Satan's Circus

by Mike Dash

  TIME TAKEN IN CROSS-EXAMINATION New York Sun, Oct. 16, 1912.

  JEROME’S AND WALDO’S TESTIMONY New York World and American, Oct. 19, 1912; Klein, p. 179; Logan, pp. 200–1.

  HAWLEY’S TESTIMONY Klein, pp. 180–81; Logan, pp. 201–2.

  SULLIVAN’S TESTIMONY New York Times and Evening Post, Oct. 19, 1912; Klein, pp. 181–84; Logan, pp. 203–4.

  “ONE WITNESS FROM HOT SPRINGS” His name was Michael Becholtz, and the conversation, he recalled (Klein, p. 190), had run as follows:

  BECHOLTZ: For God’s sake, why did you have Herman Rosenthal killed?

  SCHEPPS: Why, Mike, you have no idea what a dirty dog he turned out to be afterwards.

  It was scarcely the stuff courtroom sensations were made of.

  SULLIVAN AFTERMATH Logan, pp. 206–7.

  SHAPIRO’S EVIDENCE New York Sun, Oct. 23, 1912.

  “FIVE FORMAL IMMUNITY AGREEMENTS” Logan, p. 207.

  MCINTYRE’S SUMMATION New York Times, Oct. 23, 1912; Klein, pp. 196–202.

  “BECKER BECAME MANIFESTLY NERVOUS” New York Evening Post, Oct. 22, 1912.

  “AT LEAST ONE NEWSPAPER” New York Sun, Oct. 23, 1912.

  MOSS’S SUMMATION Klein, pp. 203–8.

  STATE OF THE CASE New York Sun, and Times, Oct. 24 and 25, 1912; Logan, pp. 210–11.

  GOFF’S CHARGE Klein, pp. 209–19; Logan, pp. 208–9.

  VIRTUALLY ORDERED TO FIND BECKER GUILTY New York American, Oct. 25, 1912.

  THE WAIT New York World, American, Sun, and Tribune, Oct. 25, 1912; Logan, pp. 210–11.

  THE VERDICT New York Times, World, and Sun, Oct. 25, 1912; “My Story,” pp. 36, 38; Logan, pp. 210–11. The Sun revealed that the long delay in arriving at a verdict had had nothing to do with disputes over Becker’s innocence or guilt—all twelve jurors were certain from the start that he was guilty. The debate was rather over the issue of whether the verdict should be murder in the first or second degree. Two jurors held out for a considerable time for the lesser verdict.

  11. RETRIAL

  “WELL,” SAID EMORY BUCKNER… New York World, Oct. 25, 1915. In 1912 Buckner was counsel to the Curran Committee; later, in the 1920s, he became one of the two highest-paid trial lawyers in the country.

  WHITMAN’S POST-TRIAL CAREER For Swope, see New York World, Oct. 26, 1912; for political aspirations, see Dictionary of American Biography, supplement 4 (1946–50), p. 886; for Borah, the Evening Post, and the Committee of Fourteen, see Logan, pp. 219–21; for enhancement, Allen Steinberg, “The Becker–Rosenthal Murder Case: The Cop and the Gambler,” in Frankie Bailey and Steven Chermak (eds.), Famous American Crimes and Trials, p. 260.

  “THE MAN OF THE HOUR…” Viña Delmar, The Becker Scandal, p. 124.

  “A GREAT TRIAL” SOCIETY WOMEN Logan, pp. 213–15; Steinberg, op. cit., p. 261.

  BECKER AFTER THE VERDICT New York World and Sun, Oct. 26, 1912.

  “HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CONVICTED….?” Logan, p. 212. OO DISCOURAGED TO TALK “My Story, by Mrs. Charles Becker,” McClure’s Magazine, Sept. 1914, p. 38.

  “EVERYBODY WAS CRYING BUT US TWO” Ibid.

  SING SING New York Sun and American, Oct. 30, 1912; Lewis Laws, 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, pp. 24–25, 78, 80; Logan, pp. 216, 221–22, 235–36; Scott Christianson, Condemned, pp. 4, 43.

  A MEASURE OF REDEMPTION Logan, pp. 235–36.

  SHORTAGE OF FUNDS New York Times, Oct. 27, 1912.

  NEW LAWYERS Logan, pp. 212–13; Klein, p. 240.

  HELEN BECKER’S TRAVAILS New York Times, Dec. 13, 1913; “My Story,” p. 36.

  CHARLOTTE BECKER For the name “Ruth,” see “My Story,” p. 39; quotations from Logan, pp. 223–24. The girl is referred to as “Charlotte,” however, in a letter Becker wrote to his niece Mary Weyrauch on April 3, 1913, soon after her burial. MBC.

  “I KNOW MAMA PICTURED HELEN…” Viña Delmar, The Becker Scandal, p. 131.

  GUNMEN’S TRIAL So promptly did the twelve jurors reach a verdict that they did not even request that sandwiches be sent into the jury room, and, according to the New York Sun, their decision would have been announced even more swiftly had it not been for a certain sense of propriety—not to mention concern that they be seen to be doing their job conscientiously. New York Sun, World, Times, and American, Nov. 20, 1912; Logan, p. 217.

  LEWIS’S PROTESTATIONS On Whitey’s atrocious marksmanship, see Shoenfeld story #127, Oct. 21, 1912, Magnes Papers P3/1782, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem. For his final statement, see New York American, Apr. 14, 1914.

  “GETTING ENTANGLED WITH THE DISTRICT’S STREET GANGS” “I had the best father and mother a boy ever had,” Louie wrote, “but I was not a good son to them. I went the wrong way. Tell all the boys on the East side, the boys I know—there are hundreds of them—tell them about the mistakes I made, which I could have avoided if I had done the right thing. Let them know that the synagogue is their best home and God is their best friend…. We were supposed, the other three boys and I, to have as many friends as any fellows on the East side, but when it came to a showdown, it was only the synagogue that stood by us, outside of our parents.” New York American, Apr. 12 and 13, 1914.

  DAGO FRANK’S CONFESSION New York American, Apr. 14, 1914.

  EXECUTION OF THE FOUR GUNMEN The execution was a dramatic one, not least for the discovery, the day before the date set for the electrocution, that the chair had been sabotaged by another prisoner; the dynamo had been damaged so badly that it would not have delivered any current. New York American, Apr. 13, 1914. As the bodies of the four gunmen were prepared for burial, thousands of curiosity seekers flooded into the streets. The crowds appeared so menacing that Lefty Louie’s body had to be hidden in order to deter them from laying siege to the undertakers’. No such precautions were taken in the case of Gyp the Blood, whose remains were laid out at Samuel Rothschild’s undertaking establishment on Lenox Avenue. A mob of some four thousand people quickly surrounded the premises, anxious for sight of the coffin, causing such severe traffic congestion that the police decided to disperse the crowd by the stratagem of loading a dummy coffin onto a hearse. The horses pulling the carriage were lashed and set off toward a nearby cemetery at a gallop, most of the spectators streaming after it as best they could on foot. New York World, Apr. 14, 1914.

  Gyp was buried the day after his execution. He was interred alongside Whitey Lewis in Mount Zion Cemetery, Maspeth. The cortege succeeded in outdistancing the crowd of gawkers still thronging the streets outside Rothschild’s, and the funeral itself was attended by only twenty people, seven of whom were members of the dead man’s immediate family. “There were no flowers and not a word was spoken until the last shovel of dirt had been thrown upon the mound,” reported the New York World on April 15, 1914. “Then Horowitz’s father fell over the grave, crying: ‘My heart is broken. He was a good boy and a good son.’”

  Lefty Louie was buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery, Flushing, that same day. His interment was as disorderly as that of Gyp the Blood. The dead man’s wife fainted on her arrival at the undertaker’s and then lapsed into hysterics, delaying the cortege by twenty minutes.

  Dago Frank Cirofici, meanwhile, was interred on April 15. Anxious to avoid the scenes of chaos that had marred the funerals of Rosenberg and Horowitz, his family abandoned plans for a public funeral and held a simple service in their home instead. That did not stop an unruly crowd from assembling outside the family’s “little frame dwelling” on East 187th Street, and when a neighbor’s porch collapsed under the weight of sightseers, “a panic was only narrowly averted.” Five carriages were required to carry flowers to the cemetery. World, Apr. 16, 1914.

  RELEASE OF THE FOUR GAMBLERS Accounts of the release of the gamblers differ; several newspapers state that Vallon left separately through a side door and the other two men slunk off in taxis with the blinds drawn low. New York World, American, and Sun, Nov. 22, 1912; Klein, pp. 243–45; my quotation comes from Logan, p. 218.

  G
AMBLERS ON BROADWAY Klein, pp. 430–31.

  HELEN’S MEETING WITH SCHEPPS Logan, pp. 299–300.

  MARTIN MANTON New York Herald and Globe and Mail, May 14, 1914; Dictionary of American Biography supplement 13.

  “MAINLY AN OFFICE-SHARING ARRANGEMENT” Logan, p. 253.

  WILLIAM SULZER Klein, pp. 431–32; Jacob Friedman, The Impeachment of Governor William Sulzer, pp. 15–72.

  BECKER’S DEMEANOR New York Herald, Feb. 29, 1913; Logan, pp. 224–25.

  IMPEACHMENT OF SULZER Friedman, op. cit., pp. 148–90.

  MANTON’S NEW EVIDENCE New York Herald, Dec. 13, 1913.

  BECKER “BRIBES” WITNESSES; POLICE RAISE DEFENSE FUND Logan, p. 255.

  DECLINE AND FALL OF BIG TIM SULLIVAN New York Times, Sept. 14, 15, and 30, and Sun and World, Sept. 16, 1913; Klein, p. 340; Daniel Czitrom, “Underworlds and Underdogs: Big Tim Sullivan and Metropolitan Politics in New York, 1889–1913,” Journal of American History 78 (1991), p. 558.

  COMMODORE DUTCH Joseph Mitchell, McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon, pp. 131–32.

  COURT OF APPEALS DECISION 210 NY, pp. 289–366; New York Times, Feb. 25, and World, Feb. 25 and 27, 1914; Klein, pp. 220–46; Logan, pp. 234–47.

  “FROM A HUNDRED SLITTED WINDOWS…” New York World, Feb. 27, 1914.

  RETRIAL New York Times, World, and American, May 5, 12, 14, and 19, 1914; Sun, May 19 and 23, 1914; Herbert Mitgang, The Man Who Rode the Tiger, pp. 102–105; Klein, pp. 247–332; Logan, pp. 254–76.

  MARSHALL’S EVIDENCE New York Times, Herald, and World, May 19, 1914; Klein, pp. 290–314.

  12. DEATH-HOUSE

  RETRIALS AND MISTRIALS New York Sun, May 23, 1914.

  POSSIBLE VERDICTS Ibid.

  MOB; DEATH-HOUSE CELL “My Story, by Mrs. Charles Becker,” McClure’s Magazine, Sept. 1914, p. 43; Logan, p. 275.

  THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE Rudolph Chamberlain, There Is No Truce, pp. 28, 34, 149, 181, 193–94, 213, 229, 235–36, 241–60, 264–74, 284, 294–95, 298, 327.

  OSBORNE AND BECKER Ibid., pp. 304–6.

  RELIGIOUS CONVERSION The date of the conversion is not certain, but Andy Logan puts it during the summer of 1913. Becker gave his religion as “Catholic” after his second trial a few months later (New York Sun, May 23, 1914). As for his influences, Becker’s mother was a member of the Roman church, and his wife was nominally an Irish Catholic but in practice was not religious and was not a churchgoer. Helen’s experiences during her husband’s trials and failed appeals made her if anything an atheist, leaving Father Cashin—and Becker’s own terminal predicament—as the most likely reasons for the policeman’s embracing of the Catholic faith. “My Story,” pp. 43–44; Logan, pp. 222–23, 235–36.

  READING MATTER Among the effects disposed of by Becker just before his execution were copies of Theodore Roosevelt’s Through the Brazilian Wilderness and a book on the Panama Canal. New York Times, July 29, 1915.

  LETTERS Becker to Gus Neuberger, Dec. 8, 1912; Becker to Mary Weyrauch, Apr. 3, 1913, both MBC; “My Story,” p. 43.

  BECKER’S MOTHER Her condition was reported in the Sullivan County Record, Oct., 31, 1912. “QUEEN OF MY HEART…” Letter dated June 19, 1914, reprinted in “My Story,” p. 37.

  “I TRY…” Ibid p. 43.

  OLINVILLE AVENUE Ibid., p. 36; Logan, p. 276.

  “ANOTHER BAD TIME” “My Story,” p. 42.

  WHITMAN’S POLITICAL CAREER For Whitman’s gubernatorial campaign and presidential ambitions, see Dictionary of American Biography supplement 4 (1946–50), pp. 885–86; Logan, pp. 278–80; Allen Steinberg, “The Becker Case and American Progressivism” in Amy Gilman Srebnick and René Lévy (eds.), Crime and Culture, p. 81.

  WHITMAN’S DRINKING Logan pp. 316, 336; Dictionary of American Biography supplement 4 (1946–50), pp. 885–86.

  MARSHALL’S RETRACTION Philadelphia Evening Ledger, Feb. 13, 1915; New York Reports, 215 NY, pp. 159–60; Klein, pp. 293–314. Klein notes in conclusion that when, in 1919, Marshall was arrested once again, on a charge of extortion, the lawyer who represented him was Frederick Groehl.

  BECKER’S SECOND APPEAL Klein, pp. 332–33. Logan, pp. 283–89, advances a detailed analysis of the voting patterns of the court of appeals and uses her knowledge of state politics to convincingly explain them.

  “FRANTIC AND FUTILE ANGER” Logan, p. 285.

  BRIDGEY WEBBER’S VIEWS New York Globe and Mail, May 18, 1915.

  BECKER’S ACCOUNT AND APPLEBAUM’S CORROBORATION Klein, pp. 342–87, 408–15; Logan, pp. 299–306. Klein adds that Applebaum told him that he was at the Capitol in Albany a few days before Becker’s execution and passed on the details of these conversations then to Whitman, who unsurprisingly failed to act on them.

  “APPLEBAUM HAD FELT UNABLE…” In fact, Applebaum said, he had had a conference with Lieutenant John Becker, the condemned man’s brother, shortly before the second trial, expressed a willingness to testify, and even suggested that Becker retain a lawyer friend of his as his trial attorney. For some unknown reason, this offer was never taken up. Klein, pp. 414–15.

  LAST LEGAL EFFORTS Klein, pp. 333–41; Logan, p. 307. “DENIED, DENIED” New York Sun, July 29, 1912.

  “DIE LIKE A MAN” New York Times, July 29, 1915.

  LEO FRANK CASE Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson, The Silent and the Damned, pp. 85–89.

  HELEN BECKER’S APPEAL New York Herald, July 30, 1915; Logan, pp. 310, 316–17.

  SING SING PREPARES New York Times, July 19, 1915; Logan, pp. 308, 320.

  STATEMENTS OF PRESS AND LAWYERS New York Times, July 29 and 31, and American and World, July 31, 1915; Logan, pp. 317–18.

  BECKER PREPARED FOR DEATH New York Times, World, and Sun, July 29, 1915.

  LAST LETTERS Klein, pp. 388–95, 399.

  RELATIVES; “ROCK OF AGES” New York Times, July 30, 1915.

  HELEN BECKER’S JOURNEY Ibid. and Sun and World, July 30, 1915.

  HISTORY OF ELECTROCUTION John Laurence, A History of Capital Punishment, pp. 64–68.

  THE EXECUTION New York World, Sun Times, and American, July 31, 1915. The executioner’s name was John Hilbert; he remained in the job until 1926 but became progressively more morose and depressed by it, finally resigning unexpectedly on the night before two more men were due to go to the chair. Hilbert was subsequently found dead, a suicide who had shot himself in the head. BECKER’S AUTOPSY New York Sun, American, and Journal, July 31, 1915; Logan, p. 323.

  EPILOGUE

  ROTHSTEIN AT JACK’S There is no contemporary authority for this oft-told story. It first appeared in Donald Henderson Clarke’s In the Reign of Rothstein, p. 31. Clarke knew Rothstein and had the story from several of the men present at the time, however, so it may be accepted as probably accurate. Jack’s stood on the corner of West Forty-third Street and Sixth Avenue and was—adds Herbert Asbury in Gangs of New York, p. 312—“famous for its Irish bacon and its flying wedge of waiters who ejected obstreperous customers with a minimum of motion and a maximum of efficiency.”

  BODY BROUGHT BACK TO NEW YORK The hearse’s journey to and from Ossining had been fraught. The vehicle broke down five times on the way up from New York City—“tire trouble” was blamed—and once on the way back, taking a total of eleven hours to complete the round-trip. Becker’s body made the journey in a cheap, black-painted wooden coffin provided by the state. New York Journal, July 30; Tribune and World, July 31, 1915.

  VISITORS New York Sun, Aug. 1, 1915; Logan, pp. 325–26.

  MRS. BECKER AND THE SILVER PLATE As the papers of the time noted, there was a precedent for this. When, more than two decades earlier, a prisoner named Carlyle Harris was executed for the murder of his wife, his mother had a plate inscribed with the words “Murdered by New York State” screwed to his coffin. In Harris’s case the plate remained on the coffin and he was buried with it. New York Times, Aug. 2; World, Aug. 1 and 2; American, Aug. 2 and 3; New York Sun, Aug. 2, 1915.

  BECKER’S FUNERAL An estimated eight-tenths of the vast crowd
were women, the World reported, noting, too, that Becker was buried with the photograph of his wife that he had worn to his execution tucked into an inside pocket of his suit. New York American and Sun, Aug. 2; New York World, Aug. 2 and 3; Sullivan County Record, Aug. 8, 1915; Logan, pp. 326–27.

  A SECOND SPASM OF REFORM It would be misleading to attribute all these changes solely to reaction to the Becker case. The impeachment of Governor Sulzer certainly aroused a statewide fury that turned more voters against the Democratic candidates for office than the murky uncertainties of the Rosenthal affair could ever do. But within the confines of New York City, the impact of Becker’s arrest, trials, and conviction was considerable. Levine, p. 14; Oliver Allen, The Tiger, pp. 223–27; Lately Thomas, The Mayor Who Mastered New York, pp. 484, 491; Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, pp. 387–91.

  COMMISSIONER WOODS Woods was a former New York Sun reporter and an English instructor who had once taught Roosevelt’s children. He was first appointed a deputy commissioner of police by Theodore Bingham in 1907. A few years later, he cemented his position and considerably enhanced his social status by marrying J. P. Morgan’s granddaughter. Levine, pp. 373–81; James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto, NYPD, p. 143; Gabriel Chin, New York City Police Corruption Investigation Commissions, 1894–1994 II, p. x; Lewis Valentine, Night Stick, pp. 34–35; Edwin Lewison, John Purroy Mitchel, pp. 117–21.

  “YOU HAVE SHOWN US…” Cited in Levine, p. 380.

  CURRAN COMMITTEE See The Report of the Special Committee of the Board of Aldermen of the City of New York Appointed August 5, 1912, to Investigate the Police Department, pp. 1–5; Henry Curran, Pillar to Post, pp. 162–70, 173–74.

  MITCHEL VOTED OUT Though the mayor was criticized for his personal conduct—unlike his predecessor, Gaynor, he enjoyed the New York social scene—the principal issue in the campaign was education. Mitchel had backed a new program of vocational education, which Tammany used to accuse him of denying immigrants the right to the best schooling. He lost overwhelmingly.

  CONFIDENTIAL SQUAD SHUT DOWN The fate of the squad’s officers was all too predictable. Transferred to Brooklyn and given unpleasant desk duty, Lewis Valentine spent the next eight years in internal exile, suffering incessant hazing from his colleagues. Valentine, op. cit., p. 37.