Uncle John’s True Crime
Page 5
What Happened: Police searched Crater’s apartment and found nothing suspicious. They offered rewards for information...but not even the taxi driver came forward. Even after interviewing 300 people—resulting in 2,000 pages of testimony—they still had no clues to his whereabouts.
But as the investigation continued, police—and the public—were astonished to see Crater’s carefully constructed facade unravel. It turned out, for example, that he’d kept a number of mistresses and had often been seen on the town with showgirls. More surprising however, was his involvement in graft, fraud, and political payoffs. Crater was a player in two major scandals, which came to light after he vanished. It also seemed as though he’d be implicated in the Ewald Scandal, which involved paying for a city appointment; there was even evidence that Crater had paid for his own appointment to the bench.
Of the 8,000 or so cases filed with the Supreme Court each year, only about 150 are heard.
Crater’s fate was hotly debated by the public. Some were sure he was murdered by gangster associates. Others—noting that the judge had removed files containing potentially incriminating evidence from his office just before he disappeared—speculated that political cronies had killed him to shut him up. Or maybe a mistress who’d been blackmailing him had done it. Then again, perhaps the judge had committed suicide rather than watch his career crumble because of scandal. Whoever was responsible, and whatever happened to the body, it was assumed Crater was dead.
Postmortem: Crater’s wife suffered a nervous breakdown and didn’t return to their New York apartment until January 1931. There, she found an envelope in the top drawer of her dresser. It contained $6,690 in cash, the judge’s will, written five years before (leaving his entire estate to her), and a three-page penciled note that listed everyone who owed the judge money. It closed with the words, “Am very weary. Love, Joe.” The police department had searched the apartment thoroughly, and had kept a 24-hour guard on it since the disappearance—so no one could imagine how or when the envelope had gotten there. But it gave rise to another possibility: Crater had intentionally disappeared.
Nothing more came of it. In July 1937, Judge Joseph Force Crater was declared legally dead, and his wife collected on his life insurance. By then, New York’s police commissioner believed that “Crater’s disappearance was premeditated.” The famous file 13595 remains open to this day—no trace of Crater or his body have ever been found.
Update: In 2005, after 91-year-old Stella Ferrucci-Good died in Queens, her daughter found an envelope marked “Do not open until my death.” Inside was a letter that implicated the cabbie who picked up Crater as well as his brother, a crooked cop. The letter claimed that they merely wanted to “rough him up,” but Crater fought back and was killed. He was buried underneath the boardwalk on Coney Island, where the New York Aquarium is now located. Five skeletons were found there in the 1950s, but then they were piled on top of thousands of others in unmarked mass graves on Hart Island. Because it would be nearly impossible to test all of the bones to get a match for Judge Crater, the case remains open.
John Dillinger once escaped from prison using a piece of wood shaped like a gun.
NO CAN(ADA) DO
Many of our Canadian readers have sent us items about life in the Great White North...including some strange Canadian laws. Here are a few examples.
In Canada, it’s illegal to jump from a flying airplane without a parachute.
In Nova Scotia, you’re not allowed to water the lawn when it is raining.
In Toronto, it’s illegal to drag a dead horse along Yonge Street on Sunday.
A maritime law in Canada specifies that two vessels cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
In Quebec, margarine must be a different color from butter.
The city of Guelph, Ontario, is classified as a “no-pee zone.”
In Montreal, you may not park a car in such a way that it is blocking your own driveway.
It’s illegal to ride a Toronto streetcar on Sunday if you’ve been eating garlic.
In Alberta, wooden logs may not be painted.
It is illegal to kill a Sasquatch in British Columbia.
An Etobicoke, Ontario, by-law states that no more than 3.5 inches of water is allowed in a bathtub.
In Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, you can only buy liquor with a doctor’s prescription.
Burnaby, B.C., has a 10 p.m. curfew—for dogs.
An anti-noise ordinance in Ottawa makes it illegal for bees to buzz.
Pedestrians on Toronto sidewalks must give a hand signal before turning.
In Vancouver, BC, it’s illegal to ride a tricycle over 10 mph.
It is illegal to sell antifreeze to Indians in Quebec.
Tightrope walking over the main streets of Halifax is prohibited. (Side streets are okay.)
According to one study, if Sherlock Holmes were real, his IQ would be about 190.
MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO
Sure, committing crimes looks all glamorous and fun on the screen, but try it in real life and the result is often two thumbs down.
MONKEY SEE: In the 1971 film The Godfather, Corleone family henchmen intimidate a Hollywood mogul by killing his prize racehorse and sticking the horse’s head in his bed.
MONKEY DO: In 1997 two New York crooks decided to use a similar method to intimidate a witness scheduled to testify against them. On the morning of the trial, the witness found an unwelcome surprise on his doorstep. “We wanted to leave a cow’s head,” admitted one of the crooks, “because his wife is from India, and they consider cows sacred.” Unable to find a cow’s head in Brooklyn, they went to butcher and got a goat head. “We figured it was close enough.” It wasn’t. They both went to prison.
MONKEY SEE: On an episode of MacGyver, MacGyver rubs his nose on some buttons so he can later determine which ones were pressed (because the oils from his nose were smudged). He figures out the secret code.
MONKEY DO: An employee at a Bangkok hotel tried the same tactic with guests’ safety deposit boxes. He was caught and sent to prison.
MONKEY SEE: In 1996, 17-year-old Steve Barone of Royal Palm Beach, Florida, was really into Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and Goodfellas.
MONKEY DO: After he was caught while trying to rob a gun store, Barone claimed at his trial that he’d been taken over by another personality—a combination of the “wise guys” from those three crime movies. The judge rejected the “Pulp Fiction defense,” as the press called it, and sentenced “Mr. Vincent Vega Henry Hill White” to four years in prison.
MONKEY SEE: The Nancy Drew books chronicle the adventures of a teenage detective who must often think quickly to get out of danger.
MONKEY DO: An 11-year-old Michigan girl was kidnapped and thrown into the trunk of her car. Instead of panicking, she asked herself, “What would Nancy Drew do?” She then found a toolbox, pried the trunk open, ran to a phone booth, and called the cops. The kidnappers were arrested.
A human body decomposes four times faster in water than on land.
WORD ORIGINS
Don’t be a swindler and cheat your way out of these crime word origins. It would be downright taboo.
CHEAT
Meaning: A dishonest person; the act of deceiving for gain
Origin: “Comes from escheat—a medieval legal term for ‘the reversion of property to the state in the absence of legal heirs, and of the state’s right to such confiscation.’ The officer who looked after the king’s escheats was known as the cheater. The word’s dishonest connotations evolved among thieves in the 16th century.” (From Wicked Words, by Hugh Rawson)
TABOO
Meaning: A behavior or activity that is prohibited
Origin: “Originally a Tongan word, tabu, meaning ‘marked as holy.’ The first taboos were prohibitions against the use or even the mention of certain things because of religious belief that to do so would invoke the wrath of the gods. The word gradually was extended in use to cover all sorts of prohibitions
or bans based upon social convention.” (From Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, Vol. III, by William and Mary Morris)
CRIME
Meaning: An action that is forbidden by a predetermined set of laws
Origin: “Derived from the Latin word crimen, which meant ‘charge’ or ‘cry of distress.’ The ancient Greek word krima, from which the Latin cognate was derived, typically referred to an intellectual mistake or an offense against the community, rather than a private or moral wrong.” (From Klein’s Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, by Ernest Klein)
ADULTERY
Meaning: Having sexual relations with someone other than a spouse
Origin: “You may be surprised to hear that there’s no ‘adult’ in ‘adultery.’ That’s because the word goes back to the Latin term adulterare, ‘to pollute, corrupt, or defile.’ (This in turn comes from alterare, ‘to alter.’) Having extramarital relations was seen as defiling—or adulterating—the marriage vows, and the verb eventually turned into the noun ‘adultery.’ ‘Adult’ traces back to the Latin adultus, a form of the verb adolescere, ‘to grow up,’ which was the source of the word ‘adolescent.’” (From The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Weird Word Origins, by Paul McFedries)
Early 1800s female pirate Cheng I Sao beheaded any pirate who disobeyed orders.
BLACKMAIL
Meaning: To extort money by threatening to expose a hurtful truth
Origin: “Blackmail has nothing whatsoever to do with the post office. Black is used in the figurative sense of ‘evil’ or ‘wicked.’ Mail is a Scots word meaning ‘rent’ or ‘tribute.’ The term blackmail originated in Scotland, where Highland chiefs at one time extorted tribute from Lowlanders and Englishmen on the Scottish border in return for protection from being plundered.” (From Word Mysteries & Histories, by the Editors of American Heritage Dictionary)
BANDIT
Meaning: A robber belonging to a gang, operating in a lawless area
Origin: “A man who ventured outside a city could depend upon little or no protection from police. Italians discovered that banishing lawbreakers constituted a severe punishment. Crooks were brought before a crowd, proclaimed a public enemy, and banished. Originally from Latin bandire (‘to proclaim’), the subject of such a proclamation was called a bandito. Finding it difficult to survive alone, the bandito joined other outcasts. Bands of them lurked in the mountains of southern Europe. Forbidden to follow normal trades, they lived by robbery and murder. English visitors to Italy listened to Bandito tales.” (From Why You Say It, by Webb Garrison)
SWINDLER
Meaning: One who cheats or defrauds someone else out of their money
Origin: “It entered English circa 1762. From the Old High German word swintan, meaning ‘diminish, vanish, or lose consciousness.’ This gave rise to the verb schwindeln, first used to mean ‘to be dizzy’ or ‘giddy.’ Because such a person is often given to flights of fancy, the Germans applied the word as well to a ‘fantastic schemer,’ or ‘a participant in shady business deals.’” (From The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories)
Since 2005, New York City has had the lowest crime rate of the 25 largest U.S. cities.
AMERICA’S FIRST
PRIVATE EYE
If you’re a fan of detective stories—which include everything from The Maltese Falcon to The Pink Panther to CSI—then you might be interested in this man: He was the real thing.
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE...
One day in June 1846, Allan Pinkerton, a 27-year-old barrel maker from Dundee, Illinois, climbed onto his raft and floated down the Fox River looking for trees that he could use for lumber. He found a lot more than that—when he went to chop down some trees on an island in the middle of the river, he discovered a smoldering fire pit hidden among them.
If someone found a fire pit in such a beautiful spot today, they probably wouldn’t suspect anything unusual. But as Pinkerton explained in his memoirs, life was different in the 1840s: “There was no picnicking in those days; people had more serious matters to attend to and it required no great keenness to conclude that no honest men were in the habit of occupying the place.”
GOTCHA!
Pinkerton went back to the island a few more times during daylight, but no one was ever there. So a few days later, he snuck back in the middle of the night and waited to see if anyone would show up. After about an hour he heard a rowboat approaching the island. He waited a while and then crept close to the fire pit to see several shady-looking characters sitting around the campfire.
The next morning he went to the sheriff. After a few nights they went back to the island with a small posse and caught the men by surprise. Pinkerton’s suspicions were correct—the men were a gang of counterfeiters, and the posse caught them red-handed with “a bag of bogus dimes and the tools used in their manufacture.”
Counterfeiting was rampant in the 1840s: In those days each bank issued its own bills, and with so many different kinds of paper floating around, fakes were easy to make and difficult to detect. Less than a month after the dime bust, somebody passed fake $10 bills to two shopkeepers in Dundee. The shopkeepers were pretty sure that a farmer named John Craig had something to do with it, but they had no proof. Pinkerton had done a good job catching the last bunch of counterfeiters, so they asked him to look into it.
It’s against the law to run out of gas in Youngstown, Ohio.
Pinkerton set up a sting: He met Craig, struck up a conversation, and convinced him that he was looking to make some dishonest money on the side. Craig sold him $500 worth of the fake bills, but rather than have the sheriff arrest him right there, Pinkerton decided to bide his time. He got Craig to reveal the location of his headquarters (a hotel in Chicago) then made an appointment to buy more counterfeit bills. A few days later, Pinkerton met Craig in the hotel bar. Then, just as Craig was passing him $4,000 worth of fake bills, two plainclothes police officers stepped out of the shadows and arrested him.
CAREER CHANGE
Had Pinkerton been left alone, he might have remained a barrel maker, but the Craig bust changed everything. “The affair was in everybody’s mouth,” Pinkerton later wrote, “and I suddenly found myself called upon from every quarter to undertake matters of detective skill.” He quit making barrels and worked a number of different law-enforcement jobs over the next few years: deputy sheriff, Chicago police detective (the city’s first), and finally as a U.S. Post Office investigator.
Then in 1850, he decided to go to work for himself—he and a lawyer named Edward Rucker formed what would become the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Rucker dropped out after a year or two, but Pinkerton stayed with it for the rest of his life.
THE EYE HAS IT
For his company motto, Pinkerton chose “We Never Sleep.” For his logo, he chose a large, unblinking eye. His agency wasn’t the world’s first private detective agency—a Frenchman named Eugène François Vidocq beat him by 17 years when he founded the Bureau des Renseignements (Office of Intelligence) in 1833. But it was Pinkerton who gave private detectives their famous nickname. Thanks to his choice of logo, they’ve been known as “private eyes” ever since.
Jeffrey Dahmer’s dad wrote a book, A Father’s Story and donated the earnings to his son’s victims’ families.
TRAIN OF THOUGHT
Pinkerton’s timing was perfect. Railroads were beginning to transform the American way of life—in both good ways and bad. As rails began to link major American cities, people could travel greater distances in less time and at less cost than ever before. But criminals could, too: a bank robber could knock over a bank in one state, then hop a train and by the next morning be hundreds of miles away in another state.
Have you ever seen a movie where the sheriff chases a bad guy and has to stop at the county line? That really was the way things worked back then—law-enforcement agencies were organized locally, and a police officer’s or sheriff’s powers ended as soon as he crossed the city or the county
line. There were few if any state police in those days, and no national police to speak of, either. The Bureau of Investigation, predecessor to the FBI, wouldn’t come into existence until 1908. Pinkerton’s private detectives had no formal police powers, but they were free to chase criminals across county and state lines and then work with local law enforcers to arrest criminals and bring them to justice.
With no one else to turn to protect their interests, the railroads went to Pinkerton. By 1854 the agency was earning $10,000 a year (about $200,000 today) on railroad company retainers alone.
UNDERCOVER
Pinkerton’s agency achieved its greatest successes by sticking to the principle that Pinkerton himself had used to catch the counterfeiter John Craig back in 1846: The best way to catch a thief was by pretending to be a thief—a detective had to win the bad guy’s confidence, then get him to spill the beans. The agents infiltrated organized gangs of all types: Confederate spy rings, unions, even the Mafia.
The Pinkerton agency was ahead of their time in many areas. They pioneered the use of the mug shot and by the 1870s had the largest collection in the world. Their centralized criminal filing system has since been emulated by the FBI and other law enforcement organizations worldwide. The agency hired a female detective, a 23-year-old widow named Kate Warne, in 1856; by comparison, the New York City Police Department did not hire its first female investigator until 1903.
After the Civil War, the Pinkerton Detective Agency helped bring the Wild West era to a close by sending manhunters into the field to hunt down infamous train and bank robbers: Jesse James, the Missouri Kid, the Reno brothers, and the Cole Younger gang. Why did Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid abandon their life of crime and flee to Argentina in 1901? Because Pinkerton detectives were hot on their trail. With the agency’s “wanted” posters and mug shots circulating throughout the United States, there was no place in the country left for them to hide.