Finding Judge Crater

On the night of August 6, 1930, Joseph Force Crater, a newly appointed judge and prominent figure in many circles of Manhattan, hailed a taxi in the heart of Broadway and vanished into thin air. Despite a decades-long international manhunt led by the New York Police Department’s esteemed Missing Persons Bureau, the reason for Crater’s disappearance remains a confounding mystery. In the early months of the investigation, evidence implicated and imperiled New York’s top officials, including then-Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mayor Jimmy Walker, as well as the city’s Tammany Hall political machine, lawyers and judges, and a theater mogul. Drawing on new sources, including NYPD case files and court records, and overlooked evidence discovered years later, Riegel pieces together the puzzle of what likely happened to Joseph Crater and why. To uncover the mystery, he delves into Crater’s ascension into the scintillating and corrupt world of Manhattan in the Roaring Twenties and Jazz Age. In turn, the story of the judge’s vanishing amid the Great Depression unfolds as a harbinger of the disappearance of his lost metropolis and its transformation into modern-day New York City.

2010 marks 80 years since New York State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater vanished and became world famous. Brilliant and secretive, this "faithful husband" and"completely honest man" left behind a mistress, a string of chorus girls, a history of crooked political deals, and one big mystery. Writers have assumed that Crater's life ended the night of August 6, 1930. Yet the evidence shows that he got rid of files that day, repeatedly gave out a false clue, and hid financial information for his wife in a secret drawer that only she knew of. This book hunts down the most realistic guess what became of the man who fooled everybody. John Winslow Gibson has a background in philosophy, and his books have critiqued rationalism and fundamentalism, proposed new institutions for America's future, and examined esoteric writing in Plato's dialogues. As all of this has involved detective work of one sort or another, the Crater case caught his interest. He says his work on it was the most fun he has had writing.

The riveting story of how the murder of femme fatale Vivian Gordon in 1931 brought about the downfall of the mayor of New York City and led to the end of Tammany Hall’s dominance. Vivian Gordon went out before midnight in a velvet dress and mink coat. Her body turned up the next morning in a desolate Bronx park, a dirty clothesline wrapped around her neck. At her stylish Manhattan apartment, detectives discovered notebooks full of names—businessmen, socialites, gangsters. And something else: a letter from an anti-corruption commission established by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Led by the imperious Judge Samuel Seabury, the commission had uncovered a police conspiracy to frame women as prostitutes. Had Vivian Gordon been executed to bury her secrets? As FDR pressed the police to solve her murder, Judge Seabury pursued the trail of corruption to the top of Gotham’s powerful political machine—the infamous Tammany Hall.

Catch Me If You Can meets The Great Gatsby meets Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief in this captivating Jazz Age true-crime caper about "the greatest jewel thief who ever lived" (Life Magazine), Arthur Barry, who charmed celebrities and millionaires—everyone from Rockefellers to members of the royal family—while simultaneously planning and executing the most audacious and lucrative heists of the 1920s. “A master of narrative nonfiction. In this mesmerizing tale about a Jazz Age gentlemanly thief, Jobb has found his own perfect jewel.” ―DAVID GRANN, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon “An enthrallingly propulsive, unpredictably twisty biography of one of the most fascinating criminals of the 20th Century. I was hooked from the very first heist.” ―MICHAEL FINKEL, New York Times bestselling author of The Art Thief and The Stranger in the Woods A skilled con artist and one of the most successful burglars in history, Arthur Barry was adept at slipping in and out of bedrooms undetected, even when his victims slept only inches away. He became a folk hero, a gentleman bandit touted in the press as the “Prince of Thieves” and an “Aristocrat of Crime.” Think Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief. In a span of seven years, Barry stole pearls, diamonds, and other precious gems worth almost $60 million today. Among his many victims were a Rockefeller, an heiress to the Woolworth Department Store fortune, an oil magnate, Wall Street bigwigs, a top executive of automotive giant General Motors, and a famous polo player. He befriended the Prince of Wales, Harry Houdini, and other luminaries. The rollicking, caper-filled rise and dramatic downfall of this master thief is a high-speed ride told in stylish prose. A Gentleman and a Thief is also a love story. Barry confessed to dozens of burglaries to protect his wife, Anna Blake (and was the prime suspect in scores of others on Long Island and across Westchester County). Sentenced to a twenty-five-year term, he staged a dramatic prison break—triggering a bloody inmates' riot—when Anna became seriously ill, so they could be together for a few more years as fugitives. Page-turning, escapist, and sparkling with insight into the allure of gemstones and our fascination with well-planned heists and the suave, clever criminals who pull them off, A Gentleman and a Thief is perfect for true crime fans who relish the exploits of con artists and high-class crooks.

For those who have wondered why Bob Steed's contributions to journalism have never moved beyond his semi-regular columns for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, wonder no more. He can't write columns any more often than he does because he's too busy writing letters, and this collection proves that they're every bit as funny as his columns.

Peter Quinn’s The Man Who Never Returned is a noir-ish, stylized detective narrative set in 1950s New York. It follows Fintan, a retired detective turned private investigator who has been given the job of finding Judge Crater, who just went missing in 1930. Based on a real story, it is quite an intriguing tale that was even more so for people living at the time. The famous missing-person case is comparable to the Amelia Earhart missing-person case, though it could have been an even more interesting one. It was alleged that the missing judge may have had information about underhanded dealings in the New York judiciary. It was believed that if such information came to light, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then governor of New York, would have had a hard time becoming the president of the United States. There were also rumors that the judge, who was a known ladies’ man, had either decided to disappear or had fallen afoul of the mafia. Featuring hardboiled characters and a beautiful re-creation of New York from the ’50s, it is quite a compelling read.

CONFESSIONS is a collection of stories from a practical joker that plays up the 'Ol' Country Boy' routine mainly for the benefit of the tourists. Many of the local people will identify with the players in these comedies and philosophical stories, as Motz is a practical joker and has been known to instigate many a misunderstanding, or to feign innocence to initiate a comic and embarrassing situation. An innocent in a world of hunters, fishermen and other liars, Motz goes out of his way to make you laugh, sometimes at his expense and often at the expense of others, who try to show how sophisticated they are. His first story about going hunting for raccoons and the misunderstandings which can occur is classic. For many years, Motz was a newspaper columnist and his humor is sometimes sarcastic, sometimes banal, sometimes self-edifying, sometimes quixotic, but never has it been dull. In many of the stories, morality suffers on the surface, only to emerge in some twisted and perverse manner later on. The often wry or cutting humor will make you read with concentration, for fear of missing some hidden fact or quirky twist of fate. You will laugh at times and you will just shake your head at others, but you will not find these observations and stories boring. And when you finally put this book down, you will reflect many times later on about how a single misunderstanding or double meaning can change a single story or single life. You will also have a deeper appreciation of the humor of a modern rural America, the world of the author.

The lawyer's trade--from its noblest moments to its greatest blunders--is examined with rigor, insight, and wit by one of America's foremost commentators on the law, New York Times columnist David Margolick.

Nostalgic selections, many of which tell of people and specific incidents, recapture the flavor of American life as experienced during the Great Depression.