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.
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