Champion Hill, Grant had asked Logan if he needed more men. The 37 year old “Black Jack” John Alexander Logan (above) assured his commander, “There are not rebels enough outside of hell to drive back the 3^rd division!” In later generations the epithet “Black Jack” would be a demeaning title, indicating the bearer had “stooped” to command African-American troops. But this “Black Jack” - perhaps the original – was a term of familiarity and fondness, which described Logan's jet black hair and blazing black eyes as well as his dark fury in battle. It was a term of respect. He was that rarity in this most political of all America's wars, one of President Lincoln's political generals who was also one of his most respected combat commanders.

Shortly after Logan's division began moving up the northern face of Champion hill, General Hovey, having committed his 2^nd brigade in the bitter fight on the same hill, asked for regiments to stabilize his position. But although Logan directed artillery to lay fire on the rebel's attacking Hovey's men, he sent no troops. Logan's reason for being parsimonious with his support was that he could read a map, and his map indicated that his 3^rd division was being offered the opportunity to destroy the entire rebel army.

It has been an axiomatic that you should not fight with a river at your back since 12 August 490 B.C. E, when Athenian hoplites butchered the larger Persian army in the surf at Marathon beach. A decade even earlier, the Chinese general Sun Tzu had warned “After crossing a river, you should get far away from it”. 

But on Friday, 15 May, 1863, when faced with the rain swollen ford of Baker's Creek, Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (above) had persevered and counter marched his army to the only bridge over that same creek. A day later, this determination was about to be revealed as a deadly mistake, and there was some irony in that the revelation would be made by the 1^st brigade of General Logan's division.

They were the 20^th, 31^st 45^th and 124^th Illinois regiments along with the 23^rd Indiana. Most were men from the Cairo region of the Prairie state, the district called Little Egypt. The Hoosiers were from the adjoining sympathetic section of Indiana. Hoosier 1^st Lieutenant Shadrach Hooper, could have been speaking for the entire brigade when he said, “...it was a case of brother contending against brother, father against son and chum against schoolmate.” The region was strongly pro-slavery with Confederate sympathies. But these regiments had answered the call to duty because of loyalty and faith in Black Jack Logan, who had been their congressman before the war. And now they were going to deliver Vicksburg over to the the abolitionist north.

The brigade general was a 46 year old jeweler named John Eugene Smith (above). His father, John Banler Smith, of Bern, Switzerland, had served in Napoleon's 1812 Russian campaign. After the defeat at Waterloo, the Smith family had emigrated to Philadelphia along with their 1 year old son. In 1834, that son, John Eugene, had moved to St. Louis, Missouri to apprentice in a jewelry store. There he met is wife, Aimee A. Massot, and they were married in 1836. 

In the 1840's, the growing family had moved to the northern Illinois, Mississippi river town of Gelena (above),  

There John operated a Main Street jewelry and watch shop, and had become a friend to the half owner of a leather shop, Orvil Grant  (above, center) - younger brother of Ulysses Grant.

These were the men, like most humans, of divided loyalties, struggling in a divided nation,  But in a brief spasm of horrible violence, these men were about to seal the fate of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the entire Confederacy.

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