Dash Mike - Satans circus : murder, vice, police corruption, and New Yorks trial of the century

CONTENTS

Charles Becker

Herman Rosenthal

Charles and Helen Becker

Big Tim Sullivan

Charles Whitman (Library of Congress)

Jack Rose(Library of Congress)

Jack Zelig

John Goff (Library of Congress)

PREFACE

N EARLY 5 MILLION men and women have served the United States as police officers.

Only one has been executed for murder.

This is the story of Charles Beckera New York police lieutenant widely reviled in the first decades of the last century as the crookedest cop who ever stood behind a shieldand of the raucous, gaudy city that made him. It is also the story of the precinct that Beckers career so frequently returned him to: Satans Circus, in midtown Manhattan, then both New Yorks entertainment district and the heart of its vice trade.

The cast of characters is extraordinary. Aside from Becker himselfwho was able, brave, intelligent, and yet utterly corruptthe book tells of Big Tim Sullivan, an election-rigging vice lord who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from ordinary New Yorkers, yet was borne to his funeral through a crowd of more than 20,000 weeping citizens; of Jack Zelig, the beloved gangster; and of John Goff, a onetime terrorist turned sadistic hanging judge. Elsewhere in its pages you will meet Gyp the Blood, a back-snapping thug and uselessly incompetent murderer; the sinister Bald Jack Rose, his entirely hairless procurer; and Bill Devery, the hulking, shrewd police chief who ran his city as one vast racket and used the money he extorted from Manhattans brothels to found the New York Yankees.

Since even a novelist would hesitate to invent such characters, I want to make it clear that nothing of what follows is fiction. Satans Circus is closely based on contemporary sourceslegal documents, newspapers, and an archive of detailed reports filed by the most prolific private detective of the daywhich make it possible to reconstruct the events of a century ago in remarkable detail. Nor are any of the conversations I have included in the book invented; each one was either recalled, word for word, by one of the participants or noted down by a reporter. In the handful of places where I have speculated on the thoughts and motives of individuals, I have acknowledged that fact in the text or in the notes.

Mike Dash
London
April 2, 2006

Ive been living on chuck steak for a long time. Now Im going to get me a little of the tenderloin.

C APTAIN A LEXANDER C LUBBER W ILLIAMS CELEBRATES HIS APPOINTMENT TO POLICE N EW Y ORKS THEATER, GAMBLING, AND PROSTITUTION DISTRICTTHE RICHEST GRAFTING TERRITORY IN THE CITY

CHAPTER 1

WIDE-OPEN

B ROADWAY GARDEN WAS DEBAUCHED . To think of the place as just another New York saloon was perverse; the Garden bore about as much resemblance to one of the sagging, smoke-stained taverns squatting on street corners downtown as a diamond did to a paste bauble. Combining the attractions of a bar, restaurant, dance hall, and vaudeville show, it was bigger and busier than half a dozen low dives rolled into one.

The Garden owed much of its popularity to its superb location. It stood near the corner of Broadway and West Thirty-first Street, in the heart of New Yorks entertainment district, and Broadway itselfthe busiest, most brightly lit thoroughfare in the worldswept a living tide of likely customers past its doors at all hours of the day and night. Even some time after midnight on a Tuesday morning, one of the quietest evenings of the week, the Garden was all jostle and hubbub, loud music and light: the sort of place that filled readily with fashionable drunks, young couples flirting their way through clandestine assignations, and single men with darting eyes who called in when the theaters closed in the hope of making the acquaintance of a chorus girl.

On this particular eveningit was some way past midnight on September 16, 1896a young man, rather smartly dressed in a jacket, waistcoat, and straw hat, was dawdling at a table in the Gardens restaurant. He was in his middle twenties and not especially attractive: pale and thin, of average height, and sporting a poorly nourished mustache that quite failed to impose itself on a face dominated by a large nose and larger teeth. His long, tawny hair had been greased, parted in the middle and then plastered down across his forehead. Occasionally, as he leaned forward, a few strands would break free and dangle limply across one eye until they were pressed back into place.

Sharing the young mans table, and sitting directly opposite him, were two much better-looking women. These girls were even younger than their host, perhaps eighteen or twenty years old, and they were fashionably clad in thick, embroidered silk, their waists tightly nipped with stays and their neatly made-up faces half hidden beneath elaborate hats. They called themselves actresses, but they were really nothing more than dancing girls, high kickers from a nearby show. They had drunk enough over the last few hours to feel pleasantly relaxed, and now they chattered happily, giggling as they told tales of their experiences. Their companion, listening attentively, scrawled notes down on a paper pad.

Skulking unobtrusively some twenty yards away, a second man observed this scene with interest. He was a good deal taller and much stronger than the first, but less extravagantly dressed. He was doing his best to remain inconspicuous. His vantage point, the lobby of Broadways Grand Hotel, was well suited to this purpose; it was crowded and less well lit than the street outside, and by pressing himself flat against a wall the man could keep a close eye on the Garden with little chance of being seen himself. He had done this sort of thing often enough to learn patience, and after a while he was grimly pleased to note that a third young woman had walked up to the table in the restaurant. The newcomer was even more striking than the chorus girls: exceptionally beautiful, her pretty, mobile face framed by a mass of startling dark red curls. She was wearing a simple shirtwaista fitted blouse with mannish collar and cuffsthat neatly displayed her figure, and she slid into the seat beside the man with greasy hair. He greeted her enthusiastically.