by Bruno, Joe
“Invariably,” Father Cashin said. “Usually the confession comes after the sacrament has been given. Becker maintained his innocence to the end.”
Father Cashin said after he had administered the holy sacrament of Extreme Unction (the last rites) to Becker, he had asked Becker, “Are you guilty by word, or deed or by any manner whatsoever of this crime?”
Becker firmly answered, “Father, as I stand on the brink of the grave, I am not.”
CHARLES BECKER’S FUNERAL
Charles Becker’s body was transported to his home in the Bronx and arrived later that same afternoon. His coffin was carried up the steps of the apartment building and laid to rest in the living room for one day of viewing.
Helen Becker, her rage for Governor Whitman, his actions and his inactions, still stewing, commissioned a local engraver to construct a five-by-seven-inch silver plaque for her husband’s coffin. She took full responsibility for this herself, and she made it clear her husband had not requested such a plaque be placed on his coffin.
The plaque read:
CHARLES BECKER
MURDERED JULY 30, 1915
BY GOVERNOR WHITMAN
District Attorney Francis Martin of the Bronx read about the plague in the newspapers. He immediately rushed to police headquarters, where he met with Inspector Joseph Faurot and first Deputy Commissioner Leon Godley. They determined that this plaque was illegal, and as a result, Inspector Faurot and Captain Wines rushed to the Becker residence to see if such a plaque actually existed. When they saw the plaque for themselves, they informed Helen Becker that the plaque was criminally libelous and had to be removed immediately. When Helen Becker refused, Inspector Faurot unscrewed the plaque himself, put it into his pocket, and he and Captain Wines exited the premises.
District Attorney Martin explained his actions to the press, “While I have sympathy for Mrs. Becker, as I would for anyone in trouble,” Martin said, “I could not, as District Attorney, permit the Governor to be libeled.”
District Attorney Martin insisted he had not been given any direct orders from Governor Whitman to remove the plaque.
From the moment Becker’s body was returned to his home, a curious crowd began forming outside. On August 2, when Becker’s coffin was being transported from Becker’s home to St. Nicholas of Tollentine Church three blocks away, there was an estimated three thousand people gathered around the cordoned-off area from Becker’s home to the church. Becker’s pallbearers were five members of the police department: Lieutenant James Brady, Captain John Bourke, Lieutenant Patrick Shea, patrolmen John O’Connor and John Ferrick; and former police officer Joseph Shepard.
As the pallbearers carried Becker’s coffin toward the church, scores of people broke through the barricade. Policemen used their clubs to beat back the rioters, and it took five minutes for order to be restored so the pallbearers could continue their journey.
After Becker’s coffin reached the church and his funeral mass began, an estimated 10,000 people surrounded the area near the church. There were seats for 700 people inside the church, but it was estimated at least twice as many had piled inside.
Outside the church during the service, battles ensued between the police and a belligerent crowd, and more police enforcements from the High Bridge Police Station were summoned to the scene. In front of the church, people were jammed so close together, women began to faint.
While the funeral services were taking place, a wagon containing floral tributes pulled up in front of the church. One large floral arrangement was a large cross made of lilies, bay leaves, and asters. Large purple lettering across it said: “Sacrificed for Politics.” On the cross was pinned a large envelope with the inscription, “From a Friend.”
Another large floral arrangement had the words, “To the Martyr, with sincere sympathies.” A third floral arrangement, sent by former inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams, who had instructed Becker in Becker’s early years as a policemen on the proper use of the billy club, read, “In sympathy and respect to Charlie.”
When the funeral mass ended, the long trip to Woodlawn Cemetery began. The hearse that contained Becker’s coffin was pulled by two black horses and followed by five black carriages; the first of which carried Helen Becker and her brother. They arrived at Woodlawn Cemetery at 11 a.m.
As the flowers were taken off the wagon to be placed near Becker’s grave, cemetery officials were ordered by the police to pull letters off the floral arrangement which said “Sacrificed for Politics.” When they had finished their task, all that read was “S O P.” The floral arrangement that read “To the Martyr, with sincere sympathies” was also altered as to make it meaningless.
Immediately after Charles Becker’s body was buried, Mrs. Becker told the press she had nothing to say today, but would issue a statement in a few days.
That statement never came.
Helen Becker returned home after her husband’s funeral, not only heartbroken, but dead broke. She had used up all her husband’s ill-gotten gains to pay for his numerous defense lawyers, who did not work cheaply.
Helen Becker continued to live on her meager teacher’s salary, and she eventually became an assistant principle in a northern Manhattan public school. She retired in the mid-1940s and lived until 1962 - 50 years after her husband’s conviction for the murder of Herman Rosenthal.
Although she had been proposed to many times, Helen Becker never remarried. As to why she never accepted any future proposals of marriage, she often said, “I prefer to remain a widow in memory of a man who was put to death by the great state of New York for a crime he did not commit. He was not an angel; he never made a pretense of being one. He was just an ordinary human being, and that is why I loved him so.”
CONCLUSION
The $64,000 question is: Did Lieutenant Charles Becker order the murder of Herman Rosenthal? Or was he framed? And if Becker was framed, who did the framing, and why?
The answer to the first question, to me, is self-evident. Charles Becker did not order the murder of Herman Rosenthal. Yes, Becker was a lout, a ruffian, a crooked cop, and much worse, and he certainly had the makeup to be a murderer if that’s what Becker thought was in his best interest. But that doesn’t mean Becker ordered Rosenthal’s murder.
As for the motive, some people might say Becker had plenty of reasons to want Rosenthal dead. I say it was in Becker’s best interest to keep Rosenthal alive.
Let’s examine the facts as we know them.
It was obvious that Becker and Rosenthal were partners in an illegal gambling house, and at the time of his death, Rosenthal had already informed on Becker in the most open of forums – the New York City press. Killing Rosenthal would not have undone the damage Rosenthal had already wrecked on Becker and his career. Keeping Rosenthal alive was the best thing for Becker, since it would give Becker a chance to discredit the gambler and possibly clear his own name in the process. Becker had a lot of pull in law enforcement and in Tammany Hall. It is not inconceivable that Becker could have walked away from Rosenthal’s accusations unscathed.
And surely, Becker was not a stupid man. If Rosenthal were to be killed just hours before he was to visit District Attorney Whitman’s office to make a formal affidavit against Becker, Becker would be the first person to come under suspicion. This fact made Becker the perfect pigeon for a frame.
Who else who stood to gain if Rosenthal were croaked?
Bald Jack Rose certainly fits that description. With Rosenthal out of the way, Rose, and his pals Harry Vallon and Bridgey Webber presumed they would be standing pretty in the Tenderloin. With the competition from Rosenthal’s gambling house out of the way, these three creeps probably figured they would rake in the fallen crumbs from Rosenthal’s gambling residue. As events further unfolded, they were chased from the Tenderloin instead, by irate members of the underworld, who, by nature, despised informers.
Let’s assume for a moment that Rose arranged Rosenthal’s murder without Becker’s knowledge. I
t could have been the perfect crime if Rose and his pals weren’t so stupid.
Why rent a car for the murder; a car that could be traced back to Rose? Efficient killers would have stolen a car to do the dirty deed. And surely, if Becker were arranging Rosenthal’s murder he would have been intelligent enough to make sure the killers didn’t use a rented car. Once the owner and the driver of the murder car (William Libby and Louis Shapiro) were caught, and they were caught quickly, the entire scheme fell apart.
This is where Rose used his ingenuity; his ability to survive. As soon as Libby and Shapiro were arrested, Rose knew he was in deep unless he came up with a plan. Rose decided to turn chicken ship into chicken salad by first turning himself in. Soon, Webber and Vallon were sitting in the same Tombs prison cell next to Rose, so they could plan and scheme to their heart’s delight.
Behind bars was where Rose transformed himself from a dumb murderer into a smart witness; a witness against Becker, whom was dumfounded; first when Rosenthal was killed, and again when he was arrested for Rosenthal’s murder. Bridgey Webber, Sam Schepps, and Harry Vallon, out to save their own skins, backed up Rose’s play, and this was the start of the demise of Lieutenant Charles Becker.
Rose also knew he had two aces in the hole; two men who wanted Rose’s story to be true for their own personal ambitions - District Attorney Charles Whitman and newspaper columnist Herbert Bayard Swope.
Whitman wanted to be Governor of the state of New York, and then President of the United States of America. The best way to accomplish this exacta was to successfully prosecute a highly visible case; especially one where the accused was a decorated New York City police lieutenant (a variation of this same strategy was later employed by New York City Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey and New York Attorney for the Southern District Rudolph Giuliani, amongst others).
Whitman didn’t want to know the truth, and like Jack Nicholson once said in a movie, “He couldn’t handle the truth.”
The truth was three lowlife gamblers arranged the killing of another lowlife gambler. This was not the stuff dreams were made of; at least not Whitman’s dreams. Whitman needed a big splash to further his political career, and his two successful prosecutions of Becker were the right ticket Whitman needed to propel him upward politically; the truth be damned.
As for Swope, he was just a huckster who knew a good story when he saw it, even if the story lacked the ingredients of the truth. Swope, who later won the first Pulitzer Prize in 1917 for his reporting on Inside the German Empire, once said, “It occurred to me that nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting, so I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial, which became the most important in America. And thereon I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts.”
And that’s exactly what Swope did concerning the murder of Herman Rosenthal. Swope knew the most sensational “opinion” to have was that a corrupt police lieutenant had ordered the killing of Rosenthal. Swope, like Whitman, saw no career advantage in stating the truth, so he tilted his reporting in a manner that would assure a guilty verdict for Becker.
AFTERMATH
When Bridgey Webber was released from the Tombs prison (after the trial of the four killers), he found out the hard way that the underworld of New York City did not like informers, rats, and canaries. In June of 1913, while exiting a Second Avenue gambling den, someone rushed up behind Webber and stabbed him in the back.
Knowing a second Becker trial was coming soon and not wanting to lose one of his star witnesses, District Attorney Whitman rushed to Polyclinic Hospital to make sure Webber was not in any danger of dying. After being told by hospital personnel that Webber’s wound was a superficial one, Whitman asked Webber if he could identify his assailant. Webber clammed up this time, saying only that a kid had stabbed him; he did not know the kid and couldn’t even identify him even if he saw him again.
Then, figuring New York City was no longer a safe place for him, Webber hightailed it to South Fallsburg, New York, where he bought a farm under his brother Charles Webber’s name. Bridgey Webber returned to New York City only to testify at Becker’s second trial.
Harry Vallon, knowing what happed to Webber could soon happen to him, trekked over to Pittsburgh, Pa., where he lived in a swanky hotel under an assumed name. It was reported that Vallon had relatives in Pittsburgh and friends of the most dubious character. On July 28, 1915, just two days before Becker’s execution, Vallon’s identity was unearthed by a member of the press.
Vallon told this reporter, “I feel compelled to talk before it’s too late.”
When Vallon was asked if that meant that he had evidence Becker was innocent and that Vallon was ready to come clean, Vallon answered, “Yes, if I get a chance.”
The Pittsburgh reporter also noted that Vallon was in the charge of a rather large man, who was said to be a detective in the employ of New York Governor Whitman. Vallon told the reporter that he had great animosity against the New York City police department, saying, “They are hounding me to the nut factory by hanging a perjury charge against me.”
Vallon also said that the New York City police had “frightened his girl” away from him by threatening to prosecute him.
Two days later, Becker was executed, and there is no indication that Vallon ever returned to New York City, or that “his girl” ever returned to him.
As for Sam Schepps, he opened a successful jewelry store called the Maison Cluny with his brother Nathan at 437 Madison Avenue. On March 30, 1918, a man named Henry Cohen, better known as “Harry the Yot,” was shot and killed in Schepps’s jewelry store, hours before Cohen was set to squeal to the District Attorney about a gambling swindle Cohen said was perpetrated against him by Schepps. Schepps and two other men were arrested for Cohen’s murder, but they all beat the case due to lack of evidence.
In 1921, Schepps was arrested again and charged with usury, because he refused to return two diamonds worth $80,000 to famed opera singer Lydia Lipkowska, after she had pawned the diamonds to Schepps in order to borrow $12,000. According to Lipkowska, Schepps said he would not return the diamonds unless Lipkowska forked over another five grand.
In October of 1933, Schepps was arrested a third time, this time with his brother Nathan, and charged with forging more than $10,000 worth of bank checks, which the Schepps brothers had foolishly deposited in their own business account.
There are no accounts of Schepps having any more run-ins with the law before he died on January 26, 1936 in the Fifth Avenue Hospital.
Bald Jack Rose reinvented himself after Becker’s convictions. Knowing he was marked as a rat throughout the New York City underworld, and also not wanting to get stabbed like Webber did, Rose donned a black wig and bought a farm in Newport, Conn. Rose, capitalizing on his newfound fame, first made a living writing “true crime” books. When his literary talents were exposed as less than ordinary, Rose toured churches in the Northeast, making compelling sermons about the evils of gambling and other vices. When that gig ran its course, Rose set up a movie production company with the intention of making short films on the subjects of his sermons: gambling is bad; mother and apple pie are good.
This scheme of Rose’s didn’t go over too well, either.
Highlighting the notion that only the good die young, Bald Jack Rose lived until the ripe old age of 72. On Oct. 8, 1947, Rose expired in the arms of his loving wife, Hilda, in New York City’s Roosevelt Hospital from an “internal disorder.”
According to newspaper reports, unlike Charles Becker’s, Rose’s funeral service at Riverside Chapel on Amsterdam Avenue and Seventy-Sixth Street attracted no public attention. By that time, 35 years after the murder of Herman Rosenthal, most New Yorkers had never heard of Bald Jack Rose, and those who did would rather forget him.
It might be whimsy, but it would have been incredibly nice if when Bald Jack Rose entered into the afterlife, he was met by Charles Becker and Becker’s billy club, in a hot place with no cold-running wat
er and no air conditioning.
That would only be right.
The End
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Mob Wives – Fuhgeddaboudit!
By Joe Bruno
PUBLISHED BY:
Knickerbocker Literary Services
EDITED BY:
Marc A. Maturo
COVER BY:
Nitro Covers
Copyright 2012 - Knickerbocker Literary Services
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What People are saying about “Mob Wives – Fuhgeddaboudit!”
FROM MOBSTERS TO THEIR WIVES - RJ Parker - Bestselling Author”
I have read all of Joe Bruno's books on the Mobsters, the crooks, creeps and gangs. I'm not surprised he wrote a book on the Mob's wives too. I suspect there will be another book one day on the children of the mobsters? I can only hope. Love all of these books. Grab a copy.. only a book for a few hours of reading enjoyment.
The "Real of Reality TV - L. L. McKenna
What a pleasure to read! Mr Bruno not only provides insight to the "reality show" but includes his blogs...and responses. While scripted or not, the only truth is the paycheck the characters cash while exposing themselves to the viewers.
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The following blogs are in chronological order. I removed the curse words in the responses, and because of the constant “Internet speak,” which is a language unto itself, I also had to do extensive editing of the responses to make them look like something resembling the English language.
I also used just the first three letters of the reader’s names. Their complete names are on my blog Joe Bruno on the Mob, and on my Facebook page - Mobsters, Gangs - just as they have listed them.