0:02 [SPEAKER_00]: you have probably heard the phrase to pull a crater, but do you know where it comes from? 0:08 [SPEAKER_00]: It basically means to disappear and it originated from one of the most infamous disappearances in American history. 0:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back, friend, to hometown history. 0:25 [SPEAKER_00]: In today's episode, we will explore the disappearance of Judge Crater, a case of how a man simply vanished from the face of the earth, leaving behind a mystery that has puzzled everyone for decades. 0:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Before we get into the case, let's get to know Judge Crater a bit better. 0:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Joseph Force Crater was born on January 5, 1889 in Eastern Pennsylvania. 0:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Being the eldest of four children, you can imagine there were quite a lot of expectations for the boy. 1:02 [SPEAKER_00]: His father owned an orchard, and his mother was a produce market operator. 1:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Both of his parents had immigrated from Ireland, and this heritage had a strong influence over Crater's upbringing. 1:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Crater's parents wanted their boy to become something of note, as any parent would. 1:24 [SPEAKER_00]: They placed a strong emphasis on his education and values, which carried him through his 1:31 [SPEAKER_00]: He studied at Lafayette College, where he graduated in 1910. 1:36 [SPEAKER_00]: After that, his ambition led him to Columbia University, where he joined the Sigma Chi fraternity. 1:44 [SPEAKER_00]: With his hard work and dedication to his studies, his legal career took off quickly. 1:50 [SPEAKER_00]: This was when he opened an office at the equitable building in Manhattan, and joined forces with 2:01 [SPEAKER_00]: becoming a member of the Kiyuga Democratic Club. 2:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Here he spent considerable time organizing election workers and representing the club and election law cases, showcasing his dedication to both law and politics. 2:18 [SPEAKER_00]: In April of 1930, Franklin Roosevelt, who was the governor of New York at the time, appointed 2:30 [SPEAKER_00]: despite its name, this court is actually a trial court, rather than the state's highest court. 2:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a significant step forward in his career, and during his time on the bench, he made some pretty life altering decisions. 2:46 [SPEAKER_00]: These include two published opinions, Rocawitz vs. Sun, which dealt with fraudulent conveyances and mortgage foreclosure fraud, and Henderson vs. Park Central Motors Service, which involved the liability of a garage company, for stolen and wrecked car. 3:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He was getting attention in fame as he worked in that position, but with attention comes scrutiny. 3:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Crater's appointment to the Supreme Court drew attention to his financial activities, particularly his liquidating investments worth $16,000, and withdrawing $7,000 from his bank account, 3:38 [SPEAKER_00]: These transactions coupled with his involvement in the anti-corruption inquiry, known as the Seabore Commission, ended up possible underhanded activities on his end, which obviously brought him negative publicity. 3:55 [SPEAKER_00]: The pressure is mounting, and Crater has to do something about it. 4:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Crater in his wife spent the summer of 1930, a cashing at their summer cabin in Belgrade, Maine. 4:10 [SPEAKER_00]: During this retreat, Crater received a rather mysterious telephone call. 4:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Now there is no concrete evidence to tell us who called him, but it was enough to make him return to New York immediately. 4:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He mentioned to his wife that he needed to return to New York City, quote, To straighten those fellows out, but offered no further details, What fellows were these? 4:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And what trouble were they causing that had to be dealt with? 4:41 [SPEAKER_00]: crater left no clues for us, but here is the confusing part. 4:47 [SPEAKER_00]: It is believed that upon arriving in New York, rather than addressing business matters, crater spent time in Atlantic City with showgirl Sally Lou Ritz. 4:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, on August 1st, Crater returned to Maine, only to travel back to New York City again, on August 3rd. 5:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Promising his wife, he would return for her birthday on August 9th. 5:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Quite a lot of back and forth for a judge on vacation, 5:19 [SPEAKER_00]: According to his wife, he was in good spirits and behaving normally. 5:24 [SPEAKER_00]: On the morning of August 6th, Crater spent two hours going through his files and his chambers. 5:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Reportedly destroying several documents. 5:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He then had his law clerk, Joseph Mora, cast two checks for him, totaling $5,150 which would be $94,000 today. 5:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Crater and Mara carried two locked briefcases to Crater's apartment, where Crater told Mara to take the rest of the day off, then came the trouble. 5:59 [SPEAKER_00]: That evening, after seeing Mara, Crater visited a Broadway ticket agency, run by his friend Joseph Gransky. 6:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He reserved a seat for the comedy, Dancing Partner, 6:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Grantsky was surprised at his reservation, since they had already seen a preview of the show earlier. 6:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't likely that Crater loved it so much that he wanted a second viewing. 6:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The judge then had dinner, a Billy Hoss' chophouse, with rits and his lawyer friend William Klein. 6:35 [SPEAKER_00]: accounts of his departure from the restaurant are different. 6:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Klein initially said that crater took a cab, but Ritz later claimed that they all entered a taxi, but crater decided to walk by himself. 6:49 [SPEAKER_00]: This was just the beginning of all the confusion. 6:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Crater had to arrive in Maine by August 9th to celebrate his wife's birthday, but he didn't show up. 7:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Weader still. 7:02 [SPEAKER_00]: When the courts opened up again on August 25th, he didn't show up then either. 7:07 [SPEAKER_00]: So this obviously alarmed his wife and colleagues. 7:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly, something was off. 7:14 [SPEAKER_00]: To avoid excessive attention on this, they launched a private investigation to find them, with no results. 7:23 [SPEAKER_00]: To be fair, they didn't give it very long. 7:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Since the private search wasn't doing anything, they decided to go public. 7:31 [SPEAKER_00]: They involved the police on September 3rd, making the missing judge front page news. 7:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He was actually called the missingist man in New York. 7:45 [SPEAKER_00]: In line with that title, the police began an intensive investigation. 7:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Detectives found that Crater's safe deposit box had been emptied. 7:56 [SPEAKER_00]: In the two brief cases that he had taken to his apartment were now missing. 8:01 [SPEAKER_00]: With the attention this case was getting, people wanted to be involved. 8:06 [SPEAKER_00]: The station was flooded with thousands of false reports from people claiming to have seen the judge. 8:13 [SPEAKER_00]: and that made it difficult to separate the good leads from the fake ones. 8:18 [SPEAKER_00]: A grand jury convened in October 1930, calling 95 witnesses, and gathering 975 pages of testimony. 8:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Yet despite the extensive investigation, the jury concluded that the evidence was insufficient to determine whether crater was alive or dead, had voluntarily disappeared, suffered from amnesia, or was a victim of a crime. 8:45 [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, they had no leads whatsoever. 8:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And to add to it, crater's social life further complicated this investigation. 8:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He was known to enjoy the city's nightlife, and socialized with many showgirls, including his long-term mistress, Connie Marcus. 9:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Two women linked to crater, skipped town abruptly after his disappearance. 9:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Sally Lou Ritz, who had dined with him on the night he vanished, was found living in Ohio. 9:16 [SPEAKER_00]: She claimed that she had left New York because of her father's illness. 9:23 [SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, there was June Bryce, another showgirl, seen with Crater the day before he disappeared, and allegedly she was involved in a blackmail scheme against him. 9:36 [SPEAKER_00]: She disappeared the day the grand jury convened on the case, and was later found in a mental hospital. 9:44 [SPEAKER_00]: What did Crater do? 9:46 [SPEAKER_00]: To add to the insanity, Cretars' jacket was apparently found in the apartment of Vivian Gordon, a woman involved in high-end prostitution, and linked to organized crime figures, like Jack Legs Diamond. 10:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Gordon was murdered shortly after offering to testify about police corruption, a crime that drew further attention to the corruption investigation, and led to significant political 10:16 [SPEAKER_00]: All this meant, there were several credible suspects, and zero usable evidence. 10:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Days turned into weeks, in weeks, and to months, but there were still no trace of crater. 10:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, six months after Crater's disappearance, his wife discovered envelopes containing checks, stocks, bonds, and a note from him in a dress or drawer. 10:45 [SPEAKER_00]: The weird thing is, the police had already searched these places, which could only mean Crater snuck the letter in after the whole investigation. 10:55 [SPEAKER_00]: This discovery led to the idea that Crater had been organizing his finances and might have been preparing for an unexpected event. 11:05 [SPEAKER_00]: But none of these items provided any further information that could be used to solve this case. 11:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Once again, hope was lost. 11:16 [SPEAKER_00]: As with any unsolved mystery, conspiracy theories began cropping up. 11:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Some people suggested he simply ran away to start a new life, possibly due to political corruption ties that were being speculated, or he wanted to be with a mistress and ran away with her. 11:36 [SPEAKER_00]: This was based on his known fondness for showgirls, and his nickname, Good Time Joe. 11:43 [SPEAKER_00]: This speculation was fueled by the numerous alleged sightings of crater, including reports of him living under an assumed identity in the years following his disappearance. 11:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Author Richard Toffel suggested that crater died of natural causes in a brothel operated by Polly Adler, and that its body was disposed of by mobsters connected to the establishment 12:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Tofu claims an early draft of Adler's memoir, mentioned Crater's death, but then again, no copies of this draft have ever been found. 12:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Another theory emerged in 2005, when Stella for which he could, a New Yorker, died and left behind notes claiming her husband knew what happened to Crater. 12:31 [SPEAKER_00]: According to these notes, Crater was killed by NYPD Officer Charles Burns, and buried under the Coney Island Boardwalk, which is now the site of the New York Aquarium. 12:44 [SPEAKER_00]: As you may have guessed, no skeletal remains were found during the site's excavation in the 1950s. 12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: As for Mrs. Crater, she remained in Maine during the search for her husband, and was later evicted from their fifth Avenue apartment for non-payment of rent. 13:03 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1937, living on a modest income, she petitioned to have Crater declared legally dead, 13:12 [SPEAKER_00]: This status was granted in 1939, and she remarried five years later, however she separated from her second husband in 1950 and passed away in 1969, without ever knowing the truth about her first husband's disappearance. 13:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And we are left with the same mystery. 13:35 [SPEAKER_00]: The disappearance of Judge Joseph Forced Crater remains one of the most enduring mysteries in American history, despite the extensive investigation, numerous theories, and countless hours spent searching for answers. 13:51 [SPEAKER_00]: The truth of what happened to Crater on that particular evening remains hidden. 13:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Was he the victim of foul play? 13:59 [SPEAKER_00]: or did he choose to disappear voluntarily? 14:02 [SPEAKER_00]: We may never know, but it is quite fun, especially right? 14:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to Home Town History. 14:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Be sure to follow along for more interesting stories from the past.
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