Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series

by David Pietrusza

  Suspicions were inescapable that additional pages were removed after his demise. The authorities said otherwise. "Not even a little corner is missing," District Attorney Banton reported cheerfully. "Of course, I cannot say what happened to the Rothstein papers before the grand jury received them, but from the looks of them, they were intact. You usually can tell if papers are missing."

  Not in a loose-leaf notebook you can't.

  In November 1929, Jimmy Walker overwhelmingly crushed Fiorello LaGuardia. George McManus proceeded safely to trial and to freedom. LaGuardia's career seemed as dead as A. R. But Jimmy Walker's safe and profitable little world changed when on the evening of December 7, 1929, the Bronx's Tepecano Democratic Club held a testimonial (i.e., fund-raiser) at the Roman Gardens Restaurant, 187th Street and Southern Boulevard.

  The guest of honor: club president judge Albert Vitale.

  It was a night of good cheer. The crowd of fifty included former city magistrate Michael N. Delagi, longtime henchman of the nowdeceased "Big Tom" Foley; police detective Arthur C. Johnson; and two armed court attendants. Six other guests had criminal records, including hoodlums Joseph "Joe the Baker" Catania (nephew of mobster Ciro Terranova, the city's "Artichoke King") and Daniel lamascia. Catania would be killed in February 1930; lamascia-in the company of Dutch Schultz-would be gunned down by police in June 1931. All six, however, possessed something else in common: charges against them dismissed in various magistrates' courts, including Vitale's own venue. The Tepecano Democratic Club, however, believed in the rehabilitation of miscreants and their subsequent mainstreaming into the larger society: a full 10 percent of the club's 300 members had police records.

  At 1:30 A.M. Vitale was addressing the crowd when seven gunmen (six of whom were masked) burst in and ordered everyone to lie facedown.

  "Ain't you fellows ashamed of yourselves to hold up this dinner given to judge Vitale?" asked Ciro Terranova. "We're all paisans ourselves." Terranova seemed oddly cheerful.

  Upon the dais, Vitale shook his head at Detective Johnson. "I figured," Johnson would testify, "that he meant, `Don't start anything.' "

  The robbers collected $2,000 in cash (including $40 from Vitale), $2,500 in jewels, and the weapons of the three law-enforcement officers present-a most embarrassing situation. Vitale ordered everyone not to phone the police. "Keep quiet and don't say anything," he told Johnson, saying he had the situation well in hand.

  He did. "Around 4 am Sunday," Johnson would recall. "I was called to the Tepecano Democratic Club, and Judge Vitale brought me to an anteroom where there was a desk. He pulled out the top right-hand drawer and said, `There is your gun.' I asked him where he had got the gun and he was unable to advise me, stating that it had come back and that was all he knew about it."

  But that was not all he knew about it. Vitale also secured the return of all cash and jewelry stolen that night.

  The voting public had ignored LaGuardia's campaign accusations about Vitale and Rothstein, but this outrage piqued their curiosity. What sort of judge consorted with Catania and lamascia? How could a judge obtain the return of the stolen goods so easily and quickly? Indeed, what sort of robbery was this?

  By year's end, the public had the answers. All revolved around Ciro Terranova.

  Terranova, an associate of such mobsters as Dutch Schultz and Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria, extorted protection from much of New York's produce trade, hence his nickname "The Artichoke King," On June 1, 1928, a Terranova rival, Frankie Yale (nee Uale), was riding through Brooklyn's Bay Ridge neighborhood in his new Lincoln coupe. A black Nash pulled alongside. The four men inside emptied over one hundred .45 caliber and Thompson submachine- gun slugs into the Lincoln-and Yale-ruining a beautiful automobile, but providing the corpse necessary for New York's most elaborate gangland funeral. Ten thousand admirers accompanied Yale's $10,000 silver coffin to the cemetery. One hundred and twelve men surrounded his grave. Each held a rose, and while gravediggers shoveled earth over Frankie's remains, each tossed his rose onto his coffin.

  In June 1929, Yale's associate, Frankie Marlow (nee Gandolfo Civito), followed him in death. Terranova engineered both murders, employing Chicago hit men for each. In fact, Al Capone owned the black Nash used in the Yale killing.

  The Yale-Marlow killings might be mere footnotes in gangland history, had not Ciro Terranova been so cheap-or so stupid. He had agreed to pay $20,000 for the murders, but once Yale and Marlow were dead, he refused to pay anything beyond the $5,000 advance the killers had already received.

  They would have killed the Artichoke King himself to get it, but realized there was little cash in that. Instead, they blackmailed him. Evidently, when Terranova put out a contract on someone, he literally put out a contract on someone. His hired guns actually possessed a piece of paper, detailing their obligations (i.e., kill Yale and Marlow) as well as Terranova's (i.e., pay $20,000). Not caring much about their reputations (or evidently about the police) in the New York metropolitan area, they threatened to release the document.

  Terranova promised to pay the assassins at Vitale's fund-raiser. Instead, he contrived this faux-robbery to retrieve the embarrassing agreement. By Christmas 1929, police investigators figured this out and accused Ciro of conspiracy, assault, and robbery (but oddly enough not with Yale's or Marlow's murders). Terranova denied everything and, like George McManus, walked away a free man.

  Magistrate Vitale was not so lucky. The New York Bar Association demanded a formal investigation of the Tepecano incident, the Rothstein loan, and Vitale's sizable savings. Over a four-year period in which Vitale had earned just $48,000, he had banked $165,000.

  Connected to the Rothstein loan was the case of Charles Fawcett, accused of helping himself to the contents of Bronx storekeeper Joseph C. Harth's cash register. A. R. secured attorney Frederick Kaplan (a Rothstein favorite and often Sidney Stajer's attorney) to defend his associate, Fawcett. Kaplan immediately tried muscling Harth into dropping his complaint-indicating that the great Rothstein desired such an outcome. Harth refused, and when the case went before Vitale, it ended up like this:

  ASSISTANT D.A.: What did you find when you looked in there?

  KRAKAUER [a next-door neighbor]: I saw this defendant in the act of pushing the register drawer closed, with his hands full of money. He just put that in his pocket as I looked in.

  ASSISTANT D.A.: Did you see this defendant taking the money out of the register?

  KRAKAUER: Yes. It wasn't right in the register; it was in his hand. I didn't see him take it out of the register, but I seen him with his hands full of money closing the drawer.

  KAPLAN: I move to strike out the last part of that answer.

  VITALE: Strike it out.

  VITALE [to arresting officer Richard Hannigan]: Have you anybody that saw the defendant taking the money out of the register, officer?

  HANNIGAN: No.

  VITALE: Case dismissed.

  The inescapable conclusion: A. R. had fixed the case for Fawcett, most likely for a price.

  Presenting evidence for the bar association against Vitale in the matter of his controversial loan from A. R. was George Z. Medalie, Rothstein's attorney in the Edward M. Fuller bankruptcy matter. Said Medalie:

  We do not pretend to know all about the Rothstein case. It is shrouded in mystery.

  We begin with a loan that appears on its face to have been wholly unnecessary. Even though the respondent [Vitale] was desirous of making speculative profits, it is quite clear that he never needed to borrow this money from Rothstein, or from anyone else, for that purpose.

  If he wanted about $20,000 with which to purchase on margin additional stock of the Bank of Italy in order to average his holdings by reason of the decline that the stock had suffered he had the securities that were available as collateral and he had the cash that was better than collateral. On June 30, 1928 he solemnly told the Claremont National Bank that he had on hand $37,000 in cash. He says on June 15 he had a large amount of cash on deposit with his
banks.

  Investigators found Vitale "guilty of gross carelessness, inattention, ignorance and incompetency." In August 1930, the Appellate Division unanimously ordered him removed from office.

  Suddenly everything about the city's judiciary was suspect. On August 6, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater, a rising star on the city bench, made a substantial withdrawal from his Fifth Avenue bank, carefully removed some files from his office, and then traveled to West 45th Street, where he stepped into a taxicab ... and simply ... vanished. No one saw Crater again or discovered why he had gone. Many suspected he had something to hide-or that someone wanted him silenced.

  On August 25 Governor Franklin Roosevelt appointed Samuel Seabury, presiding judge in the second Becker-Rosenthal trial, to conduct a full investigation of the Magistrates' Courts. Seabury systematically uncovered a pattern of corruption involving not just judges, but police and prosecutors. The public didn't mind corruption regarding gamblers or bootleggers, but it did mind authorities framing innocent women on prostitution charges. When Chile Mapocha Acuna, a former waiter at Reuben's, accused twenty-eight police officers and numerous magistrates of entrapping hundreds of innocent women-nurses, landladies, ordinary housewives-for profit, the public was outraged.

  Among the worst involved in this enterprise was the city's first woman judge, jean Norris. But others soon joined her in resigning: George W. Simpson (for ill health-he had arthritis in one finger); Louis B. Brodsky, who transacted $7 million in real estate and stock deals while on the bench; A. R.'s old associate, Francis X. McQuade, whose illegally holding of outside employment while serving as magistrate (including the post of treasurer of the New York Giants) finally attracted public notice; and Crater ally George F. Ewald, who in 1927 paid Tammany leader Martin J. Healey $10,000 for his judgeship.

  Tammany Hall often played for keeps. No one really knew what happened to judge Crater, but everyone knew what happened to Vivian Gordon, a thirty-two-year-old redhead who was scheduled to testify about her bogus 1923 arrest by vice-squad police. On February 26, 1931, passersby found her strangled in Van Cortlandt Park. Her murder was never solved, but by now the public suspected the worst.

  Governor Roosevelt had long despised Tammany. As a freshman state senator, in 1911 he led the fight blocking the appointment of Charles Francis Murphy's candidate for United States Senate, William "Blue-Eyed Billy" Sheehan, a former lieutenant governor and speaker of the assembly, but, nonetheless, an unimpressive hack. Now Roosevelt wanted the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination and had to walk a fine line. He couldn't appear too cozy with the corruptionridden machine, yet, he feared open war with his own state's most powerful Democratic Party organization. In early 1930, Roosevelt vetoed a Republican-backed bill authorizing a wider investigation of New York City municipal corruption. Still, he knew he could not long resist the growing pressure for reform.

  On March 10, 1931 FDR gave judge Seabury another assignment: to probe New York County's ineffectual District Attorney Thomas C. T. Crain. Hyman Biller hadn't been the only miscreant to escape justice under Crain's feeble watch. Most recently Crain had botched the investigation of the Healey-Ewald judge-buying scandal. Before the month was over, Roosevelt signed legislation authorizing a $250,000 joint legislative committee for "the investigation of the departments of the government of the City of New York." Again, Judge Seabury was in charge.

  Wherever he looked Seabury found corruption. Prominent Tammanyites made a fortune peddling influence with the variancegranting Board of Standards and Appeals. From 1922 through 1930, Tammany bagman William E "Horse Doctor" Doyle, a former veterinarian, collected $2 million for appearances before the board. Former Tammany leader George W. Olvany's law firm hauled in another $5 million. Olvany collected even more on his own. Asked if political connections helped his private practice, he grinned and said, "Well, it won't hurt any."

  Many prominent Democrats displayed unusual frugality, one being Kings County Register James A. McQuade, who banked $520,000 while taking home less than $50,000 from his official position. McQuade responded with an incoherent tale of mysterious borrowings to support thirty-four starving relatives. McQuade should have been removed from office. Instead, in 1931, Brooklyn Democratic boss John McCooey nominated him for sheriff. He won.

  Less fortunate was New York County Sheriff, former Deputy County Clerk, and leader of the Fourteenth Assembly District, the Honorable Thomas M. Farley-not to be confused with either A. R.'s longtime servant Tom Farley or Tammany boss Tom Foley.

  On October 6, 1931, the 250-pound Farley took the witness stand in his own defense. Seabury asked how, in the past seven years, Farley, earning just $87,000 in public service, banked $396,000. Farley responded with ingenious density, later memorialized as the song, "Little Tin Box" in the Broadway musical Fiorello!:

  Q-You deposited during the year 1925 some $34,824-and during that time, what was your position?

  A-Deputy County Clerk.

  Q-And your salary?

  A-I guess $6,000.

  Q-Will you tell the Committee where you could have gotten that sum of money?

  A-Monies that I had saved.

  Q-Where did you keep these monies that you had saved?

  A-In a big box in a big safe.

  Q-Was [it] fairly full when you withdrew the money?

  A-It was full.

  Q-Was this big box that was safely kept in the big safe a tin box?

  A-A tin box.

  Q-Sheriff, coming to 1926, did not your total deposits for that year amount to $49,746?

  A-That is what I deposited.

  Q-Sheriff, where did you get this money?

  A-Monies I saved.

  Q-What is the most money you ever put in that tin box you have?

  A-I had as much as $100,000 in it.

  Q-When did you deposit that?

  A-From time to time.

  Then Seabury asked about the $83,000 he deposited in three banks in 1929:

  A-Well, that came from the good box I had. [Laughter].

  Q-Kind of a magic box?

  A-It was a wonderful box.

  Indeed it was a wonderful box, but not wonderful enough to save Sheriff Farley's job. Governor Roosevelt removed Farley from office, noting that "as a matter of sound public policy . . . when a public official is under inquiry ... and it appears that his scale of living, or the total of his bank deposits, far exceeds the public salary which he is known to receive, he ... owes a positive public duty to the community to give a reasonable or creditable explanation of the sources of the deposits, or the source which enables him to maintain a scale of living beyond the amount of his salary."

  Such a principle spelled trouble for many in Tammany, most particularly for James J. Walker. "The Mayor of the Jazz Age" lived high, wide, and handsome. He enjoyed long and expensive European travel, partied at the best clubs, boasted an extensive and expensive wardrobe, and, last but not least, maintained a showgirl mistress, Miss Betty Compton.

  Seabury now moved against the mayor himself. Slowly, methodically, Seabury's staff crafted a case against Walker, as they had against the magistrates and the rest of the administration. On May 25, 1932, judge Seabury summoned Walker to the stand. On the first day, the mayor held his own, displaying the wit, charm, and intellect that so often compensated for sloth and arrogance. One exchange went like this:

  SEAauRY: Apparently you are making a speech Mr. Mayor.

  WALKER: Well, they're not so bad. Did you ever listen to one of them?

  Walker didn't cow Seabury, and he kept grilling Walker. He wanted to know about $26,535 in bond profits Walker received from a transaction in which he invested nothing at all. He questioned Walker about his unhealthy interest in awarding a bus franchise to the supremely unqualified Equitable Coach Co. (from which he received a $10,000 line of credit for his 1927 trip to Paris). Seabury interrogated him about his friendship with publishing magnate Paul Block, who coveted a contract to supply ceramic subway tiles. Block had set up a joint
brokerage account with Walker. Again, Walker contributed nothing-but netted after-tax profits of $246,692.

  Walker's ordeal on the stand lasted two days. When it ended, he traveled to Yankee Stadium to dedicate a monument to late Yankee manager Miller J. Huggins. After Walker's first day of testimony, a Madison Square Garden crowd of 18,000 gathered at police academy graduation ceremonies had cheered him. A bit nervously, perhaps, but the masses remained his. Now they turned on him. When Walker marched from his field level box, the booing grew more deafening with each step he took. On reaching center field, he began:

  Politics is like baseball.

  In baseball the greatest star may be cheered for a home run today and then, on the very next day, be booed if he strikes out.

  Gentleman Jimmy paused for effect, then continued: "That's the way it is, and that's the way it should be. Freedom of speech"-and with that he pointed upward to Old Glory-

  is guaranteed by that emblem up there. It also guarantees us the right to criticize, or even to boo. If a politician pops out, fouls out, or strikes out, he must expect adverse criticism. If he cannot withstand the boos-and I mean b-o-o-s, and not b-o-o-z-e" [and with that, the crowd erupted in laughter] then he also should not pay attention to praise.

  The great little fellow to whom this memorial tablet has been placed upon the scene of his many triumphs, Miller Huggins, sometimes heard his mighty team booed. Fame is a comet that chases its own tail in the sky. Huggins is now well beyond the reach of criticism or praise, but we still remember him as a wonderful man. It is so important to be a man first, and regard whatever else that comes to you or is denied you in the way of laurels as a secondary consideration. It is more important, when all else is over, and one has gone through the narrow door from which there is no returning, to have been loved than to have been exalted.

  The crowd that had jeered minutes before now cheered thunderously.

  Seabury didn't cheer. On June 1, 1932, he interrogated the mayor's older brother, Dr. William H. Walker, Jr., and New Yorkers discovered that for all their mayor's faults, he was at least his brother's keeper. Earning just $6,500 annually as a Board of Education medical examiner, Dr. Walker had banked $451,258 in the past four years. Testimony and documentation revealed that he had collected over $100,000 in kickbacks from four physicians working on city workmen's compensation cases.