CALLING JUDGE CRATER Chapter Six

So what happened after Judge Joseph Force Crater left William Klein and Sally Lou Ritzi, at 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. Assuming the cab ride was uneventful.

Joe had reserved a seat for "The Dancing Partner", but if he did not call for the ticket by curtain time, it most likely 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. But 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 in upstate New York, 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. They don't buy criminal court judges, They buy 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 other 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, 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.

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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. Nobody – not even Stella, who had her own rocks – really wanted that. 

Hounded by the press who smelled more Tammany Hall scandal headlines, 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 local newspaper, 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. But evidently her brother, the owner, admitted the man his sister  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 loaded with Canadian Club whiskey  - 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  Club 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 (above).  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 Shirtwaist 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 grand jury convened in October, there was still no sign of the judge. Instead Crane located 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 new 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 Crater's other 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 had left New York City 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 they 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. At the time it was one of the few 5 star hotels welcoming Jews in Manhattan.  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 under water. 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 over the original valuation . AMBAM got $1.3 million for the hotel, and negated the $1.5 in debt, all for their $75,000 investment.  Only the tax payers lost money on this deal.

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. But 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?

                                        - 30 -