Satan's Circus

by Mike Dash

  The funeral itself was subdued. There was little ceremony, and Rabbi Samuel Greenfield delivered only a short address. He made no attempt “to dignify or glorify Rosenthal beyond his walk in life,” waiting reporters noted, but talked a little of the dead man’s generosity to friends. Greenfield also mentioned one relative who had been too ill to attend. Herman’s mother, who had depended on him for support, was dying in Brooklyn. She lay on her deathbed, raving and calling for her son, never knowing—Swope exhaled—that “her boy had preceded her on her long journey.”

  Viña Delmar and her father were not the only people taken aback by the public’s consuming interest in Herman Rosenthal. New York’s underworld, more used to gangland murders going unreported and unsolved, could scarcely remember a case like it, and the active involvement of the district attorney badly shook the murderers in the gray Packard. Zelig’s men had plainly believed there would never be a full investigation of the crime, neither bothering to conceal their vehicle’s license plates nor donning disguises or masks. The gangsters went hurriedly underground, and many of the gamblers who had known Rosenthal well wasted little time in leaving town. Some fled to the Catskills, others to Hot Springs, Arkansas, a popular resort renowned for harboring criminals. Among those who left New York more or less immediately were Beansey Rosenfeld, Dan the Dude, and all three of the minor gamblers who had shared Herman’s fatal table at the Metropole.

  The furor that erupted over Herman’s shooting was, in short, unprecedented, and it owed a good deal to the city’s newspapers. Every daily in the city cleared its front page to report not merely the murder but the ensuing investigation—even the Morning Telegraph, which as a rule preferred to discuss horseflesh and chorus girls. Still more remarkably, the story remained news for months. Hearst’s American featured the case on its front page on 150 of the 190 days following the shooting—this at a time when it also had to make room for a World Series between New York teams, an attempt on the life of Theodore Roosevelt, and national elections. The World and the rest of Manhattan’s dailies were not far behind. “Never in their history,” one reporter calculated, had “the New York press found room for as relentless coverage of a story as it did for the Rosenthal murder.”

  What made the affair sensational, of course, was the rumored involvement of the city’s cops. Tales of police corruption sold newspapers, and it was the tantalizing possibility that someone in authority had commanded Herman’s murder that set the Rosenthal affair apart from other gangland killings. New Yorkers vividly recalled Herman’s angry allegations against Becker on July 15. The gambler’s death, coming as it had a mere eight hours before he was due to give a further statement to the authorities, seemed to confirm every accusation he had made.

  District Attorney Whitman helped fan the flames. Having openly accused the NYPD of instigating and then covering up a conspiracy to murder, the DA was soon in the news again, melodramatically declaring Herman’s shooting “a challenge to our very civilization.” His well-publicized determination to crack the case resulted in a steady stream of developments, each leaked to an eager press. Editors responded by assigning their best reporters to the story, and a swarm of inquisitive newsmen were soon actively assisting Whitman in pursuing leads that had eluded him. The papers’ editorial columns and cartoonists, meanwhile, seized the chance to condemn police corruption and brutality. “Never before in this city was murder done with such openness,” the American scolded. “The tragedy seemed the limit of malignity; nothing could be worse than this.” The World published a grim cartoon showing a hulking cop, his revolver smoking and his face hidden by a strip of cloth labeled “The System,” stepping over a body sprawled on the pavement. “Strip off the mask!” the caption begged.

  Swope and Whitman, who had set the whole story in motion, were the principal beneficiaries of this deluge of reporting. For Swope the affair was a godsend: the biggest story of the year, perhaps of his entire career. The opportunity to cover such a case amply justified the risks that he had taken, first in arranging to publish Herman’s unproven affidavits, next in pursuing Whitman to Rhode Island and cajoling the DA into coming home, and then in routing him from his bed on the night of the shooting to take charge of the investigation. The Rosenthal shooting made Swope’s name and secured for him the post of chief reporter for his paper.

  For Whitman the case was even more important. Had it not been for Herman’s murder, the district attorney might well have served out his term in comparative obscurity, denied the chance to resuscitate his fading career. Rosenthal’s death offered the opportunity to garner headlines and present himself as a no-nonsense lawman. Throughout the ensuing weeks and months, Whitman would take considerable pains to contrast the vigor of his own investigation with the lethargy and dubious motives of the police. Whether or not the DA was really as sure as he appeared to be that the murder was no mere dispute between gamblers, he certainly did see the whole affair as an opportunity to embark on a high-profile crusade against Manhattan’s cops. By taking on those perennial New York bugbears, police corruption and brutality, Whitman hoped to build himself a platform from which to launch a new career in politics, as other district attorneys and peppery judges (Gaynor included) had already done.

  Looked at in this way, Lieutenant Becker made an attractive target. There was nothing to be gained, in political terms, from prosecuting Zelig’s gunmen; even Rosenthal’s gambling enemies, Webber and Rose, were such obvious lowlifes that their convictions would scarcely raise a stir of interest. Arresting Becker, on the other hand, would create a scandal, and convicting him was an achievable goal. It simply meant proving that the lieutenant had had a hand in Herman’s murder—and pursuing Rosenthal’s charges against Becker’s grafting, too.*44

  While the district attorney was busy making statements to the press, Rhinelander Waldo was pushing hard for answers. The commissioner wanted the murder solved just as badly as did Whitman, though he no doubt hoped to prove that the police had had no role in it. Waldo’s determination was due in part to a natural desire to prove to his many critics that his men could solve the case. But it evidently owed something, too, to the awkward conference he had been forced to endure with his mentor, Mayor Gaynor, soon after the shooting. “Conferring,” one newsman explained, “was perhaps not the word.” By standing at a particular spot in City Hall Park, reporters had been able to follow the progress of the interview through a half-open window in Gaynor’s office:

  When the meeting began, the Mayor wore his straw hat. He took it off early in the talk, however, and was seen belaboring his police commissioner with it. Now on the head, then on the shoulders or chest, as the mood seized him. Toward the end of the talk he contented himself with poking it at the commissioner.

  For all Waldo’s urgings, though, it took some time to get the police inquiry on track. Of course, Inspector Hughes and his colleagues had (at least if Whitman were correct) strong motives to leave the murder unresolved, and they often did seem baffled by an array of false statements and red herrings that, taken together, gave the impression that the whole case was a muddle. The police had to sift through statements from more than one witness who claimed that uniformed policemen had been among the killers at the Metropole. Another insisted that Sam Paul had been seen sitting in the Packard taxi, and a third swore that the man who had telephoned to rent the murder car was none other than Lieutenant Becker. None of these stories checked out, and neither did the tale told by another witness who claimed that the taxi had no connection to the murder in any case—the gunmen had walked to the Metropole, he said. As for the number of assassins who had lain in wait for Herman to emerge, conflicting testimony put the number variously at one man, three, or four.

  Amid all this misinformation, though, there were three or four good leads. The best hope of breaking the case seemed to lie with William Shapiro, who remained in custody at the Sixteenth Precinct station house. Hughes, unhappy with the chauffeur’s continued insistence that he had not recognized his custom
ers, had his prisoner arraigned for murder on his second day in custody, and—confronted by the chance that he would stand trial for the killing—Shapiro was soon revealing more of what he knew. He still refused to name any of Zelig’s gangsters. But he did recall that Harry Vallon had been one of his passengers that night. So had a second gambler named Schepps, he said.

  To Hughes and the Satan’s Circus police, Shapiro’s allegations made sense. The hatchet-faced Vallon was a known minor criminal who was not only a friend of Bridgey Webber’s, but an acquaintance of Jack Rose’s. Sam Schepps, a former pimp and opium fiend, belonged to the same circle of associates. A short, plump, bespectacled sneak, and “egotistical beyond imagination,” Schepps now bought and sold fake jewelry and picked up spare change every now and then by carrying messages for Rose.

  Looked at dispassionately, the chauffeur’s statement clearly pointed to the notion that Rosenthal had been killed by his fellow gamblers. Bald Jack Rose had hired the taxi seen outside the Metropole. Two close associates, Vallon and Schepps, had traveled with him in the car. Vallon, in turn, was known to work for Bridgey Webber. As for Sam Paul—who was, other than Arnold Rothstein, the most influential gambler of them all—rumors had reached the police as early as July 17 that Herman’s death was actually the consequence of a recent police raid on the Sam Paul Association, occasioned by a tip-off Paul believed had originated with Herman Rosenthal. It came as little surprise to anyone when a New York American investigation showed that at least a score of gamblers—including Paul, Webber, Vallon, Schepps, and Rose—had spent the hours after the murder together at the Lafayette Steam Baths, an all-night hangout on the East Side greatly favored in the underworld.

  Whether any of this linked Becker to the murder remained a matter of dispute. Commissioner Waldo did not think so, loyally if naïvely hurrying out a statement backing the lieutenant and defending his department. But Whitman continued to insist such was the case. The DA was still not willing to let the police investigation run its course, and over the next few days he not only convened a grand jury to consider Herman’s graft allegations but also created quite a stir by asking the Burns private detective agency to conduct its own inquiries into the Rosenthal affair. The police could not be trusted to find the murderer themselves, Whitman said.

  Ironically enough, in these strained circumstances, it was the much-maligned Inspector Hughes who made the next important breakthrough, tracking down Bridgey Webber and hauling him in for questioning. Webber proved unforthcoming; he gave a short statement of his movements on the night of the murder that omitted anything incriminating and implausibly insisted he and Rosenthal were close friends. “I have known Herman all my life,” he stated. “When I was blackjacked by ‘Tough Tony’ on registration day three years ago, Rosenthal took me to the doctor and took me home. People wanted to make me believe that Herman had me beaten up. I didn’t believe it. I don’t know anything about the murder.” But Hughes was certain that Bridgey knew more than he was saying. The gambler was released, but the police kept close track of his movements.

  The next suspect to turn up was Jack Rose, who walked unchallenged right into police headquarters on July 18. Bald Jack, it transpired, had spent the interval since Rosenthal’s murder hiding in a friend’s apartment well uptown. According to statements he made at different times, the gambler either had been lying in bed, ill and unaware that he was wanted for questioning, or—rather more plausibly—had waited for the chance to see what Shapiro was saying before making the decision to turn himself in. Whatever the truth, his appearance on Centre Street had been meticulously planned. Rose had spent much of the previous day consulting a lawyer friend with strong connections with Tammany Hall. That morning he had carefully dressed in his best clothes and had even stopped off for a manicure on his way downtown. He strolled into the lobby of the building wearing a natty gray suit and a gray silk shirt, discreetly striped with green, and swung a cane jauntily to and fro as he made his way upstairs.

  Bizarrely, the World observed, given that half the policemen in the city were supposed to be searching for him, Rose went quite unrecognized by anyone in the lobby “despite his remarkable appearance” and was able to saunter up and down the corridors unchallenged in search of Waldo’s office. The gambler was eventually directed in to see a surprised Deputy Commissioner Dougherty, who took down his age—thirty-seven—and occupation—“sporting man”—and extracted a statement as determinedly bland as Webber’s had been. “There was nothing to be gained by staying back,” Rose said when asked why he’d surrendered, “since I felt that I was perfectly innocent. I haven’t the remotest idea of why or by whom Rosenthal was killed.”

  If Bald Jack’s unrevealing evidence irked Dougherty at all, the deputy commissioner did not show it. But—given Shapiro’s incriminating statements—Dougherty was not about to let Rose go free. He knew that the gambler had plenty more to say and was better placed than any man to solve the mystery of Charley Becker’s involvement in the whole affair. When Bald Jack had finished talking, Dougherty informed his prisoner he was under arrest “on a charge of acting in concert with others to cause the death of Rosenthal.” Then he stepped out of his office for a moment to arrange for a message to go straight to Whitman’s office informing him of this development.

  Dougherty was still discussing the matter with a colleague along the hall when his office door flew open. The visitor was none other than Lieutenant Becker, who evidently had no idea his former collector had turned himself in. Becker had (so he would later claim) called in at police headquarters to tell his boss where Bald Jack might be hiding, and he was badly shocked to discover that he was too late, stopping “as if shot” when he saw Rose already sitting there. As for the gambler:

  All of a sudden I felt, rather than saw, somebody at the door, and I may have heard a kind of hiss—I’m not sure now—but I don’t think I heard anything at all—I just felt it. I looked up and there standing in the door was Becker. I shall never forget that face if I live to be a thousand years old. He never moved a muscle. He just stood there and looked. I never had been so scared in all my life. I wanted to go to the electric chair right then—anything to get away from him and his eyes.

  I hadn’t made a single crack about Becker except to boost him. But he was afraid I was beginning to tell, and anyway I had come to headquarters in spite of his orders. I always knew Charles Becker was a tough man, but I never knew the real sort of man he was until I got that flash of him looking at me. It didn’t last more than a minute, I suppose, but I felt like I had been in a furnace, I was just burning up. He disappeared without a word, and I came to with a choke as Dougherty entered.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked in a funny way.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said. “I’m seeing things.”

  Becker had every reason to be disconcerted by Rose’s sudden appearance at Police Headquarters. Bald Jack hiding out among the tenements well away from awkward questions was one thing. Bald Jack sitting confident and apparently talkative in the heart of police headquarters was quite another. The development certainly implied that Rose knew he could easily stand trial for the Rosenthal shooting and had come to Commissioner Dougherty to do some sort of deal. And indeed more or less as soon as the gambler was led away to the cells—still swinging his cane and protesting to waiting newsmen that he was merely doing his duty as a citizen by assisting the police with their inquiries—the tenor of the investigation changed.

  To begin with, Dougherty stopped protecting Becker. The deputy commissioner had loyally followed Waldo’s line thus far, insisting there was no evidence, other than the word of criminals, that any member of the NYPD had had a thing to do with Herman’s death. “The police are too busy going after Rosenthal’s killer to pay attention to the newspaper stories that take up so much of Mr. Whitman’s time,” he brusquely informed one newsman after the shooting at the Metropole. On July 20, though, Dougherty changed his mind, calling on the DA in the latter’s offices to ask what s
hould be done. Several of the leading dailies reported the conversation that ensued:

  DOUGHERTY: Do you want me to arrest Lieutenant Becker?

  WHITMAN: Not yet.

  DOUGHERTY: All right. I see we agree as to who is in back of this killing.

  Chauffeur Shapiro’s successive confessions, meanwhile, had at last grown detailed enough for the deputy commissioner to authorize the arrest of several leading suspects. First Bridgey Webber and then Sam Paul were summoned to headquarters for questioning, Webber because, according to the chauffeur, his rooms had been the murderers’ rendezvous, and Paul thanks to the various threats muttered against Rosenthal at a Sam Paul Association picnic held just before the murder. Paul’s arrest coincided—to the surprise of many of the journalists covering the case—with the seizure of Rosenthal’s old friend Jack Sullivan, the newspaper distributor, who had been seen lounging around Webber’s poker club at around the time the four gunmen assembled. There was still no sign of Harry Vallon or Sam Schepps, and the latter was generally believed to have fled the city. But the whereabouts of Vallon became obvious when, shortly after midnight on July 23, the faro dealer followed Rose in strolling right up Centre Street and surrendering to the police, reputedly on Webber’s orders. Vallon had been hiding out in the Catskills, and he proceeded to give a vague and unincriminating statement. Dougherty was not impressed, and he had Webber, Paul, Sullivan, and Vallon charged with conspiracy to murder.

  By that Tuesday morning, then—one week after the shooting—the police had three gamblers and a hanger-on in custody along with Libby and Shapiro. So far as the general public was concerned, six arrests meant progress, and there was increasing speculation that the mystery of Herman’s murder was about to be solved. The press coverage was tumultuous; most dailies printed extra editions to report developments, and a crowd estimated at more than six thousand strong filled the streets outside the Criminal Courts Building when Webber and his friends were brought in for questioning. “A kind of lunacy descended on the city,” Viña Delmar would remember, “as one dramatic charge followed another. The days were filled with extras, which in turn were filled with rumors as well as with detailed testimony.”