Joseph Force Crater

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Joseph Force Crater
Born(1889-01-05)January 5, 1889
Easton, Pennsylvania, United States
DisappearedAugust 6, 1930 (aged 41)
New York City
StatusDeclared dead in absentia
(1939-06-06)June 6, 1939
Alma mater
OccupationJustice of New York Supreme Court for New York County
Known forUnexplained disappearance

Joseph Force Crater[1] (January 5, 1889 – disappeared August 6, 1930; declared legally dead June 6, 1939) was an American lawyer who served as a New York State Supreme Court Justice and mysteriously vanished shortly after the state began an investigation into corruption in New York City. Despite massive publicity, the missing person case was never solved and was officially closed 40 years after Crater was declared dead.

Early life and education[edit]

Joseph Crater was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, the eldest of four children of the former Leila Virginia Montague and Frank Ellsworth Crater, a produce market operator[2] and orchard owner.[3][4][5][6] Both had immigrated from Ireland.[7] He was educated at Lafayette College (class of 1910) and Columbia University, where he was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.[8] During his time at Columbia, he met Stella Mance Wheeler,[9][10] who was at the time married, and helped her get a divorce. They married seven days after her divorce was finalized, in spring 1917.[9][2]

Career[edit]

Crater opened an office at the Equitable Building in Manhattan, joined Tammany Hall district leader Martin J. Healy's Cayuga Democratic Club, and spent time organizing election workers and representing the club in election law cases.[7]

Four months before his disappearance, on April 8, 1930, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then New York governor, appointed Crater as Justice of the New York Supreme Court for New York County,[7] which is a trial court, despite the designation "supreme" (New York State's highest court is the Court of Appeals). He issued two published opinions: Rotkowitz v. Sohn, February 8, 1930[11] involving fraudulent conveyances and mortgage foreclosure fraud;[12] and Henderson v. Park Central Motors Service, July 11, 1930[13] dealing with a garage company's liability for an expensive car stolen and wrecked by an ex-convict.[14]

Attention was later drawn to Crater's liquidating investments worth $16,000 and withdrawing $7,000 from his bank account that spring (together equivalent to about US $419,500 in 2023), a possible pay-off for his judgeship. He had also given the congratulatory speech at the dinner celebrating George Ewald's judgeship in 1927; accusations of Tammany Hall corruption in that appointment were an initial impetus in the opening of what would become the Seabury Commission in mid-1930.[15]

Disappearance[edit]

Crater and his wife were vacationing at their summer cabin in Belgrade, Maine in the summer of 1930, shortly after the anti-corruption inquiry began. In late July, Crater received a telephone call. He told his wife nothing about the call other than to say that he had to return to New York City "to straighten those fellows out".[15] The next day, he arrived at his apartment at 40 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village but, instead of dealing with business, he went to Atlantic City, New Jersey with showgirl Sally Lou Ritz.[16]

Crater returned to Maine on August 1, then traveled back to New York City on August 3, promising his wife that he would return by her birthday on August 9. She stated that he was in good spirits and behaving normally when he left. On the morning of August 6, Crater spent two hours going through his files in his chambers, reportedly destroying several documents. He then had law clerk Joseph Mara cash two checks for him that amounted to US $5,150 (equivalent to about $93,930 in 2023). At noon, Crater and Mara carried two locked briefcases to Crater's apartment, where Crater told Mara to take the rest of the day off.[17]

That evening, Crater went to a Broadway ticket agency run by friend Joseph Gransky and reserved one seat for a comedy called Dancing Partner[18] at the Belasco Theatre; Gransky was surprised because he and Crater had already seen a preview of the show. Crater then ate dinner at Billy Haas's Chophouse at 332 West 45th Street with Ritz and William Klein, a lawyer friend.[15][19] Crater's dinner companions gave differing accounts of his departure from the restaurant. Klein initially testified that "the judge got into a taxicab outside the restaurant about 9:30 p.m. and drove west on Forty-fifth Street."[20] This account was initially confirmed by Ritz: "At the sidewalk Judge Crater took a taxicab."[21] Klein and Ritz later changed their story and said that they had entered a taxi outside the restaurant, but Crater had walked down the street.[22]

Crater's disappearance did not elicit any immediate reaction. When he did not return to Maine after ten days, his wife began making calls to their friends in New York, asking whether anyone had seen him. His fellow justices became alarmed when Crater failed to appear for the opening of the courts on August 25; they started a private investigation but failed to find any trace of him. The police were notified on September 3, and after that the missing judge was front-page news.[23][24]

Investigation[edit]

Detectives discovered that the judge's safe deposit box had been emptied and the two briefcases that Crater and Mara had taken to his apartment were missing. These promising leads were quickly lost amid thousands of false reports from people claiming to have seen the missing judge.[17][25][26][27] A grand jury convened in October 1930 called 95 witnesses and amassed 975 pages of testimony. Mrs. Crater refused to appear.[15][28] The jury concluded that "the evidence is insufficient to warrant any expression of opinion as to whether Crater is alive or dead, or as to whether he has absented himself voluntarily, or is the sufferer from disease in the nature of amnesia, or is the victim of crime."[29][30]

Crater enjoyed the city's nightlife; he socialized with many showgirls in addition to his long-term mistress Connie Marcus.[15] Two of these women left town abruptly after his disappearance. Sally Lou Ritz (real name Sarah Ritzi; 1907/1908–2000) had dined with Crater the evening that he vanished and was also rumored to be his mistress; she left New York in August or September 1930.[31][32] She was found in late September 1930 living in Youngstown, Ohio with her parents; she said that she had left New York because she had received word that her father was ill. She was still being subjected to interviews by police investigating the Crater case in 1937, by which time she was living in Beverly Hills, California.[33][34] June Brice, another showgirl, had been seen talking to Crater the day before he disappeared. A lawyer acting for Crater's wife argued that Brice had been at the center of a scheme to blackmail Crater (the reason for the bank withdrawals on the day of his disappearance) and that a gangster boyfriend of Brice had killed the judge. Brice disappeared the day that a grand jury was to convene on the case. In 1948, she was discovered in a mental hospital.[7]

Crater's jacket was reportedly found in the apartment of Vivian Gordon.[15] She was involved in high-end prostitution and linked to madam Polly Adler. Gordon had liaisons with a large number of influential businessmen and was the owner, on paper at least, of a number of properties believed to be fronts for illegal activity.[35] She was also seen around town with gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond, with whom Crater was rumored to socialize. Crater had known Diamond's former boss, organized crime figure Arnold Rothstein, and had been extremely upset at Rothstein's murder.[22] Gordon was angry about a conviction that had resulted in her losing custody of her 16 year-old daughter. On February 20, 1931, she met with a lawyer for the Seabury Commission and offered to testify about police graft. She was murdered five days later. The publicity surrounding Gordon's killing led to the resignation of a policeman whom she had accused of framing her, and the suicide of her daughter.[35] The scandal also refocused attention on the corruption investigation, which ultimately led to the resignation of Mayor Jimmy Walker and largely eliminated Tammany Hall's hold on the city, previously weakened by Rothstein and the conflict over his former empire.[22][35]

Crater's wife found envelopes containing checks, stocks, bonds, and a note from the justice on January 20, 1931, six months after his disappearance. They were in a dresser drawer that had been empty when searched by police. The discovery led to new but ultimately inconclusive leads, and no further trace of Crater was ever found.[22] The case was officially closed in 1979.[36]

Subsequent events[edit]

Mrs. Crater remained at their vacation home in Maine during the search for her husband, until her discovery of the hidden envelopes.[9] She was evicted from the Fifth Avenue apartment for non-payment of rent.[28] In July 1937, when she was reportedly living on $12 per week (equivalent to $250 in 2023) working as a telephone operator in Maine, she petitioned to have the justice declared officially dead.[37] She married Carl Kunz, a New York City electrical contractor, in Elkton, on April 23, 1938.[38] Kunz's first wife had hanged herself eight days before the wedding.[36] Crater was declared legally dead in 1939;[9][39] his widow received $20,561 in life insurance (equivalent to $450,370 in 2023). She separated from Kunz in 1950 and died in 1969 at age 70.[28]

Mrs. Crater expressed her belief that her husband had been murdered in her own account of the case, The Empty Robe, which was written with freelance writer and journalist Oscar Fraley and published by Doubleday in 1961.[40][41]

On August 19, 2005, authorities revealed that after Queens resident Stella Ferrucci-Good's death at age 91, they had received notes she wrote in which she claimed that her husband, NYPD detective Robert Good, had learned that Crater was killed by Charles Burns, an NYPD officer who also worked as a bodyguard of Murder, Inc. enforcer Abe Reles, and by Burns' brother, Frank. According to the letter, Crater was buried near West Eighth Street in Coney Island, Brooklyn, at the current site of the New York Aquarium.[42][43][44] Police reported that no records had been found to indicate that skeletal remains had been discovered at that site when it was excavated in the 1950s.[42] Richard J. Tofel, the author of a 2004 book on the Crater case, Vanishing Point, expressed skepticism of Ferrucci-Good's account.[42]

Popular culture[edit]

The phrase "to pull a Judge Crater", or simply "to pull a Crater", means to disappear.[45] It is no longer widely used. For many years following Crater's disappearance, "Judge Crater, call your office" was a standard gag of nightclub comedians.[46] As a publicity stunt for their 1933 film Bureau of Missing Persons, First National Pictures promised in advertisements to pay Crater $10,000 (equivalent to $240,000 in 2023) if he claimed it in person at the box office.[47] Crater's last letter, possibly written on the day of his disappearance, was sold at auction on June 22, 1981, for $700.[48] The letter was marked "confidential" and began: "The following money is due me from the persons named. Get in touch with them for they will surely pay their debts." It was incorrectly reported that this letter was Crater's will.[49]

See also[edit]

Further reading[edit]

  • Crater, Stella (Wheeler); Oscar Fraley (1961). The Empty Robe. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. p. 210. LCCN 61-8880.
  • Tofel, Richard J. (2004). Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater and the New York He Left Behind. Chicago, Illinois: Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 978-1-56663-605-6. LCCN 2004052669.
  • Gibson, John Winslow (2010). Judge Crater, the Missingest Person: How He Disappeared and Why They Couldn't Find Him. Indianapolis, Indiana: Dog Ear Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60844-712-1.
  • Keene, Ann T. (June 2000). "Crater, Joseph Force (1889–1930), jurist". American National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1101196.
  • Riegel, Stephen J. (2022). Finding Judge Crater: A Life and Phenomenal Disappearance In Jazz Age New York. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-3719-6.

References[edit]

  1. ^ "PA-8536330.jpg". flashbak.com. Archived from the original on July 12, 2021. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
  2. ^ a b Warren, Alexandra (Spring 2010). "Joseph Force Crater". Pennsylvania Center for the Book. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
  3. ^ records of the members of the First Methodist Church, Easton, Pennsylvania
  4. ^ World War I draft registration
  5. ^ Joseph Force Crater in the 1900 United States Census; Easton, Pennsylvania
  6. ^ Harold Leslie Crater, Jr., The descendents [sic] of Moritz Creeter (1703–1772), who arrived at the Port of Philadelphia on the ship Mortonhouse on August 19, 1729 (privately published, 2003), p. 160.
  7. ^ a b c d "The Missingest Man in New York". New York Press. February 16, 2015. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
  8. ^ The Sigma Chi Quarterly: The Official Organ of the Sigma Chi Fraternity, Volume 26, p. 122
  9. ^ a b c d Meehan, Tom (August 7, 1960). "Case No. 13595; It's thirty years later, there's plenty of data -- but still no Judge Crater". The New York Times.
  10. ^ "Judge John Crater: On August 6 1930 Supreme Court judge became The Missingest Man in New York". Flashbak. August 6, 2013. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
  11. ^ "ROTKOWITZ v. SOHN, 136 Misc. 265 | Casetext".
  12. ^ 239 N.Y.S. 639, N.Y.Sup., February 8, 1930.
  13. ^ "Henderson v. Park Central Motors Service, 138 Misc. 183 | Casetext".
  14. ^ 244 N.Y.S. 409, N.Y.Sup., July 11, 1930.
  15. ^ a b c d e f Kantrowitz, R. Marc (April 21, 2023). "Judge Crater, call your office". Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.
  16. ^ Gibson, John Winslow (2010). Judge Crater, the Missingest Person: How He Disappeared and Why They Couldn't Find Him. Indianapolis, Indiana: Dog Ear Publishing. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-60844-712-1.
  17. ^ a b "Aide denies Crater destroyed papers; hunt is pressed". The New York Times. September 5, 1930. p. 1.
  18. ^ ​Dancing Partner​ at the Internet Broadway Database
  19. ^ Garrett, Robert (August 11, 1980). "Good Night, Judge Crater, Wherever You Are". New York Magazine. pp. 11–12.
  20. ^ "Ransom of $20,000 Asked for Crater" (PDF). The New York Times. September 16, 1930. p. 1. Retrieved July 22, 2014.
  21. ^ "Search for Crater Swings to Havana" (PDF). The New York Times. September 24, 1930. p. 4. Retrieved July 22, 2014.
  22. ^ a b c d "CNN Transcript: Interview with Richard Tofel". CNN. August 22, 2005. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
  23. ^ "Wide Hunt Is Begun for Justice Crater, Missing Four Weeks". Times Wide World Photo. The New York Times. September 4, 1930. p. 1. ProQuest 112687780.
  24. ^ "City to Offer $5,000 in Hunt for Crater; Crain Seeks Inquiry". The New York Times. September 11, 1930. p. 1. ProQuest 11838224.
  25. ^ "Federal men scan Crater bank books". The New York Times. September 6, 1930. p. 1.
  26. ^ "Family asks hunt for Judge Crater". The New York Times. September 7, 1930. p. 3.
  27. ^ "Search for Crater near a standstill". The New York Times. September 8, 1930. p. 5.
  28. ^ a b c "Stella Crater Kunz, Once Wed to Judge Who Vanished, Dead". The New York Times. September 24, 1969 – via ProQuest.
  29. ^ "What Happened to Judge Crater?". Prairie Ghosts. Archived from the original on February 4, 2012. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
  30. ^ Cohen, Daniel (1976). Mysterious Disappearances. New York: Dodd Meade. pp. 18–19.
  31. ^ Lawhon, Arielle (January 8, 2015). "Case closed: The true story of a happy ending". ariellawhon.com. Retrieved August 12, 2023.
  32. ^ "Sally Lou Ritz". The Charley Project. Archived from the original on June 13, 2010. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
  33. ^ "Mystery to Sally". The Daily Times. Beaver, Pennsylvania. September 25, 1930. p. 6.
  34. ^ "Check on Bodies in Crater Search". Daily Boston Globe. September 28, 1930. p. B2. ProQuest 1999524842.
  35. ^ a b c Shteir, Rachel (February 25, 2013). "The Dead Woman Who Brought Down the Mayor". Smithsonian Magazine.
  36. ^ a b Cawley, Janet (August 5, 1980). "Column 1 :Judge Crater case slips into history Police file is closed on 'missingest' person". Chicago Tribune – via ProQuest.
  37. ^ "Exclusive. 'Judge Crater's Wife Ends Hope: Asks Missing Jurist Declared Legally Dead'". Los Angeles Times. July 21, 1937 – via ProQuest.
  38. ^ "Crater's Widow Wed at Elkton; Husband Gave D.C. Address: Ceremony Took Place on April 23; Jurist Held Legally Dead. Judge Crater's Widow Married In Elkton Rites Crater". The Washington Post. July 14, 1938 – via ProQuest.
  39. ^ "Crater Will Case Up May 26". The New York Times. April 28, 1939 – via ProQuest.
  40. ^ Crater, Stella (Wheeler) (1961). The Empty Robe. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.
  41. ^ Perlmutter, Emanuel (April 9, 1961). "A Missing Person: THE EMPTY ROBE. By Stella Crater With Oscar Fraley". Book Review Section. The New York Times – via ProQuest.
  42. ^ a b c Rashbaum, William (August 20, 2005). "Judge Crater Abruptly Appears, at Least in Public Consciousness". The New York Times. Retrieved June 6, 2012.
  43. ^ Gendar, Alison (August 19, 2005). "Judge Crater Found? Dead gal's secret letter may solve 1930 mystery". Daily News. New York. Retrieved June 6, 2012.
  44. ^ Esposito, Rich (August 18, 2005). "Long-Concealed Letter May Be Key to N.Y. Judge Mystery". ABC World News Tonight. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
  45. ^ Gulick, Aubrey. "Judge Crater Pulls a Crater". The American Spectator. Retrieved January 10, 2024.
  46. ^ "Joseph Force Crater becomes the missingest man in New York". The History Channel. Retrieved January 10, 2024.
  47. ^ "Cinema: The New Pictures". Time. September 18, 1933. Retrieved April 22, 2016.
  48. ^ Sotheby Parke Bernet, Sale No. 4652E on June 22, 1981, "Printed and Manuscript Americana", Lot 174.
  49. ^ "Churchill, FDR suckered Stalin for autograph". Times-Advocate. Escondido, California. June 23, 1981. p. 3.

External links[edit]

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