CALLING JUDGE CRATER Chapter Five

It was a very odd search, because it seemed nobody wanted to actually find Joseph Force Crater. Most of the cops couldn't afford to admit they even knew where the rocks they were expected to turn over, were. And if they ever found Joe under one of those rocks, there would have to be explanations, like why they hadn't turned that rock over earlier. And nobody – not even Stella, who had her own rocks – really wanted that.  Hounded by the press who smelled another Tammany Hall scandal, the cops finally issued a statement in mid-September. “We have no reason to believe he is alive, and no reason to believe he is dead. There is absolutely no new development in the case.” That spin went down just like the Titanic.

The cops searched the apartment at 40 Fifth Avenue again, and again found nothing. They interviewed William Klein and Sally Ritz again. This time the pair replaced the story of Joe disappearing in a taxi with the image of Joe walking west on 45^th Street. A lead to nowhere. Swimming? And in Westchester? Then Joe's best friend, Lawyer Simon Rifkin, mentioned that Joe had mentioned he might be going to Canada. At last a lead that did not require the invasion of a Times Square speakeasy. But they way they investigated that lead, spoke volumes.

After sending a Missing Persons report to the 'Mounties' in Montreal, the cops started as close to the Canadian border as they could – the little town of Plattsburgh, New York (above), with 13,000 residents. But the detectives did not call the local constabulary. Instead they called the The Plattsburgh Sentinel. 

And it should have been no surprise that a local reporter found a local busybody, one Helen Murray, who saw Judge Crater at her brother's drug store on Friday, 8 August, 1930. The Missing Person's Bureau immediately dispatched Joe's cousin, W. Everett Crater, on the 300 mile train ride north.

When Everett arrived in Plattsburg, he went to the drug store, but failed to find Ms. Murray. And evidently her brother, the owner, admitted the man she thought was Judge Crater was another man entirely. 

But before this failure had dampened the New Yorkers' hearts, there was another sighting of the judge a half a mile north in the village of Champlain, within spitting distance of the Canadian border. Governor Roosevelt now released the New York State Police to scour the border for the judge, along with their other their prohibition patrols. Southbound New York Route 11, which started at the Canadian line, was crowded every night with unobtrusive trucks and sedans - as were the five other border crossings in the county.

A mechanic who worked 48 hours a week for less than $15.00, could make $50 to $75 for the half mile drive between Champlain and Plattsburgh, carrying what might be bootleg booze. And as a driver, you were not even breaking the law unless you looked in one of the cases. 

If you owned a truck or a big sedan, and were willing to run a little more risk, you could buy a case of perfectly legal Canadian Whiskey for $15 in Montreal, which you could sell for $120 in Plattsburgh. 

The border region was strewn with small hotels, road houses, resorts and hunting lodges, all floating in a sea of Canadian whiskey and jammed with thirsty citizens. Surely Good Time Joe could be found in one of these dens of inequity. 

Since the New York City Council had posted a $5,000 reward, every red blooded capitalist in the Adirondacks had become an amateur detective. And they kept finding Joe Crater.

In fact there was a bumper crop of Judge Craters that fall. There were sightings at Fourth Lake, midway between Lake Placid and Syracuse, a “positive” I.D. at nearby Raquette Lake, and a possible sighting in the Keene Valley, on the road to Ticonderoga. 

Three workers at the Altamont Hotel on Tupper's Lake swore they had seen Joe. He was repeatedly reported in Saratoga, betting on the ponies. But none of these Judge Craters proved to be the real, original missing Judge Crater. The search was back to square one, Times Square in Manhattan.

The rising stench of this fell into the lap of recently elected New York County District Attorney, Thomas Crowell Taylor Crain. At 72 years of age, Crain was what they called a Tammany Hall stalwart, experienced at muddying waters. 

In 1905, as Commissioner of Tenement Housing, he found nobody was responsible for the Allen Street tenement fire that killed at least 20. 

In 1911 Crain was the presiding judge at the Triangle Shirwaist factory fire, which killed 148. Under his instructions, the jury found the owners not guilty.   Judgement like that got him elected  D.A. in 1929,  

Crain convened a grand jury on the Arnold Rothstein murder (above), but it came to no conclusion. And now, he decided to investigate the case of the missing jurist.

Crain wrote a letter to Stella. He requested her appearance before a grand jury, and asked her to bring a copy of Joe's will. But Stella was busy. Still grieving for her lost marriage and lost life, she had been reduced to taking a job with the Maine Telephone and Telegraph Company in their Belgrade Lakes exchange as an operator. 

Stella (above) was now earning $12 a week, and had no interest in putting herself under Mr. Crain's jurisdiction. She would not testify. She did tell the police – by telephone – that Joe “...never liked and seldom went swimming.” But that just muddied the waters even more.

When the Crane jury convened in October, there was still no sign of the judge, but there was a brakeman on a passenger train running between Tucson and Bisbee Junction, Arizona. He spotted the judge on the train, and heard him say he was heading to El Paso, Texas.  Detectives were dispatched, and the lead lead nowhere.

Still, the ever vigilant D.A. Crane pressed on. He called Bill Klein, who repeated his latest version of events at the chophouse. Next, Crane might have been expected to call Klein and Crater's dinner companion, but Sally Lou Ritz, aka Sally Lou Ritzi (above, right), had disappeared. Lest anyone suspect foul play, they quickly located the dancer in Youngstown, Ohio, staying with her parents. She left so abruptly, she said, because her father had been taken ill. And no, she was not coming back to appear before Crain's grand jury.

Still D.A. Crane persevered. He next called dark haired ex-model Constance Braemer “Connie” Marcus. She had met Joe Crater in 1922, while she was working at the Cayuga Democratic Club. They became friends, so of course Connie hired him when she decided to divorce her husband, just as Stella had done. Shortly thereafter, the pair began a 12 year affair. Joe paid the rent on Connie's apartment at the Mayflower Hotel (above) overlooking Columbus Circle on Central Park West, where he visited her several times a week. He also loaned her money to invest in a dress shop on 57^th Street, where she also worked as sales girl. But no, she had no idea where Joe was. She hadn't seen him since June.

Next on Crane's list of witnesses was June Brice, yet another show girl. She had been seen talking to Joe on Tuesday evening. But she had also disappeared. And didn't find her for a decade. So they called Elaine Dawn, yet a another show girl, but she failed to add anything to the record except that Joe was a good dancer, who knew how to show a girl a good time. So Crane decided to open a line of investigation into the fate of the Libby Hotel.

The 12 story luxury hotel and baths at the corner of Chrystie and Delancey Streets in the yidishe mittenmark – Jewish Heart – of Manhattan was the dream of emigrant Max Berstein and funded mostly by stocks sold in synagogues. It was one of the few 5 star hotels welcoming Jews at the time. Named after Max's deceased mother, it had opened in 1926 to good business. But within 2 years business - and the neighborhood -  fell off so badly the American Bond and Mortgage Company, or AMBAM, bought a controlling interest in the hotel for just $75,000. They then used the hotel as collateral for several loans and ran up debts with suppliers until the hotel was $1.5 million in debt. And in February of 1929 AMBAM's accountant Charles Moore testified under oath that the hotel was worth only $1.3 million, which put it $200,000 in the hole, and officially bankrupt.

The Tammany Hall government of new Mayor Jimmy Walker, then granted AMBAM foreclosure protection, which prevented just anyone from buying the property. The city also appointed lawyer Joseph Force Crater as receiver. Joe had to put up a $1.3 million guarantee, but that was just a paper promise, and it guaranteed him anything over that, which he might get for the hotel. Within a month, the city itself seized everything under eminent domain between Chrystie and Forsyth Streets, and Houston and Canal Streets, which included the Libby hotel, so they could clear slums and widen the streets. In January, the same Charles Moore now re-valued the empty Libby Hotel as being worth $3.2 million.  The city then negotiated to buy the property at the bargain basement price of $2.85 million, which allowed Joseph Force Crater to pocket almost 2 million dollars, a $700,000 profit . AMBAM got $1.3 million for the hotel, and avoided the $1.5 in debt, for their $75,000 investment.

It all smelled to high heaven, but Joe Crater appeared to have done nothing illegal. However the story muddied his reputation, and  when matched with the suggestion he had bought his judgeship for $23,000, left the members of the grand jury not feeling too disappointed when, in January of 1931, District Attorney Crane disbanded them, declaring that “The evidence is insufficient to warrant any expression of opinion as to whether Crater is alive or dead, or as to whether he has absented himself voluntarily, or is the sufferer from disease in the nature of amnesia, or is the victim of crime.” In other words it was a typical Crane decision – muddied. Very muddied.

With the grand jury disbanded, Stella Crater was no longer under any legal threat, and she returned to New York City to pick up her clothes and mementos before they were seized by the landlord for non-payment of rent. And wonder of wonders, Stella found in a bedroom dresser drawer a couple of envelopes, filled with cash, stocks, bonds and un-cashed checks to the total of $6,690.00 – about $1.3 million today. There was also a list of people who owed Joe Crater even more money, and a note to Stella, which ended, “I am weary. Love Joe.” But it was undated.

Stella (above)  told the NYPD detectives, and the District Attorney's Office about her discovery. She had to. The federal tax collector would be asking where she got the money. As joint property with her husband, who was still officially alive, there would be no inheritance tax. The cops insisted they had searched the drawer several times, and it had always been empty. Stella stuck to her story, and the cops stuck to theirs. But they also noticed that one of the checks made out to Joe and endorsed by him, was dated 30 August, 1930 – over three weeks after he vanished off west 45^th street. It had clearly been post dated, said Stella. And there was no way of proving that was not what had happened.

But it brought everything back to that night, a quarter after 9:00pm, Wednesday, 6 August 1930, outside Billy Haas's Chophouse on West 45^th Street. After he stepped away from that spot, what the hell had happened to Judge Crater?

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