Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (85 page)

When it was McIntire’s turn to cross-examine Rose, Judge Goff outdid himself in his efforts to railroad Becker.

McIntire’s strategy was to have Rose admit on the witness stand that he was a ruthless criminal himself and was looking to involve Becker in Rosenthal’s murder in order to save his own hairless skin. But whenever McIntire tried this line of questioning, he was cut off by Judge Goff, who then told Rose to plead the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.

It was obvious to those in court that McIntire, overweight and 57-years-old, was not in the best of health. This was compounded by the fact that the courtroom was stifling hot (unusual for early October), and the windows had been ordered closed by Judge Goff just before McIntire started his cross-examination of Rose.

McIntire began his questioning of Rose at around 2:45 p.m. At 8 p.m. McIntire was near exhaustion, and he asked Judge Goff if he could resume his cross-examination on the following day.

Judge Goff adamantly said no.

McIntire tried to keep questioning Rose, but as the clock was nearing 9 p.m., McIntire nearly fainted. Wiping his brow, he told Judge Goff he could no longer continue with his cross examination. Instead of allowing McIntire to resume his cross-examination of Rose the following day, Judge Goff declared the cross-examination of Rose over, and he dismissed Rose from the witness stand.
          Judge Goff also insisted that the final summations by the defense and the prosecution were to take place on the same day. On Oct. 22, at approximately 3 p.m., Judge Goff asked McIntire how long his summation to the jury would take. McIntire said he was not certain, but said it could take as long as four hours. And besides, McIntire said he was overcome by the heat again and would rather give his summation the following day. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Judge Goff agreed that McIntire would be allowed to start his summation the following morning at 10 a.m., but it could not run longer than 2 p.m. At that time, they would take a recess until 3:30 p.m., when Assistant D.A. Moss would start his summation, which also could not run longer than four hours. Both McIntire and Moss agreed with the judge’s decision, and Judge Goff dismissed court for the day.

As Becker was led from the courtroom, reporters asked him why he did not take the stand in his own defense.

Becker said, “It has been my desire all along to tell my story to the jury, confident that I could sweep aside every particle of seeming evidence brought against me. But my lawyers have advised against it, and I have yielded to their advice.”

Becker’s lawyer’s advice was on the mark, since if Becker took the stand, Whitman could have introduced tons of evidence that Becker was a crooked cop; taking graft with both hands. And this would have undoubtedly prejudice the jury against Becker.

Becker was also asked by the press what verdict he expected the next day.

“What can they do but acquit me?” Becker said. “What evidence has been brought against me other than that of crooks and thugs? I am confident of complete vindication.”

However, after the summations by the prosecution and the defense were completed the following day, Judge Goff decided he needed more time before he gave his charge to the jury. And that he did, not on October 23, but on the morning of October 24. 

It was apparent to all: Judge Goff’s instructions to the jury stuck a proverbial knife in Becker’s back.

As Judge Goff went over point after point concerning the evidence, he presented the prosecution and their witnesses’ statements as if they were the gospel truth. There was never any question of Judge Goff being fair. Any testimony made by Bald Jack Rose on the witness stand, Judge Goff accepted in his charge to the jury as absolute fact. And if Rose was telling the truth, of course Lieutenant Charles Becker was guilty as charged for ordering the murder of Herman Rosenthal.

             
At 4:30 p.m., the jury started its deliberations. By 10 p.m., no verdict had been reached and there was speculation in the press that this was good news for Becker, since it usually took a jury longer to find a man not guilty than guilty. However, that speculation evaporated around 11:30 p.m., when the jury announced it had come to a decision.

At exactly 11:54 p.m., Becker was seated and awaiting his fate.

Clerk Penny rose, and after he gave his roll call to the jury, he spoke directly to jury foreman, Mr. Skinner, “You have reached a verdict, gentlemen?”

Skinner and the other 11 jurors rose to their feet. Skinner said, “Yes, we have.”

“How do you find?” Clerk Penny said.

Mr. Skinner said, “We find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment.”

The room became quiet as a tomb; all eyes concentrated on Becker.

Becker’s face turned red and his mouth opened in a silent scream. He tried to say something, but the words stuck in his throat.

Clerk Penny said to the jury, “You find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, and so say you all?”

All 12 jurors said “Yes” in unison.

Clerk Penny read the names of each juror individually, and he said to each one, “Is that your verdict?”

One by one, the jurors all responded “Yes.”

While Clerk Penny was verifying the juror’s verdicts individually, twice Becker appeared as if he were about to faint. Finally, two court officers rushed to his side and held him upright.

Judge Goff, a look of satisfaction on his face, said that he would administer sentencing on October 30.

As Judge Goff exited the courtroom, two court officers took Becker by each arm and led him from the courtroom. They crossed a bridge separating the courtroom and the Tombs prison called “The Bridge of Sighs,” and they took Becker back into his cell in the Tombs.

After the verdict was announced, there was bedlam outside the courtroom door.

Helen Becker was not in the courtroom to hear her husband’s verdict. The courtroom had been so packed, she was stuck outside; her face pressed against the courtroom door. When the door was finally flung open and the cry of “Guilty!” permeated the air, Helen Becker hit the floor in a faint. She was picked up and carried to a bench, where she was attended to by friends, one of whom was McIntire, who assured her there would be a successful appeal and a new trial.

McIntire repeated this statement to a group of newspapermen, and when they asked him his basis for an appeal, McIntire said, “I can tell you no more.”

It wasn’t until 12:55 a.m. that Helen Becker was able to walk out of the courthouse. She was whisked away in a car by her relatives. But not before she released a statement to the press, which was relayed by her brother-in-law, saying, “I was so shocked. I could not believe it. To think that this thing could happen to my husband, it seems impossible.”

Despite the fact that the Becker family was now devastated, things looked quite rosy for Bald Jack Rose, and his fellow gamblers Bridgey Webber and Harry Vallon. As per their agreement with Whitman, after the trial of the four actual shooters was completed, all three gamblers were to be set free from their cells in the Tombs. Sam Schepps, because he did not participate in the planning of Rosenthal’s murder, was
immediately set free after Becker was found guilty.

As for Whitman, it’s safe to say he put on a big bender after Becker’s conviction. The word quickly spread around town that Whitman would become the next mayor of New York City.

However, Whitman had set his sights much higher than that.

He announced to
the
Saturday Evening Post
, “I’d like to become Governor of New York State instead!”

On October 30, 1912, Judge Goff sentenced Becker to death in the Sing
Sing Electric chair, during the week that started on Monday, December 9, 1912.

The following day, Becker was taken from the Tombs, and, handcuffed to a sheriff, he boarded a train to Sing
Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. While at Sing Sing, Becker hired attorney Joseph Shay, to represent him for his appeal.

The four killers, who actually shot Rosenthal, went on trial before Judge Goff on December 8, 1912. Originally, through their lawyer, Charles Wahle, all four men had requested separate trials. But at the last moment, Wahle convinced “Gyp the Blood” Horowitz, “Whitey Lewis” Muller, “Lefty” Rosenberg, and “
Dago Frank” Ciroficci that it was in their best interest to be tried together. Whether this was the right course of action, or not, is hard to determine. But the results speak volumes. (Wahle must have figured he had four losers, so why go through the task of four time-consuming trials for one payday?)

The trial of the four killers lasted a week, and the same cast of characters whom had testified at Becker’s trial, especially Bald Jack Rose, was called to the stand by District Attorney Whitman, who tried this case himself without any help from Assistant D.A. Moss.

Predictably, the results were the same as in the Becker trial.

This time it took only one ballot and a mere 25 minutes for the jury to come back with a guilty verdict.

As he was led from the courtroom, “Whitey Lewis” Muller complained to the press, “When I heard Goff make the charge to the jury, I knew we was dead. The jury would have convicted a priest after listening to that charge.”

After various appeals were denied, all four killers were executed in Sing
Sing Prison in April of 1914.

The day after the four Rosenthal killers were convicted, as per their arrangement with Whitman, Bald Jack Rose, Bridgey Webber, and Harry Vallon were released from the Tombs prison. They were soon seen circulating in the Tenderloin, doing what they had been doing before they had been arrested; so much for justice.

But all three men had targets on their back, since it was well-known in the underworld that all three were rats, and rats don’t have a long life expectancy in the mean streets of New York City.

Attorney Shay was able to obtain several delays to Becker’s execution, and Charles Becker was still alive in the spring of 1913.  However, Shay, who had never handled a criminal case before (his specialty was personal injury), resigned and was replaced by Marion Manton; a bulldog of a criminal attorney, who had been given the moniker of “Praying Manton,” because of 
his ability to trap people on the witness stand into saying things other than what they had intended to say. Manton also was a bigwig at Tammany Hall, and Becker needed all the help he could get.

The only problem was – Shay worked cheap and Manton commanded big bucks. Not having the money to pay Manton, Helen Becker signed over the deed of the Becker’s Bronx house to Manton as payment for his services.

Becker got a tease in early 1913, when New York State Gov. William Sulzer, an old-time pal of Big Tim Sullivan (and close to Manton too), said that documents that had been submitted to him proved Becker’s innocence. Sulzer said that after the appeal decision came back from the Court of Appeals, and if Becker was not given a second trial, Sulzer would use his powers as governor to commute Becker’s sentence.

However, Sulzer, who took over as governor on January 1, 1913, had difficulties of his own, and he never got his chance to help Becker.

Sulzer’s first setback came when it was uncovered that he had diverted campaign contributions into his own personal coffers, and then, when confronted with the evidence - he lied about it. However, Sulzer’s biggest blunder was not playing ball with the head of Tammany Hall: Charles “Boss” Murphy.

Murphy, as payback for getting Sulzer elected, wanted certain men appointed to prestigious positions in Sulzer’s administration. The biggest fish Sulzer turned down for Murphy was James E. Gaffney, the owner of the “Miracle” Boston Braves. Murphy wanted Sulzer to appoint Gaffney to the State Commission of Highways, but Sulzer told Murphy to take a flying leap. Sulzer said, instead of appointing a man to that position, he would put the plum appointment up for a vote.

This was not a smart thing to do to the man (Boss Murphy) who just got you elected governor.

Murphy then used his powers at Tammany Hall to induce the New York State Assembly to impeach Sulzer, which they did on August 13, 1913, by a vote of 79-45. Sulzer was replaced by Lieutenant Gov. Martin H. Glynn, who acted as if he didn’t know Charles Becker ever existed.

Becker always had a big ally in Big Tim Sullivan. However, as early as the beginning of 1912, Sullivan had begun experiencing extreme bouts of dementia. Big Tim escaped from his upstate asylum several times, but he was always found at one of his New York City haunts, playing cards and drinking like a fish.

The last time Sullivan escaped was on August 31, 1912, and he did so after waiting for his guards to fall asleep after an all-night card game. Two weeks later, an unidentified body turned up in an Bronx morgue. The man had apparently been run over by a freight train in Pelham, New York. No one claimed the body, but before the body was buried in Potter’s Field, a policeman recognized it as the body of Big Tim Sullivan.

Big Tim was given a proper sendoff, as 25,000 people followed his casket from a downtown funeral home to his funeral mass at old St. Patrick’s Church on Mulberry Street, just south of Houston Street.

Despite the setbacks of Sulzer’s impeachment and Big Tim Sullivan’s demise, Becker finally got a lucky break.

On Feb. 24, 1914, the New York State Appeals Court, by an overwhelming 6-1 majority, ruled that Becker’s first trial had been grossly improper. The main reasons given by the appeals court were the dubious actions in the courtroom by Whitman and his staff; statements presented to the jury that were certainly prejudicial against Becker and should have been objected to by Judge Goff. As for Judge Goff, the appeals court cited his obvious one-sided performance in the courtroom; favoring the prosecution and constantly lambasting the defense. Judge Goff was also taken to task for dismissing Bald Jack Rose from the witness stand when McIntyre could no longer physically function in court because of heat exhaustion.