Joseph Force Crater (January 5, 1889 – date of death unknown) was a judge in New York City who suddenly disappeared on the night of August 6, 1930. He was last seen leaving a restaurant and entering a taxi. He had stated earlier that he was planning to attend a Broadway show. His disappearance became one of the most famous in American history and pop culture, and earned him the title of "The Missingest Man in New York".
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Early life and legal career
Crater was born on January 5, 1889 in Easton, Pennsylvania, the eldest of four children born to Frank Ellsworth Crater and the former Leila Virginia Montague. [1][2][3][4] He was educated at Lafayette College (Class of 1910) and Columbia University.
He was an Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court.[5] He had been appointed to the state bench by then-Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt just four months before disappearing on August 6, 1930.
Timeline of Crater's disappearance
Receiving a phone call while on vacation
In the summer of 1930, Judge Crater and his wife, Stella Mance Wheeler, were vacationing at their summer cabin at Belgrade Lakes, Maine. In late July, he received a telephone call. He offered no information to his wife about the content of the call, other than to say that he had to return to the city "to straighten those fellows out".
The next day, he arrived at his Fifth Avenue apartment but instead of dealing with business, he made a trip to Atlantic City in the company of his mistress, a showgirl named Sally Lou Ritz. He returned to Maine on August 1, and traveled back to New York on August 3. Before making this final trip, he promised his wife he would return by her birthday, on August 9. Crater's wife stated that he was in good spirits and behaving normally when he departed for New York City. On the morning of August 6, Crater spent two hours going through his files in his courthouse chambers. He then had his assistant, Joseph Mara, cash two checks for him that amounted to U.S. $5,150 (equivalent to about $60,000 in 2006). At noon, he and Mara carried two locked briefcases to his apartment and he let Mara take the rest of the day off.
A ticket to see Dancing Partner
Later that evening, Crater went to a Broadway ticket agency and bought one seat for a comedy called Dancing Partner that was playing that night at the Belasco Theater. He then went to Billy Haas’s Chophouse on West 45th Street for dinner. Here, he ate dinner with his mistress, Sally Lou Ritz, and a friend of his who was a lawyer. The lawyer later told investigators that Crater was in a good mood that evening and gave no indication that anything was bothering him. The dinner ended a little after 9 pm, a short time after the curtain rose on the show for which Crater bought a ticket, and the small group went outside.
Disappearance in a taxi
Crater then waved goodbye to his friends and hailed and entered a cruising taxi on West 45th Street. What happened to him after that remains a mystery. Theories about his disappearance have suggested that he was murdered, that he ran off with another woman, or that he had been involved in corrupt practices which were about to be revealed.
Delayed responses to disappearance
Strangely, there was no immediate reaction to Judge Crater's disappearance. When he did not return to Maine for 10 days, his wife began making calls to their friends in New York, asking if anyone might have seen him. Only when he failed to appear for the opening of the courts on August 25 did his fellow justices become alarmed. They started a private search but failed to find any trace. The police were finally notified on September 3 and after that, the missing judge was front-page news.
Nationwide investigation
The story captivated the nation and a massive investigation was launched.[6] The official investigations started vigorously, but quickly slowed. Detectives discovered that the judge's safe deposit box had been emptied and the two briefcases that Crater and his assistant had taken to his apartment were missing. These promising leads were also quickly bogged down by the thousands of false reports coming from people claiming to have seen the missing man.[7][8][9][10]
In October, a grand jury began examining the case, calling 95 witnesses and amassing 975 pages of testimony. The conclusion was 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."[11]
None of the investigations succeeded in discovering the judge's fate or possible whereabouts, and Crater was officially declared dead "in absentia" on June 6, 1939,[12][13] and his case—Missing Persons File No. 13595—was officially closed in 1979.
Sally Lou Ritz disappeared in August or September 1930, and was never seen again.[14]
Recent information
On August 19, 2005, authorities revealed they received a letter written half a century before by Stella Ferrucci-Good. In it, the woman identified a location near West Eighth Street in Coney Island, Brooklyn, at the current site of the New York Aquarium, where she claimed the judge was buried under the boardwalk. Moreover, the letter identified Crater's killers as her husband, NYPD officers Robert Good and Charles Burns, also bodyguard of Abe Reles of Murder, Inc. and Burns's brother Frank, a cab driver.[15]
Police confirmed that skeletal remains had been discovered at that site in the 1950s. Modern DNA techniques, unavailable in the 1950s, would make it easy to determine whether a set of remains were Judge Crater's. However, the bones discovered were almost immediately reburied in a potter's field on Hart Island, New York, among hundreds (if not thousands) of other unmarked and unidentified remains, and it would now be a daunting task to find those bones among so many.
In popular culture
Though no longer in wide use, the phrase "to pull a Crater" means to disappear.[16] For many years following Crater's disappearance, "Judge Crater, call your office" was a standard gag of nightclub comedians[16] and was often heard on public address systems.
In order to promote the 1933 film Bureau of Missing Persons, Warner Bros. advertised they would pay $10,000 to Crater if he claimed it in person at the box office.[17]
See also
- Missing person
- Cold case
- Forensics
- Genetic fingerprinting
- List of people who have mysteriously disappeared
References
- ^ records of the members of the First Methodist Church, Easton, PA
- ^ World War I draft registration
- ^ Joseph Force Crater in the 1900 US Census; Easton, Pennsylvania
- ^ 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.
- ^ In New York, the “Supreme Court” is a trial-level court, not the state's highest court. The highest court in New York is the Court of Appeals, whose members are titled “Judge” instead of “Justice”.
- ^ "Wide Hunt is begun for Justice Crater, missing four weeks," New York Times, Sep, 4, 1930, pg.1
- ^ "Aide denies Crater destroyed papers; hunt is pressed," New York Times, Sep. 5, 1930, p.1
- ^ "Federal men scan Crater bank books," New York Times, Sep. 6, 1930, pg. 1
- ^ "Family asks hunt for Judge Crater," New York Times, Sep. 7, 1930, p.3
- ^ "Search for Crater near a standstill," New York Times, Sep. 8, 1930, p. 5
- ^ What Happened To Judge Crater?
- ^ Tom Meehan, "Case No. 13595," New York Times, Aug. 7, 1960, p. SM27
- ^ "Crater will case up," New York Times, Apr. 28, 1939, p. 27
- ^ The Charley Project: Sally Lou Ritz
- ^ "JUDGE CRATER FOUND? Dead gal's secret letter may solve 1930 mystery", New York Daily News August 19, 2005
- ^ a b Kelly, Jack, 'Judge Crater Vanishes Forever", americanheritage.com
- ^ "The New Pictures". Time Magazine. 1933-09-18. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,746087-3,00.html. Retrieved on 2008-08-09.
Further reading
- Crater, Stella; Fraley, Oscar (1961). The empty robe [by] Stella Crater with Oscar Fraley. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. LCCN 61-008880.
- Tofel, Richard J. (2004). Vanishing point : the disappearance of Judge Crater and the New York he left behind. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. LCCN 2004-052669. ISBN 1566636051.
External links
- Joseph Force Crater at
Find a Grave - Fox News
- MSNBC (includes video)
- New York Post
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