F YOU WANTED TO OPERATE Illegally in New York-gambling, prostitution, a saloon-no problem. You required: 1. appropriate discretion (i.e., avoid having too spectacular a murder on your premises) and 2. protection from two venerable New York institutions: Tammany Hall and the police.
City cops were as crooked as the politicians. From police on the beat to the highest officials at headquarters, they possessed plentiful opportunities-and took 'em eagerly. They became rich, arrogant, and ultimately too independent for Tammany. When the politicians finally had enough and concluded they had allowed too much autonomy to the cops, they decided to deal more directly with city vice lords. Their primary go-between would be Arnold Rothstein.
Change came when a corrupt, brutal police lieutenant named Charles Becker ordered some East Side toughs to gun down his erstwhile partner, gambler Herman "Beansy" Rosenthal, ordering him murdered on a crowded street just off Times Square-questionable judgment on everyone's part. Moreover, Becker sanctioned Rosenthal's murder during one of the infrequent periods when Manhattan enjoyed a Republican district attorney. That was truly reckless. That was inexcusable.
Venal police officials long predated Lieutenant Becker, the most spectacular being Inspector Alexander "Clubber" Williams, Commissioner "Big Bill" Devery, and Becker's former superior, Captain Max Schmittberger. Their careers reveal the workings of what frustrated reformers called "The System."
"Clubber" Williams didn't invent police corruption and brutality, but transformed both into fine arts. In 1876, when Williams's superiors transferred him from a mundane East 20s precinct to the West Side's Central Broadway District, hub of Manhattan's gambling, white slave, and liquor trades, his greedy heart leaped with joy. "I've had nothing but chuck steak for a long time," Williams chortled, "and now I'm going to get a little of the Tenderloin." Previously, the precinct was "Satan's Circus," forever afterward-the "Tenderloin."
Clubber exploited his opportunities, accumulating a $500,000 fortune, a seventeen-room town house, a $17,000 steam yacht, and a Connecticut country estate. Eighteen times he was investigated for graft. Eighteen times he won acquittal.
Gotham's cops had a license to steal, but Tammany charged them for the license. Even in Williams' day, a promotion to roundsman cost $300; to sergeant, $1,600; and to captain, anywhere from $12,000 to $16,000. Big money, but money easily earned back.
Clubber Williams paved the way for others. In the 1890s, William S. "Big Bill" Devery-300 pounds, crooked, and often drunk-served as New York's police commissioner. Devery, in partnership with Big Tim Sullivan and Sullivan's ally Frank Farrell, controlled Manhattan gambling. By 1900 Manhattan police payoffs amounted to $3 million annually, twenty times that amount in the purchasing power a century later. In 1894 the Board of Police Commissioners booted Devery off the force. A grand jury indicted him for extortion. But Big Bill won acquittal and returned to duty. A few years later, after the same process of indictment and acquittal, the New York State Legislature abolished the commissionership. Devery still survived. Tammany Mayor Robert A. Van Wyck, who called Big Bill New York's best police chief ever, reinstated him, imaginatively naming him "Deputy" Commissioner.
Most folks at Tammany liked Devery, among them organization boss Richard Croker. The general public, however, sickened of having their pockets picked by the Croker-Van Wyck-Devery operation. In 1901 Croker dumped the unpopular Van Wyck from the ticket, but Republican Seth Low still captured City Hall in a landslide. Croker departed for a genteel European exile, replaced at Tammany by Charles Francis Murphy, a taciturn but savvy East Side saloonkeeper. Murphy attempted to distance Tammany from Devery-and from other obvious thieves. It was a policy that would inevitably make the ostensibly colorless Murphy the Hall's most successful leader.
Big Bill could comfortably retire from public life; he just didn't enjoy being shoved out. In 1902 he contested a Murphy henchman for leadership in the West Side's Ninth Assembly District, going all out for victory. Big Bill packed 10,000 constituents onto two steamboats, six barges, and a single tugboat for a magnificent Hudson River cruise, where they received sandwiches, soft drinks, pies, 6,000 pounds of candy, 1,500 quarts of ice cream, and even 1,500 nursing bottles for infants. Forty-five musicians serenaded the crowd. As Devery's flotilla docked, fireworks exploded from nearby barges, and Big Bill dispensed shiny silver twenty-five-cent pieces to each child.
Just before the primary, Devery staged another outing, distributing 20,000 glasses of beer from kegs emblazoned "Special Devery Brew." He won. But Murphy cited a Democrat County Committee rule allowing the expulsion of "objectionable" members and refused to seat him.
In 1903 Devery retaliated, running for mayor as an independent. He outraged the churchgoing Murphy by exposing a house of prostitution operating at a Murphy-owned property at Lexington and 27th. "There's been more young girls ruined in that house than in any other place in the city," Devery charged. "The trouble with that fellow [Murphy] is that he's got a red light hangin' around his neck, and consequently he sees a red light in whichever direction he looks." Devery handily lost to Tammany-backed Congressman George B. McClellan.
In 1894, during one of the state senate's periodic probes of police graft, its Lexow Committee heard testimony from Clubber Williams' henchman, NYPD Captain Max Schmittberger. Schmittberger implicated both himself and Williams in corrupt activities, but proved unusually flexible. When times had called for corruption, he was corrupt. When reform was in vogue, he was honest. Schmittberger not only remained on the force after the probe, he won promotion to oversee the Tenderloin. Reformers-including President of the Board of Police Commissioners Theodore Roosevelt-thought Schmittberger had gone straight. As long as they held office, he had.
But when Tammany reclaimed power, Schmittberger reverted to form, exacting tribute from every Tenderloin poolroom, bordello, and saloon. To help collect his loot Schmittberger engaged the services of Lieutenant Charles Becker, a cop as tough and corrupt as any of his predecessors. Born in the Catskills in 1870, as a teenager he moved to the Lower East Side's burgeoning German neighborhood. He worked at menial jobs (including bouncer in a huge Germanic beer hall, the Atlantic Gardens), meeting the usual neighborhood characters: street toughs, gamblers, prostitutes, and Tammany politicians. Tammany liked him. He wasn't just physically imposing, his manner distinguished him from other bullyboys. The Wigwam admired him so much, that in November 1893 it not only obtained his appointment to the force, it waived its usual fee.
Charley habitually fell into trouble, but-each time-somebody pulled him out. On the evening of September 15, 1896, Becker, on plainclothes assignment outside West 32nd Street's newly opened Broadway Gardens, arrested three women for soliciting. Two of the ladies were being escorted by Stephen Crane, a reporter for William Randolph Hearst's New York journal and author of the recent bestseller The Red Badge of Courage. Crane, who later claimed to be interviewing the women for an article, protested that nobody had done anything wrong. Becker released Crane's companions, but hauled the third woman-a "really handsome," redheaded prostitute named Dora Clark-into the 19th Precinct house on 30th Street. Crane followed. Despite police warnings, Crane defended Clark vociferously. ("Whatever her character, the arrest was an outrage. The policeman flatly lied.") The next morning a magistrate dismissed charges against Clark, but Crane remained outraged. He discovered that only shortly before Dora Clark's arrest, Becker had falsely accused another woman of soliciting. Crane also learned of a general police vendetta against Clark, initiated after she spurned a swarthy officer named Rosenberg, whom she mistakenly thought to be black. ("How dare you speak to a decent white woman!") Soon after, Becker met Clark on the street, throttling, punching, and kicking her until passersby restrained him. He threatened Dora that she would "wind up in the river" if she caused any more trouble for the police.
Crane demanded that Becker be disciplined, and learned how police protect their own. Cops raided Crane's living quarters. At Becker's departmental hearing, every off-duty officer in the precinct appeared in a demonstration of support for their comrade. Becker's attorney implied that Crane, never the most fastidiously moral person, was both a pimp and an opium addict. His questions were perfunctorily ruled out of order, but, nonetheless, made their way to the pages of the daily press. Becker won acquittal. Police Commissioner Roosevelt (formerly a friend and admirer of Crane's; Crane had dined at T. R.'s home in July and autographed a copy of The Red Badge of Courage) professed concern for gratuitous police roughness, but heartily congratulated Becker and turned his back on Crane permanently. Police accelerated Crane's harassment. Newspapers continued questioning his morals and judgment. He left the city for safer territory.
Becker soon found himself in more trouble. On September 20, 1896-five days after arresting Dora Clark-he discovered three men robbing a tobacco store. He clubbed one man. Then he and his partner, an Officer Carey, fired at the other two. One shot went through a suspect's heart. Police falsely identified the dead man as the "notorious fanlight operator [burglar] John O'Brien," and Becker and Carey enjoyed considerable public approval for two full days. But the dead man was no burglar. He was nineteen-year-old plumber's assistant John. Fay. Becker received a month's suspension. Only Big Tim Sullivan's intervention kept him on the force.
That December Becker arrested yet another woman for soliciting. She turned out to be the very proper wife of a Paterson, New Jersey, textile manufacturer. "I don't care who she is," Becker responded. "I know a whore when I see one." Again, Big Tim saved his job. Not long afterward, a teenager charged Becker of beating him senseless in a theater lobby.
In the summer of 1904, Becker rescued a man named James Butler who had fallen off a Hudson River pier, earning the highest departmental award for heroism. Two years later, Butler alleged that Becker had promised to pay him for falling into the water and reneged on the promise. Butler hinted that he ended up saving Becker.
Becker was the quintessential bad cop, the type of officer who, if retained at all, should never be presented with even the mildest temptations. So, of course, he was transferred to Captain Max Schmittberger's Tenderloin.
Becker saw the immense sums Schmittberger raked in. Three hundred dollars a month was the going rate for protection, and hundreds of saloons, poolrooms, brothels, and red-light hotels needed protection-protection from people like Lieutenant Becker. One day Becker entered Dollar John Langer's West 38th Street saloon and gambling hall and informed Dollar John that in addition to the usual $300 monthly fee paid to Schmittberger, he would remit an extra $20 to him. Langer paid. Impressed by the ease of that shakedown, Becker made the rounds of the district, collecting at each stop.
The next morning, Schmittberger ordered Becker to see him. He knew all about his subordinate's actions-whom he had visited, how much he had collected. He ordered Becker to hand over the $150 he had accumulated. He threw $15 back at Becker.
"That's your share, ten percent," Schmittberger snapped. "From now on you're my collector. You'll get ten percent. Some of the joints can stand to pay more than they are and if you can get it so much the better for you. But remember, I'll always know exactly how much they paid." Thus, Charles Becker became Max Schmittberger's bagman. His bankroll grew, and so did his ego.
By 1909 reform was in the air. Tammany, eager to retain power and flexible enough to realize it once again needed a respectable and pliant front man, dumped Mayor George McClellan and turned to irascible, but clean Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice William J. Gaynor. Gaynor was more upright than Tammany would have liked. Almost immediately he broke with the machine, but his reforming was not always easily fathomable. Rather then shut down the city's widespread vice industry, he advocated merely the preservation of "outward order and decency." That didn't mean shutting everything down, but it didn't mean a wide-open town. It meant something in between.
Such a policy needed a sophisticated, intelligent practitioner-a first-rate, tough, politically savvy police commissioner. Gaynor's first Commissioner, Brooklyn lawyer James C. Cropsey, might have been that man. However, Cropsey quickly resented Gaynor's constant interference and quit.
Gaynor transferred Fire Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo, an energetic but naive socialite, to the job. For reasons not yet understandable (though some say at Tammany's request), Waldo engaged Lieutenant Charles Becker to cleanse the city. Rightfully suspicious of the local precinct houses, Gaynor had created two centralized vice squads-"strong arm squads" to maintain his "outward order and decency." Waldo created a third and named Lieutenant Charles Becker to head it.
Soon Becker basically ran all three squads, collecting graft he never dreamt of. To foster the illusion of activity and integrity (and also to warn those reluctant to pay him bribes), he raided numerous gambling houses. He staged raids on phony houses to further impress Waldo and other gullible observers. He even engaged a press agent, Broadway's Charlie Plitt, to herald his accomplishments.
Charles Becker now required his own bagmen and enforcers. He didn't trust other cops, so he chose as his prime collector a gambler, prizefight promoter, and onetime minor-league baseball manager named Bald Jack Rose (a.k.a. Billiard Ball Jack Rose), so nicknamed because he had not a single hair on his entire body. To help enforce discipline, when a mere raid wouldn't do, Becker relied on the services of one of Manhattan's up-and-coming young hoodlums, Big Jack Zelig, to beat recalcitrants into submission.
Life was good for Becker, but not without problems. Particularly vexatious was veteran East Side gambler Herman "Beansy" Rosenthal, who, in February 1912, opened a gambling house at 104 West 45th Street. Big Tim Sullivan had a soft spot for Beansy Rosenthal. Although they didn't know why, no one could deny that the big Irishman loved the pudgy little Jew. Herman Rosenthal certainly knew it, and thought Big Tim's patronage gave him license to operate anywhere and without paying off anyone.
Becker didn't like the arrangement but lived with it, at least as long as he had to. In early 1912, however, Big Tim's mind began to slip: he was suffering from syphilitic paresis. As Sullivan's faculties went, so did his power.
Becker would now collect from Rosenthal-and, for good measure, collect more from Rosenthal's colleagues. Becker press agent Charlie Plitt had killed a man when Becker raided what the Times called "a Harlem negro gambling resort." Becker raised a Plitt defense fund, assessing a donation from each gambler in his territory: in Beansy's case, $500. Rosenthal recognized this as a pure shakedown and refused to pay. Bad things started happening to Herman Rosenthal. One night Jack Zelig's crew beat him to a pulp. When Rosenthal still wouldn't pay, Becker took 20 percent of his gambling house. But when Commissioner Waldo demanded to know why certain gambling rooms at 104 West 45th Street remained open, Becker ended up raiding what was now his own place. Feeling doubly betrayed, Rosenthal publicly spouted off against Becker, who retaliated by posting an around-the-clock police guard to shutter Rosenthal's house.
Rosenthal tried telling his story to Mayor Gaynor. Gaynor refused to listen, but Herbert Bayard Swope, now editor of the New York World, would. Swope had Rosenthal narrate his tale in affidavit form, then published an edited version (omitting Becker's name). Becker traveled downtown to the World's office to read the original version, including this passage:
The first time I met Charles Becker, now a Lieutenant of Police in New York City, and who was holding the same office at the time of our first meeting, was at a ball given by the Order of Elks in Forty-third Street, near Sixth Avenue, and we had a very good evening, drank very freely and we became very good friends. Our next meeting was by appointment on New Year's Eve, 1912, at the Elks Club....
We drank a lot of champagne that night, and later in the morning we were all pretty well under the weather. He put his arms around me and kissed me. He said, "Anything in the world for you, Herman. I'll get up at three o'clock in the morning to do you a favor. You can have anything I've got. " And then he called over his three men, James White, Charles Foy and Charles Steinhart, and he introduced me to the three of them, saying, "This is my best pal and do anything he wants you to do."
Rosenthal also scheduled a meeting with Manhattan's Republican District Attorney Charles Seymour Whitman, a ruthlessly ambitious reformer. The combination of Beansy Rosenthal's allegations and Charles Whitman's power and drive could prove dangerous. Becker now faced numerous unpleasant scenarios, up to and including prison. But even if no indictment resulted, the situation was simply bad for business.
Arnold Rothstein knew everything that transpired on Broadway, including what his old acquaintance Beansy was up to. So did Tammany Boss Tom Foley (one of Big Tim Sullivan's closest allies), who approached Rothstein about silencing Rosenthal. "Get that stupid son of a bitch out of town," Foley ordered.
A. R. dispatched John Shaughnessy, a pitman at his gambling house, to bring Herman to the Rothstein brownstone. Rothstein had little patience for fools, and absolutely none for Rosenthal and his dangerous, stupid game that could sink everyone. Beansy argued that Becker had overstepped his bounds, that Big Tim Sullivan protected him, and no cop had any right to violate that protection.
"The Big Feller isn't here," Rothstein shot back. "And if he was, he'd tell you to keep your trap shut. All you can do is make trouble for a lot of people."
"I don't want to make trouble for anyone, only Becker," Herman protested. "They ask me about anybody else, I won't tell them. Only about Becker." Rothstein didn't believe him.
"They're smarter than you are," A. R. responded. "They're not interested in doing you any favors. Whitman is only interested in Whitman and the Republicans. He'll crucify the Big Feller."
"They can't make me say what I don't want to say," Beansy snapped.
Rothstein got down to business. "Beansy, you've got to get out of town," he said, handing him $500. "Lay away until this thing blows over. Here's enough money to get you out. If you need more, let me know."
But Rosenthal was too stubborn-and stupid-to listen. "I'm not leaving town," he responded. "That's what Becker wants me to do. I'm staying right here."
Herman remained in town, kept shooting off his mouth, but occasionally enjoyed spasms of good judgment. One day he visited Arnold's home. "I've changed my mind," he said. "Give me the money and I'll get out of town."
Rothstein replied icily: "You waited too long."
Beansy didn't realize how desperate his situation had become: "Let me have the five hundred. I'll go 'way someplace and hide."
But the decision had already been made. No one has to pay dead men for silence. "You're not worth five hundred to anyone any more, Beansy," Rothstein responded.
Rosenthal couldn't believe what he heard. "Then you can go to hell," he sputtered as he fled Rothstein's home.
On the following night, Monday July 15, 1912, Herman Rosenthal visited Charles Whitman's office, laying out his whole story. Returning from downtown, Rosenthal again visited A. R. and still vacillated, still wanting Rothstein's help. He told Arnold where he'd been and asked if Arnold could help with his rent money.
Rothstein remained uninterested. Beansy wouldn't live long enough to spend the cash. "In that case," said A. R., "if you want money you go and get it from the District Attorney."
Rosenthal walked from A. R.'s 46th Street home down to West 43rd Street, to his favorite haunt, the Metropole Hotel, owned by the Considine Brothers and by none other than Big Tim Sullivan him self-and where Arnold Rothstein had only recently operated the gambling concession. At the Metropole Rosenthal pawed through a pile of newspapers. Each carried stories of his big expose. The publicity pleased him: "Gambler Charges Police Lieutenant Was His Partner," blared Swope's World headline. Beansy liked being a big man, such a big man that nobody could touch him. Not Rothstein. Not Becker. Maybe not even Big Tim.
Beansy downed a few drinks (horse's tails-ginger ale with a twist of lemon) and ate his big steak "as if he could take it with him." Usually, a five-man Hungarian orchestra performed at the Metropole, but Monday nights were slow and the Considines hired a ragtime piano player to bang out the "Bunny Hug" and the "Ocean Roll," but there was nothing festive about the atmosphere. Everyone knew something was about to happen. They avoided Herman Rosenthal like the plague. Outside, West 43rd Street was strangely silent. Police shooed passersby off the sidewalks. They, too, expected something ...
At 1:40 A.M., someone-witnesses never agreed who-asked Rosenthal: "Can you come outside for a minute, Herman?"
Beansy didn't hesitate. He left a dollar tip (for his eighty-cent bill), put on his hat, and walked outside. A car drove by. Four-maybe five-men got out, firing pistols point-blank at Rosenthal. Five shots. Four hit their target. Three in the head. One in the neck.
Charles Whitman got the news. He had ordered Beansy to stay home, but Beansy clearly had trouble following advice. Whitman realized he should have provided protection to his star witnessalthough obviously there was a problem in providing police protection. Within an hour Whitman arrived at the precinct house nearest the Metropole, the seedy West 47th Street Station, just west of Eighth Avenue. Two things caught his interest. One was Lieutenant Charles Becker's arrival. His presence at the station seemed to confirm Whitman's already-great suspicions. Equally suspicious was the state of the police investigation. Several police officers were patrolling 43rd Street as Rosenthal met his fate. An off-duty police detective was dining at the Metropole. Yet no one apprehended the assailants. No one in uniform correctly noted the license number of the murder vehicle. Save for the alert eyes of Charles Gallagher, that license number might never have been revealed.
Gallagher, an unemployed cabaret singer walking to the Metropole to inquire about a job, first tried alerting an officer on the murder scene to the correct number: "New York 41313." He was ignored. Gallagher tried again, with Lieutenant Edward Frye. "I got the license number of that car," he repeated.
"We already have it," Frey snarled, shoving him away.
Gallagher went to the precinct house to restate his story. "We got the number," the desk sergeant responded, without gratitude or interest.
In fact, police possessed four different numbers: none Gallagher's, none correct.
"The car went past me-this far away. I know I got it right," Gallagher elaborated.
"Are you a witness?" the sergeant screamed.
Gallagher got the message. The police didn't want the right number. "No sir," he stammered. "I just got the license number. I thought-"
Gallagher never finished. Police threw him into a cell.
Reporters witnessed the scene at the station and told Whitman. He ordered Gallagher brought to him. Police apologized profusely. They had, they said, clearly misunderstood the value of Gallagher's information.
They hadn't. It was extremely valuable and broke the case wide open. Whitman quickly traced "41313" to a 1909 gray Packard touring car owned by one Louis Libby, who rented it out for hire. Libby hadn't chauffeured the car that night, but his partner, William Shapiro, had. Shapiro readily admitted his passengers had assassinated Beansy Rosenthal. He claimed that Bald Jack Rose-Becker's bagman-had hired the car.
Even before Whitman had interrogated Libby or Shapiro, he knew who the ultimate villain was. The next afternoon, Thursday, July 16, he told reporters:
I accuse the police department of New York, through certain members of it, with having murdered Herman Rosenthal.
Either directly or indirectly it was because of them that he was slain in cold blood with never a chance for his life. And the time and place selected were such as to inspire terror in the hearts of those the system had most to fear. It was intended to be a lesson to anyone who might have thought of exposing the alliance between the police and crime.
Just as he was about to give important additional evidence and to give the names of eight or ten men who could and would support his charges; just as the situation shapes up most dangerously for the police involved, he is killed and with him his evidence.
But the case against Lieutenant Becker will be pushed through with all possible vigor, even though it is apparent no conviction can result.
Whitman spoke too soon. Tammany knew when to cut its losses. Republican investigations had a pattern of failing to deliver the knockout punch. Usually, a cop could be thrown overboard: a Big Bill Devery, a Clubber Williams. There was no need for Charles Whitman to poke around Tammany if a high-profile cop could be sacrificed to protect it, particularly one everyone agreed was crooked to the core. Charles Becker was highly expendable.
Defending Libby and Shapiro was Aaron J. Levy, New York State Assemblyman from Manhattan's Fourth District, and despite his youth (he had just turned thirty-one on the 4th of July) one of Tammany's more influential attorneys. After visiting his clients on Thursday, July 18 Levy handed the press a typed statement that included this:
Shapiro told me [that] after the shooting he was working with his motor and pretended it would not start. One of the parties [murderers] said: `Don't stall that engine. You had better get it started and be damned quick about it.
Shapiro still hesitated and one of the parties said: "Go on, you fool, get started: don't you know the cops are fixed and no one will bother us? It is a clean getaway."
That was interesting enough, but reporters wanted more. They asked Levy: "Do you believe that this murder was a gamblers' feud?"
"I do not," he answered.
"Do you believe it was a gang feud?"
"I do not."
"Well, then, what kind of feud do you think it was, Mr. Levy?"
"Now then, I am afraid I have as good as told you already."
Yes, he had. By mentioning the police fix, Levy was signaling Whitman that Charles Becker had murdered Rosenthal. Soon he would be more direct ("Rose is not a big factor in this case. There is Lieutenant Charles Becker and a few others") and speak of "contemplated arrangements" with Whitman's office to free his clients, arrangements having little to do with Libby and Shapiro, and everything to do with protecting Big Tim Sullivan and Tammany Hall. That night, a mysterious figure visited Whitman's Madison Avenue home. The two men conferred for three hours. At this point, just about every coming-and-going in the case was being reported instantly, but Whitman never revealed the identity of his visitor. A day later, the Times reported he was "a very well-known gambler of the Broadway tribe" there to "take up the story where the dead Rosenthal left off."
Was it Arnold Rothstein? Most gamblers associated with the case-aside from Beansy and Arnold-were not Broadway gamblers, but Lower East Side types. And if any of these gamblers had appeared to verify Rosenthal's story of harassment from Becker, Whitman would have ignored him. Within a week, the district attorney admitted as much publicly when rumors began floating of Big Tim's owning a piece of Rosenthal's operation. On Monday, July 22 Whitman dismissed such information contemptuously-he was "investigating a murder, and not conducting a sociological investigation." What he meant was that Sullivan and Tammany were off limits in this case. So was Arnold Rothstein. Whitman would carefully, meticulously, exclude Sullivan's and Rothstein's names from both Becker murder trials-further evidence that A. R. had delivered a deal to Whitman.
The deal? Tammany would give up Becker. It would not surrender Big Tim. Whitman accepted the deal.
Meanwhile, William Sullivan informed Assemblyman Levy of the identity of the three gamblers with Jack Rose during the murderLouis "Bridgey" Webber (so nicknamed for his brief marriage to a 200-pound prostitute named Bridget), Harry Vallon, and Sam Schepps. He also divulged the names of three of the gunmen: "Lefty," "Whitey," and "Gyp"-Lefty Louie Rosenberg, Whitey Lewis, and Harry "Gyp the Blood" Horowitz. All worked for Big Jack Zelig.
On Monday, July 22, just a week after the murder, Whitman indicted six men-Libby and Shapiro; two gamblers in the murder car: Rose and Webber; and two others: well-known gambler Sam Paul, at whose recent gamblers outing to Long Island talk ran that if Rosenthal couldn't keep his mouth shut someone would "get him and get him for keeps"; and Becker associate and former William Randolph Hearst bodyguard Jacob Reich (a.k.a. Jack Sullivan, "The King of the Newsboys"). On the night of the murder, Reich accompanied Becker to Madison Square Garden. Becker then conveniently dropped off Reich at the Metropole-in time to witness Rosenthal's death.
Another Tammany lawyer now entered the drama. Max D. Steuer had come to America from Austria literally in steerage and worked his way up from Lower East Side newspaper and match peddler (with a cowbell tied around his neck to attract customers) to Columbia Law School. On May 1911 the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Fire killed 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women their employers had locked in their workplace. Steuer successfully defended company owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris on manslaughter charges, earning him the enmity of those on the Lower East Side who lost friends and family in the inferno-but also cemented his reputation as the city's toughest defense lawyer.
Steuer never minded doing Tammany's work-it was he, after all, who had informed Charles Francis Murphy of how to exclude Big Bill Devery from the county committee. Steuer at first wanted no part of defending Bridgey Webber, but soon changed his mind: "yield[ing] to the persuasion of friends who felt the interests of someone whose name has not been mentioned in the case would not be safe unless a lawyer of Steuer's ability was on hand to represent them." Steuer was yet another protege of Big Tim Sullivan. He was clearly present not to defend Webber, but to ensure he (and another gambler in custody, Harry Vallon) confessed and implicated Charles Becker.
On July 29 Whitman indicted Becker. Bald Jack Rose, Bridgey Webber, and Harry Vallon had all confessed to their roles in the murder. All claimed that Becker ordered their actions. All swore that Lefty Louis, Whitey Lewis, Gyp the Blood, and a fourth gunman, Dago Frank Cirofici, did the actual shooting.
Whitman lost interest in four of his original suspects: Sam Paul, Jacob Reich, William Shapiro, and Louis Libby. Shapiro and Libby gained immunity as material witnesses. Jack Sullivan vouched consistently for Becker's innocence (and for Rose, Webber, and Vallon's duplicity). He remained indicted, but never went to trial. Sam Paul, an ally of Lower East Side Republican chieftain Sam Koenig, walked away scot-free.
Whitman now possessed three key witnesses against BeckerRose, Webber, and Vallon-but all were admitted accomplices. Under New York law, a defendant could not be convicted solely upon the testimony of an accomplice. That left Whitman with no case whatsoever. To solve this problem, Whitman, Rose, Webber, Vallon, and their attorneys created the improbable fiction that Sam Schepps-wit- ness to numerous meetings with Becker and present at numerous other critical junctures-had not actually participated in the crime. Schepps, a con man at heart, played the part eagerly.
Meanwhile, public unease grew regarding Commissioner Waldo. Yet Waldo retained Mayor Gaynor's unrestrained support. "You have the hardest police situation in the world to deal with," Gaynor wrote Waldo. "We have in this city the largest foreign population of any city, and a large number of them are degenerates and criminals. The gambling of the city is almost all in their hands, not to mention other vices and crimes. The published names of every one connected nearly and remotely with Rosenthal and his murder shows them to be of this same class of lawless foreigners to which he belonged."
Not surprisingly, some observers-especially prominent Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise-interpreted Gaynor's remarks as anti-Semitic. The short-tempered Gaynor denied hostility to Jewish voters, but refused to apologize, especially to Wise, a longtime adversary. "I cannot help Rabbi Wise," Gaynor sniffed. "He is supposed to be a preacher and a charitable man. That he has borne false witness against me concerneth him more than it concerneth me. He seems to read the Hearst newspapers and accept their statements as true. What a howling wilderness the mind of such a man must be."
Months passed before Becker's murder trial, and odd events overtook New York City's Democratic Party. In 1912 many Republicans wanted Charles Whitman to run for governor. He refused, claiming that he wanted to wrap up the Becker case. In actuality, 1912 was the year of the disastrous Teddy Roosevelt-William Howard Taft feud that split the Republican Party and elected Woodrow Wilson president and scores of other Democrats nationwide-not a good year for ambitious Republicans. Tammany boss Charles Francis Murphy had reluctantly backed East Side Democratic Congressman William Sulzer for governor and, as payback, demanded that Sulzer appoint Murphy's business partner, James E. Gaffney, state highway superintendent. Sulzer refused. Soon they tangled on other issues, and by August 1913 the assembly (led by Aaron J. Levy, now assembly majority leader) impeached Sulzer. In October the state senate removed him from office.
As Sulzer's career exploded, Big Tim Sullivan's mental state unraveled. It had been deteriorating even before Rosenthal's death. In 1912, The Big Feller's supporters realized he wasn't stable enough to serve in the State Senate-and elected him to Congress. But he never did return to Washington. His mind worsened, and in July 1913 he sailed for Europe, hoping for improvement. When he returned, he was worse yet. He wandered away from the hotel where his family had sequestered him. They found him on the streets and moved him to his brother Paddy's house in the Bronx, where he was guarded round the clock. One night, after playing cards with four retainers, Big Tim escaped again.
Two weeks later, at the Bellevue morgue, a police officer chanced upon an unidentified man scheduled for a pauper's grave. "It's Big Tim," he exclaimed. "God rest him!"
A New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad employee had discovered the body near Pelham Parkway, on their tracks. The first police officers to arrive on the scene unanimously thought the corpse oddly cold for one just run over by a train. They surmised that someone had planted it there. Despite the corpse's expensive attire and gold jewelry, no one-including three detectives later disciplined for inaction-bothered tracing its identity. No one transported the remains from the Fordham morgue to the main Bellevue morguewhere it should have gone immediately-for more than a week. The coroner, who had known Sullivan for years, failed to identify him (even though the deceased's face was unscarred). Indeed, no one had recognized a man whose eventual funeral attracted 75,000 mourners, including sixteen congressmen and four United States senators, and whose main floral display contained 3,000 American Beauty roses and 2,000 white chrysanthemums.
It was as if someone in power wanted "The Big Feller" to disappear, and had tried to arrange for it to happen. After all, some said his mental acuity was returning and that he felt like talking about his old friend Beansy Rosenthal.
Meanwhile, Mayor Gaynor had broken completely with Tammany and in September 1913 announced his campaign for reelection as an independent. The next day, badly needing rest, he sailed for Europe aboard the liner Baltic. Back in 1910 Gaynor had narrowly missed assassination, shot in the neck at point-blank range by a deranged former city dockworker. His health never fully recovered. On September 10, His Honor died in his sleep as the Baltic approached the Irish coast.
On the afternoon of October 5, 1913, two days before Charles Becker's trial began, an inebriated Big Jack Zelig exited Siegel's Coffeehouse on Second Avenue and boarded a northbound streetcar. A block later, a tall man jumped on, worked his way toward Zelig, aimed his .38 caliber revolver and shot Big Jack behind the left ear. Thirty-year-old all-around hoodlum Red Phil Davidson said he murdered Zelig because Big Jack had robbed him of $400 (or $1,800, depending on which story he told). Nobody believed him.
Zelig had said publicly that he wouldn't testify against Becker. The defense had scheduled him as one of their witnesses. District Attorney Whitman had claimed he would actually end up testifying for the prosecution. Nobody ever really knew what Big Jack Zelig had to say. We do know that someone didn't want him to say it.
In this miasma of disgrace and death, Charles Becker finally stood trial in October 1913. Bald Jack Rose's story had already been leaked to the papers. He told of his approaching Zelig to kill Rosenthal. Zelig, then jailed on cooked-up concealed weapon charges, had refused. Rose then traveled to the Bronx to convince Lefty Louie and Whitey Lewis to assassinate Rosenthal on Becker's behalf. When Lefty and Whitey protested that they no longer carried guns ("We don't carry them anymore since this trouble of Zelig's"), Rose warned them that if they didn't bump off Rosenthal, Becker would have them arrested anyway. "Well, it don't make any difference. Zelig didn't have one [a gun] either. Now if you go downtown at all, you are gone [framed]," he said. They came onboard.
Rose claimed that Rosenthal was to have been killed on an evening in early July while dining at West 50th Street's Garden Restaurant. But when his assassins spotted private detectives (whom they believed to be in Whitman's employ), they retreated. This incensed Becker, who told Rose: "All that's necessary is to walk right up to where [Rosenthal] is and blaze away at him and leave the rest to me. Nothing will happen to anybody that does it. I will take care of that ... Walk up and shoot him before a policeman if you want to. There ain't nothing to fear."
Rose also revealed to the press that he phoned Becker from a public phone booth in the Times Building, at 3:00 A.M., one hour after Rosenthal's murder. "Hello there, did you hear the news?" he asked. "Yes," Becker responded, "and I congratulate you."
Rose told of meeting Becker after the police lieutenant witnessed Beansy Rosenthal lying lifeless at the West 47th Street station house. Said Becker:
It was a pleasing sight to me to see that squealing Jew lying there and if it had not been for the presence of Whitman I would have cut out his tongue and hung it on the Times Building as a warning to future squealers.
During the actual trial, Rose held the room spellbound, revealing such other details as when Becker ordered:
I don't want [Rosenthal] beat up. I could do that myself. I could have a warrant for any gambling house that he frequents and make a raid on that place and beat him up for resisting arrest or anything else. No beating up will fix that fellow, a dog in the eyes of myself, you, and everybody else. Nothing for that man but taken off this earth. Have him murdered, cut his throat, dynamited, or anything.
Bald Jack Rose proved as effective a witness as a prosecutor could desire-the right mixture of the straightforward and the dramatic. Bridgey Webber and Harry Vallon provided reasonably credible accounts, but other prosecution witnesses were virtually worthless. Sam Schepps' tale, a narrative of wide-eyed innocence told by a smirking con man, proved completely unbelievable, as did most of Whitman's shady supporting cast. Charles Becker refused to take the stand. Presiding judge John W. Goff (appointed to the case by Tammany-backed Governor John Dix) ran roughshod over Becker's counsel John F. McIntyre and in his charge to jurors reported every prosecution allegation as fact. The jury had no trouble sending a corrupt cop like Becker to the chair. If justice and the law collided, justice would triumph.
The New York State Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, had other ideas. In a blistering decision, it ripped Rose, Webber, Vallon, and especially Schepps as "dangerous and degenerate" and unworthy of belief. It condemned judge Goff's handling of the case:
... the defendant certainly was entitled to a scrupulously fair and impartial trial where nothing should be done to prejudice his case or to obscure the minds of the jurors ... We do not think that the defendant had such a trial. We think that he suffered grievously from the erroneous disposition both of questions of law and discretion.
In May 1914 Charles Becker received a new trial. His first conviction resulted largely from Sam Schepps's corroborating testimony. Now Schepps's word was less than worthless. District Attorney Whitman (seriously thinking of running for governor in that year, with the Democrats now at each other's throats) badly needed another conviction and, to obtain one, another corroborating witness. He got one in James Marshall, a black professional buck-and-wing dancer, and former stoolie for Lieutenant Becker.
In Becker's first trial, Rose, Webber, and Vallon claimed they met Becker at West 124th Street and Seventh Avenue. There, Becker impatiently ordered Webber to stop dallying and move ahead with murder. "Before Bridgie arrived Becker was telling us he was going to raid a crap game," Harry Vallon noted, adding what seemed to be irrelevant detail to his account. "There was a little colored boy on the other side of the street and [Becker] called him over and spoke to him."
In April 1914 Whitman located the "little colored boy"-Mar- shall; put him on his payroll; and convinced him to testify that he had seen Becker, Rose, and company on that Harlem street corner. That same month, Gyp the Blood, Lefty Louis, Whitey Lewis, and Dago Frank went to the chair at Sing Sing, each protesting his innocence to the end.
When Becker stood trial again in May 1914, it was a less acrimonious replay of his first trial, with a significantly altered cast of characters. The patrician, and more even-tempered, judge Samuel W. Seabury replaced Goff. James Marshall substituted for Sam Schepps as chief corroborating witness, and Becker had two new attorneys, W. Bourke Cockran and Martin T. Manton.
Manton was an unknown, but the Irish-born Cockran had served in Congress, as a judge, and, more importantly, as Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall. He was a brilliant orator-Winston Churchill modeled his speaking style upon Cockran's. Decades later Churchill could rattle off long passages of Cockran's oratory. Cockran didn't want to defend Becker, but old friends in Tammany convinced him otherwise. When Seabury rejected Cockran's very first motion, that a prejudicial atmosphere existed and the trial be postponed, Cockran walked off the case.
Becker and Manton still thought they couldn't lose. Whitman's case was too flimsy, his witnesses too untrustworthy. Judge Seabury instructed the jury on May 22, 1913. They came back in one hour and fifty minutes. The verdict: guilty.
Becker's team couldn't believe that a jury unhectored by the likes of a judge Goff could convict him. That his fate hung upon James Marshall's testimony particularly rankled Becker. From Sing Sing, he wrote: "You must know that the testimony of the little crapshooting coon was pure and unalloyed perjury of the ranking kind ..."
His accusation was soon substantiated. In February 1915 Philadelphia police arrested Marshall for wife-beating. At the station house Mrs. Marshall charged her husband with telling "all them lies about that policeman in New York." Two reporters witnessed her outburst and printed her charges. Marshall admitted his wife's claim-then retracted his retraction.
The controversy surrounding James Marshall's testimony provided Becker and Manton with hope, and Manton filed a 540-page brief with the Court of Appeals. For good measure, Manton charged Seabury with "extreme partiality." This time-even with Marshall's flip-flopping-the court had no trouble affirming Becker's conviction.
In November 1914 New Yorkers had elected a new governor. While Becker's team had counted on a second trial, and now lost it, the governor they would have to appeal to for mercy-mercy, not justice-was their nemesis, Charles Seymour Whitman.
Whitman would not extend it.
Becker had one card left to play: the King of Spades himself, Big Tim Sullivan. On July 21, 1915-less than a fortnight before his scheduled execution-Becker released a 10,000-word apologia for not only his dealings with Herman Rosenthal and Bald Jack Rose, but for his entire soiled career. Becker finally introduced Sullivan into the drama, contending that the kindly old "Big Fellow" had innocently loaned $12,500 to Rosenthal for what turned out to be Beansy's gambling house, and Big Tim, fearing his name might be dragged into controversy if Beansy kept talking, wanted the gambler silenced. As Becker told it, he-Becker-merely wanted Rosenthal left alone:
My private telephone rang, and a man describing himself as Mr. [Harry] Applebaum, Senator Sullivan 's private secretary, said the Senator wanted to see me. He said the matter was urgent and the Senator must see me tonight and added, "I will call for you in about thirty minutes in an automobile and take you down to meet him." Mr. Applebaum appeared, accompanied by Jack Rose, and said the Senator was waiting at the Circle Theater. All three of us went to Sixtieth Street, where Sullivan stepped out of a limousine and invited me to his private office. We went up two flights of stairs, and on entering his room, he asked me. "What about this Rosenthal affair?" I said. "There's nothing of it," he said. "It must not be allowed to go any further. Rosenthal has gone so far now, he can't be stopped. He must be got away. "
"That, " I said at once, "would be the very worst thing could happen to us. Everybody would say that either you or I had caused his disappearance, and naturally it would seem that, if we induced him to leave, it must be because he had something discreditable to reveal."
The Senator answered. "Where a fire of this kind is started, there is no knowing where it will reach. Rosenthal has always been very close to me politically and personally, and once inquiry starts they reach into election matters. And secret investigations of elections by grand juries have always been sources of great trouble. Whatever happens in this row between you two, I want you to promise me that you will never mention the fact that I spoke to you about letting Rosenthal open." This promise I gave. He expressed very warm appreciation of my attitude, and coming downstairs, just as we emerged from the building, he said: "I would give $5,000-yes, $5,000-to have prevented this thing or to stop it now if I could. "
Harry Applebaum supported Becker's account. Jack Rose denied it. Big Tim had ordered, hinted at, or in some way acquiesced in a gambler's murder, and that is why so many people so high up at Tammany Hall had cut their deal so quickly with a Republican district attorney to protect the former East Side chieftain. But at this point, over a year and a half after Becker's first trial, fewer and fewer people cared what a dead political leader had done. Time indeed moves on. They did care if a living crooked cop had crossed the line into murder, and had long since decided that he had.
Nagging questions of prosecutorial propriety remained. Even Governor Whitman, in the privacy of his own conscience, had to admit he had manipulated the system, witnesses, and evidence to secure a conviction. He cut deal after deal, buying testimony with immunity and with cash. He had whitewashed Tammany, relied on the testimony of murderers and perjurers. He had suborned perjury, most notably from his two key witnesses: Sam Schepps and James Marshall.
Yet, he must have justified it all to himself. Beating "The System" wasn't easy. People were afraid to talk and were right to be afraid. When you had a chance to finally make a dent in the whole rotten operation, to trap a man like Becker, you did what you had to. Whitman did what he had to do, and if it made him governor-and maybe someday president-there was nothing wrong in that.
Was Becker really guilty? Whitman had to ask himself. Guilty even discounting what Schepps and Marshall and even Bald Jack Rose had to say? Two juries thought so, hadn't given much consideration to the alternative. Becker did have a motive. He was brutal enough to order a man killed. He was arrogant enough to think he could get away with it.
If Becker was innocent, why was he so intimately involved with so many of the guilty: Rose, Webber, Vallon, Schepps? If he was innocent, by what remarkable coincidence had he deposited Jack Sullivan at the murder scene a half hour before the crime? Why had police cleared the sidewalks outside the Metropole to facilitate a murder? Why had they let the murderers escape? Why had they failed to obtain the correct license number? Why had they ignored, abused, and then locked up the man with the correct number? Why, if Becker didn't want Rosenthal killed, had Bald Jack Rose phoned him in the middle of the night with the good news? Why if Becker had really planned on suing Beansy Rosenthal to defend his good name (and thus be subject to testifying), did he fail to take the stand in two trials to save his very life? Becker had amassed $100,000 in graft ($65,000 in one bank account alone). His friends on the force and in Tammany had raised a huge defense fund for him. Yet by 1915 his wife had to sell their home in the Bronx. Why? Becker's defense team was expensive-but not that expensive. Were Becker's defense attorneys buying their own witnesses with Becker's money?
Yes, people do get framed. Charles Becker had framed Jack Zelig. Years ago he tried railroading prostitute Dora Clark and a textile manufacturer's wife from Paterson. No doubt he had framed dozens of others. Now, thought Charles Whitman, it was Lieutenant Becker's turn-and justice would be done.
As the time before Becker's execution receded into mere hours, his saintly-but naive-wife Helen trailed Governor Whitman from Albany to Peekskill to Poughkeepsie to make a last-minute plea for her husband's life. When Whitman could run no more, she faced him and could say ... nothing. Nothing emerged but a flow of tears and anguished, heart-wrenching sobbing. Whitman walked away.
At Sing Sing, early on the morning of July 30, 1915, Charles Becker walked to the electric chair. He forgave his enemies and asked forgiveness from those he had wronged. Some contended he approached death stoically. The World said he appeared "about to be overcome by sheer nerve panic." Frank Ward O'Malley later would compare the calm demeanor of a black prisoner sentenced to death to Becker's edginess, saying, "the Negro showed the Czar of the Tenderloin how to die." Arnold Rothstein thought that was about the best thing Frank ever wrote.
They strapped Becker into the chair, pumped 1,850 volts through him-and found him still breathing. They ran another 2,500 volts into him. Still he lived. A third charge finished the job.
In the Governor's Mansion, Whitman couldn't sleep. At Tammany Hall Boss Murphy and his assistants kept watch through the night. And in the White Room at Jack's, a different crew maintained its own vigil. They included Nicky Arnstein, Tad Dorgan, Frank O'Malleyand Arnold Rothstein. A. R. lay his gold pocket watch on the table to better track the time. At 5:45 A.M. he snapped it shut.
"Well," Rothstein finally said, "that's it."
That was it for Charles Becker, it for the old style of police graft and corruption, it for the old-style gambling houses of Manhattan. Arnold Rothstein would invent floating crap games that would move from hotel to hotel, apartment to apartment, warehouse to warehouse. Now gambling would move out to the suburbs, out to Long Island. Arnold Rothstein already had a new gambling house in the old Holley Arms Hotel out in Hewlitt, with none other than George Considine, Big Tim's partner at the Metropole, as his partner. The cops could no longer be trusted to direct the shakedowns. That would be left to the politicians, but the politicians needed a smart man-"a smart Jew" as Big Tim might have put it-to be their go-between with gamblers, the judges, and the police.
A new world was being born, and Arnold Rothstein meant to make a profit on every continent.