by Tom Philbin
In the fall of 1930, a grand jury began examining the case, eventually calling ninety-five 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.”
None of the investigations unearthed Crater’s whereabouts or why he had disappeared. Crater was officially declared dead “in absentia” on June 6, 1939, and his case—Missing Persons File No. 13595—was officially closed in 1979. Sally Ritz disappeared in September 1930 and was never seen again. Are the disappearances related? That, too, is unknown.
Many theories have been offered through the years about what happened to Judge Crater. Judges often have enemies—dangerous enemies—and Crater was no exception. One theory holds that he was killed so he couldn’t testify in the Tammany Hall corruption case, which involved Boss Tweed’s notorious crew. Another suggests that he was “executed” by a hit man ordered by gangster Legs Diamond when the judge didn’t pay an extortionist. Crater was also a womanizer, prompting some to believe he was murdered by a jealous lover or found dead in the arms of a prostitute, thereby leading to a cover-up. There has been talk of amnesia and suicide; and others believe he ran away with a showgirl.
Sightings
Crater’s disappearance led to reported sightings in America as well as foreign countries, and some of the sightings were hilarious. He was said to be seen shepherding sheep in the Pacific Northwest, locked away in a Missouri mental facility, mining for gold in California, gambling in Atlanta, aboard a ship in the Adriatic, and operating a bingo game in northern Africa.
But at least one theory has some credibility. In 2005, Barbara O’Brien found a letter from her grandmother, Stella Ferrucci-Good, that was to be opened after Stella’s death. In the letter, Stella claimed that Judge Crater had been murdered by New York City policeman Charles Burns and his brother, taxi driver Frank Burns, who buried Crater’s remains under the Coney Island boardwalk.
O’Brien found the letter in a metal box in her grandmother’s house in Queens. The box also contained old newspaper clippings about Crater’s disappearance, marked up with notes in the margins.
Still a Mystery
Skeletal remains were found under a section of the boardwalk that was removed in the mid-1950s as an aquarium was being built. The human remains were exhumed and re-interred in a mass grave on Hart Island. At the time, no science was available to positively identify the bodies. Some wonder why the public wasn’t told about the discovery of the remains until fifty years later. The discovery most likely received brief mention in the media at the time, but why would any editor make the connection to Crater?
The one missing element is motive. No one has yet offered a definitive motive for why someone would have wanted to murder Judge Crater. However, when the answer does come out—if it ever does—it most likely will seem simple. Jimmy Pavese, a former Suffolk County homicide investigator, once commented, “All crimes are simple once you know the answer.”
Q & A
Q. How many people in the United States are missing?
A. By the end of 2005, there were 109,531 active missing-person records, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Children under the age of eighteen accounted for 58,081 (53.03 percent) of the records, while 11,868 (10.84 percent) were for young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty.
Notable Quotable
“I know why you fellows are here. You think I’m the Mad Bomber.”
I’m old enough to remember the so-called “Mad Bomber” who terrorized New York City in the 1950s. I was a kid living in the Bronx—and that was one scary experience. Newspapers such as the Daily News and the Daily Mirror, one step above tabloid quality, capitalized on the terror that the Mad Bomber embodied, fanning the flames of anxiety. Not a day went by when New Yorkers were not aware that a bomb could go off, possibly killing them.
The Mad Bomber left pipe bombs that ranged in size from four to ten inches long and from one-half inch to two inches in diameter and that used timers constructed from flashlight batteries and cheap pocket watches. The bomber used wool socks to transport the bombs and hang them from railings, and investigators soon learned to look for socks as evidence.
Homicides Cleared
One might think that with DNA and the forensic information available today, every homicide would be solved. Not so. According to the FBI, only 62.6 percent of homicides in 2004 were “solved,” leaving almost 40 percent “uncleared,” as cops say. To put a face on this with some numbers, 16,137 cases of non-negligent manslaughter occurred in 2004 in the United States. So taking 34.7 percent of those cases as unsolved, 6,035 folks literally got away with murder.
There are a number of reasons for that. One is that many investigators are not well trained, and another is that the examination of evidence is primitive. And while 60 percent of murders are solved, they are mostly of a simple kind—one family member kills another. When investigators are dealing with whodunits or cold cases, they are dealing with cases that are much more difficult.
The Mad Bomber planted his first bomb on November 16, 1940, leaving it on a windowsill at the Consolidated Edison power plant in Manhattan. The bomb was wrapped in a note signed “F.P.” that stated he had planted another, also at a Con Ed facility.
Shortly after the United States declared war on Japan and entered World War II, the police received a letter in block capital letters from the bomber stating that he would not set off any bombs during the war.
The Mad Bomber’s note announcing that he would detonate no more bombs for the duration of WWII.
True to his word, the bomber planted no bombs between 1941 and 1945—and even in the years immediately following the war. Instead, he sent crank letters and postcards to police stations, newspapers, and private citizens. Investigators studied these penciled messages and found clues in the writing that hinted of a possible European education.
In 1951, the Mad Bomber started leaving bombs again. Investigators noticed a great deal of improvement when they compared the Mad Bomber’s new bombs to his old ones, leading them to suspect that he had spent time serving in the military during his hiatus.
For his new wave of bombings, he chose mainly public buildings, bombing several of them more than once over the next seven years. He left bombs in restrooms and storage lockers five times each at Grand Central Station and Pennsylvania Station, three times at Radio City Music Hall, and twice each at the New York Public Library and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, as well as at the RCA Building and in the New York City Subway.
Particularly terrifying to me as a boy were bombs left in phone booths and on subways, public places I frequented. The most notable bombs were left in movie theaters, where the bomber cut into seat upholstery and slipped his explosive devices inside. Before 1951, few of the bombs, though real, ever exploded and no one had been hurt.
Pennsylvania Station. The Mad Bomber set off a number of bombs here.
That changed on March 29, 1951, when he placed a bomb in a cigarette sand urn in the Oyster Bar, the restaurant downstairs at Grand Central Station. The bomb exploded, but fortunately no one was injured. Nor was anyone hurt by the next bombs, which exploded without injury in telephone booths in the New York Public Library and in Grand Central Station. But the explosions were heard ’round the world, particularly in New York City, and anyone passing through any of the public facilities in New York would have to stop and carefully check to make sure no pipe bomb was ready to go off.
The Mad Bomber seemed to have Con Edison on his mind constantly because he sent the next bomb through the mail to the company in White Plains, New York. Again, this was a dud but that did not reassure anyone about the Mad Bomber.
In a letter dated October 22, the bomber pointed cops toward the popular Paramount Theatre in Manhattan. No bomb was there, but police found a not
e that said:
Bombs will continue until the Consolidated Edison Company is brought to justice for their dastardly acts against me. I have exhausted all other means. I intend with bombs to cause others to cry out for justice for me.
On November 28, a coin-operated locker at the IRT 14th Street subway station was bombed, again without injury. Near the end of the year, the Herald Tribune received another letter.
Have you noticed the bombs in your city—if you are worried, I am sorry—and also if anyone is injured. But it cannot be helped—for justice will be served. I am not well, and for this I will make the Con Edison sorry—Yes, they will regret their dastardly deeds—I will bring them before the bar of justice—public opinion will condemn them—for beware, I will place more units under theater seats in the near future. F.P.
Several more bombs went off throughout the city in 1952 through 1954, injuring at least four people. Then, around Christmastime 1954, a bomb was planted in the cushion of a seat in Radio City Music Hall, where a capacity crowd of 6,200 people were watching the classic movie White Christmas with Bing Crosby.
The bomb went off, injuring four people. The heavy drapes muffled most of the sound, and the explosion was only heard by those in the immediate vicinity. Almost unbelievably, the show was allowed to go on, and only upon its completion were 150 seats taped off and a search for evidence begun. Good thing a second bomb hadn’t been planted someplace in the theater!
Through 1955 and 1956 the bombs continued, some injuring people, some duds, but residents’ terror continued to escalate. Indeed, because so many people were at risk and because the bomber did not confine his bombing to one area, fear during the Mad Bomber’s reign was said to be worse than the terror sown by David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, in the 1970s. With the Mad Bomber, everyone knew that eventually someone was going to get killed.
What a Difference Time Makes
I’ve told this story in some of my other books, but it’s worth retelling here.
In the 1970s I was an aspiring TV writer, and one day the story editor of Hawaii Five-O, Ken Pettus, invited me to visit him in California. Bizarrely, though I’m an ex-paratrooper, I had become a little afraid of flying, so I took the train to Los Angeles from my home on Long Island.
I spent only a couple of hours with Ken, but I asked him if he would be interested in any story I could make up involving a volcano, and he said yes.
On the train back across the country, I came up with the story that would eventually run in 1975 as an episode called “A Hawaiian Nightmare.” It involved a volcanologist—an expert on volcanoes—threatening to make a volcano erupt unless he was paid a certain sum of money.
I didn’t know how to make a volcano erupt, so I consulted a volcanologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He told me the scheming character would have to blow a hole in the side of the volcano so the lava could flow out. That, in effect, would be just like an eruption. The hole would have to be a big one, so I wondered what kind of explosive could be used. It would have to be very powerful.
“I would suggest ammonium-nitrate fertilizer as the core material,” a chemist at DuPont told me.
“Is that powerful enough?” I asked.
“Let’s put it this way,” the chemist said. “There was a ship docked in Texas City, Texas, in the ’40s whose hold was filled with ammonium nitrate. It went off, and they found the anchor two miles away.”
Indeed, he gave me the complete, simple formula (not revealed here or when the episode ran). The next time I heard about ammonium nitrate was in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh used it as the explosive to take down the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I can just imagine trying to pick the brain of that DuPont chemist today. It wouldn’t happen.
The Greatest Manhunt in History
A single event changed the way the police focused on the Mad Bomber. A December 2, 1956, bombing at the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn left six of the theater’s 1,500 occupants injured, one seriously, and drew tremendous news coverage and editorial attention. The next day, New York City Police Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy ordered what he called “the greatest manhunt in the history of the police department.”
Of course, police already had a theory about the Mad Bomber’s identity. They thought they were looking for a former Con Edison employee with a grudge against the company and pointed the investigation in that direction. As a result, the cops reviewed Con Ed employment records, but that wasn’t the only thing they did. Detectives checked lawsuit records, mental-hospital admissions, and vocational schools where bomb parts might be made. Citizens turned in neighbors who behaved oddly and coworkers who seemed to know too much about bombs. All of these suspicions had to be checked. A new group, the Bomb Investigation Unit, was organized to focus solely on Mad Bomber leads. The police were desperate to catch him.
Police had developed a sort of profile of the Mad Bomber by April 1956. The department issued a multi-state alert for a person described as a skilled mechanic with access to a drill press or lathe (for its ability to thread pipe) who posted mail from White Plains, was over forty, and had a deep-seated hatred for the Consolidated Edison Company. Police distributed samples of the bomber’s distinctive printing and instructed anyone who recognized it to contact them. Police also reviewed drivers’ license applications in White Plains and found nearly 500 possible matches to the bomber’s printing; the names were forwarded to the NYPD for investigation.
A Bomb in the Empire State Building
Despite the active man hunt, the Mad Bomber kept bombing. On December 29, 1956, several weeks after the Paramount Theater episode in Brooklyn, he placed a bomb in the Empire State Building. Cops tried to track him down using all available forensics, but they were unsuccessful. Then John Cronin, an NYPD police captain working the case, contacted a friend of his, James Brussel, MD, a criminologist, psychiatrist, and assistant commissioner of the New York State Commission for Mental Hygiene. Captain Cronin asked Brussel to meet with Inspector Howard E. Finney, head of the NYPD’s crime laboratory.
Brussel was an early practitioner of profiling, in which the investigator studies the behavioral actions of the perp and then creates a portrait of him or her that includes factors such as age, race, sexuality, educational level, and the like. Years later, the technique would prove invaluable to the FBI, and some of the agency’s profiles would prove to be remarkably accurate.
Profilers
On one of the visits I made to the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, I first learned about the process of profiling, which can be described as a way of finding out who might have committed a particular crime, say murder, by closely examining elements and surrounding elements of the crime scene, and then drawing a profile of the killer based on the type of perp who usually commits that type of crime.
For example, one of the most obvious profiles often can be drawn for the murderer of a homosexual male. These murders typically involve what cops call “overkill,” and the murder weapon usually is a knife. In an overkill, the victim may have been stabbed one hundred times or more when just a few blows would have been fatal. Those extra blows were driven by rage in a relationship gone bad. Hence, the FBI and police will start by looking for a gay male.
Although some people argue that it is a flawed art or science, profiling has been regularly used by FBI investigative stars like John Douglas, Robert Ressler, and Roy Hazelwood. And it has paid off. Indeed, why would the FBI continue to use profiling if it didn’t work? Keep reading to learn more about several of today’s famous profilers.
Robert Keppel, PhD
Psychologist Robert Keppel’s real-life experience with one of the major serial killers of the twentieth century is straight out of the pages of fiction. Like the FBI agent in Thomas Harris’s The Red Dragon who enlists the help of the brilliant serial killer Hannibal Lecter to track down serial killer Francis Dolarhyde, Keppel visited Ted Bundy on Death Row in Starke, Florida, and got innumerable insights on how to tra
ck down the Green River Killer.
John Douglas
No discussion of criminal profilers would be complete without detailing the innovative work of John Douglas, who might be considered a superstar among superstars. This former FBI agent developed a variety of sophisticated profiling techniques and had many successes in profiling. Probably his greatest success came from accurately profiling Wayne Williams, the serial killer responsible for murdering more than thirty young African Americans in the case that became known as the Atlanta Child Murders. John Douglas’s profile led to the arrest of Wayne Williams. Williams maintained his innocence, but once he went to jail for the crimes, the murders in the area stopped.
Robert Ressler
There is some debate, but ex-FBI agent Robert Ressler, one of the founding fathers in 1972 of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, is said to have invented the term “serial” murderer or killer to refer to someone who murders at least three people in a row, with a cooling-off period in between.
