By Clive I. Morrick
This three-part series revisits the infamous Judge Joseph Force Crater’s disappearance. Part Two describes events in his life that may or may not have contributed to it. Part Three will summarize the (few) books about the case.
Judge Crater took his seat on the New York Supreme Court bench on April 17, 1930 and disappeared on August 6, 1930. A note on some of his extra-judicial activities is in order.
The Libby Hotel
The Libby Hotel at Christie and Delancey Streets opened in 1926 and went bust in 1929. Crater, then in law practice and well in with Tammany Hall, was appointed receiver for the creditors. The American Bond and Mortgage Company (AMBAM) bought the hotel at auction for $75,000 and assumed a debt of $1.5 million. The City then condemned the land for a road-widening project. AMBAM claimed it was worth $3.2 million and the City paid $2.85 million. The creditors shared $75,000 while AMBAM’s profit was $1.27 million.
On January 19, 1931, Crater’s wife, Stella, “discovered” a list of Crater’s debtors marked “Confidential.” Crater had written that he was owed a large sum for the Libby Hotel matter.
Did Crater Buy His Seat on the Bench?
Crater was close to Martin Healy, who was a member of his Cayuga Democratic Club, a Tammany district leader, and a deputy City commissioner. In 1930, several investigations into judicial appointments began. City Magistrate George Ewald had “loaned” Healy $10,000—the annual salary of his position.
Mayor Jimmy Walker suspended Ewald on August 6th, which was the day Crater disappeared.
During the investigation into Crater’s disappearance, it emerged that Crater had withdrawn $22,500 from his banks just after his appointment—the annual salary of a New York Supreme Court judge.
On the morning of August 6th, Judge Crater’s private assistant, Joseph Mara, cashed $5,000 checks for Crater and removed several files from his chambers. Mara’s father, also a Tammany insider, was scheduled to testify in the Healy-Ewald investigation the next day.
Crater’s Other Women
Crater was a theater buff and partial to showgirls. Soon after his disappearance, several women he knew either vanished or were hospitalized.
Elaine Dawn, a Ziegfeld dancer, was seen with Crater on August 5th, at Club Abbey on West 54th Street, which was owned by gangster Owney Madden. Dawn was in the cast of “Artists and Models,” a revue which played at New York’s Majestic Theatre from June 10th to July 1, 1930. Reporters were unable to find her because, on August 17, 1930, she entered a hospital with a bad knee.
Sally Lou Ritz, also an extra in “Artists and Models,” and possibly Crater’s mistress, dined with Crater and William Klein (long-time lawyer for the Shubert theatrical empire) at Billy Haas’s Chophouse on August 6th—Crater’s last known night alive. Soon after, Ritz fled to California and assumed a domestic life.
June Brice was a showgirl whom Crater allegedly visited on August 6th. Stella Crater’s attorney, Emil K. Ellis, claimed Brice was blackmailing Crater. She had received a subpoena to testify in the Healy-Ewald matter. After September 14, 1930, no one in her circle saw her. She too was in the hospital, with tuberculosis and, later, early onset dementia.
During this period, a madam named Vivian Gordon was cooperating with an investigation into the Police Department’s Vice Squad. On February 26, 1931, her body turned up in Van Cortlandt Park. Investigators found a topcoat of Crater’s in her apartment.
Then there was Polly Adler, a madam who moved in both gangster and political circles. In the first draft of her 1953 memoir, “A House is not a Home,” she reportedly disclosed that Crater died of a heart attack while engaging one of her prostitutes and, with help, she discarded his body into the Hudson River. The published version makes no such claim. After listing some of the bigwigs taken down in the Healy-Ewald investigation, she added, “…and on August 6th Judge Joseph Force Crater, apparently overmastered by a disinclination to stand up and be counted, walked out of a restaurant on West 45th Street, hopped into a cab, and has never been seen since.
Sources
Adler, P, “A House is not a Home,” Rinehart, NY, 1953.
Baker, S, “Murdered Judges of the 20th Century: and Other Mysterious Deaths,” Pale Horse Publishing (Self-published, 2003).
Crater, S, and Fraley, O, “The Empty Robe,” Doubleday, NY, 1961.
Tofel, R, “Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater and the New York He Left Behind,” Ivan Dee, Chicago, IL, 2004.
Berger, S. and Zion, J, “Ritz with A Shvitz,” PaknTreger (Magazine of the Yiddish Book Center), No. 59, Spring 2009.
New York Times archives.
