Randall Floyd is a syndicated writer living in Augusta.

Judge's disappearance was beyond law

Web posted June 14, 1998

By Randall Floyd
Special Columnist

Joseph Force Crater lived the kind of life most men only dream of.

Young, handsome and rich, the successful 41-year-old New York lawyer enjoyed yachts, travel, fast cars, private retreats and beautiful women.

As president of the prestigious Democratic Party Club of Manhattan, he was also very powerful, rising in April of 1930 to an appointment to the New York State Supreme Court.

In those days, Judge Crater was probably the most popular man in New York City. Ambitious, hardworking and gifted with persuasive charm, he possessed an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time.

A bright political career obviously lay before this tall, dapper ladies man who parted his iron-gray hair neatly down the middle. All he had to do was stay out of trouble -- and remember who his friends were at Tammany Hall.

On the evening of Aug. 6, 1930, Judge Crater disappeared. One minute he was laughing and talking with friends outside a Manhattan restaurant; the next, he waved goodbye, stepped into a cab and was never seen or heard from again.

Judge Crater's ride into the unknown prompted one of the most massive manhunts in New York history. The investigation lasted for years and cost millions of dollars, but the fate of Joseph Force Crater remains unsolved.

Some speculated that he was kidnapped and murdered by political enemies. Others said he was the victim of amnesia, while a few concluded that he had simply run away with a secret lover after withdrawing a large sum of money from his Fifth Avenue bank.

Ironically, nobody realized that the judge was missing for almost two weeks. Colleagues thought he was on vacation with his wife in Maine, while Mrs. Crater was under the impression he was on a business trip in New York State.

But when the judge did not show up at the vacation house or keep an appointment in New York City on Aug. 25, fellow justices arranged a private search, hoping to keep the story out of the newspapers. Eventually the police were called in, and the disappearance made front page news on Aug. 26.

An investigation revealed that the judge's bank deposit box was empty, as was a private safe. Two personal briefcases were missing, along with other personal belongings from his Fifth Avenue office. Foul play was immediately suspected, though rumors were flying around town that the judge had simply skipped out, perhaps with a new girlfriend he had reportedly been seen with.

After hearing the testimony of 95 witnesses, a grand jury concluded: "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 a sufferer from disease in the nature of amnesia, or is the victim of a crime."

Mrs. Crater, who had fallen in love and married Judge Crater in 1916 after he had successfully represented her in a divorce settlement, thought otherwise. She and a close group of friends continued to search for clues, convinced that foul play was behind her husband's disappearance.

The judge had been murdered, Mrs. Crater felt, "because of a sinister something that was connected with politics." In her opinion, forces within Tammany Hall had killed Judge Crater because he refused to pay them back for helping with his nomination to the bench.

Other theories linked the judge's fate to organized crime. In his judicial role, Judge Crater had once helped put together a lucrative deal involving the sale of a Manhattan hotel. Some investigators suggested that the transaction went sour for a certain group of people who saw revenge as the only way to vindicate their losses.

The most likely explanation, according to close friend and fellow New York attorney Emil K. Ellis, was that Judge Crater had been murdered in a showgirl's blackmail scheme. Mr. Ellis, who went on to represent Judge Crater's widow in a lawsuit against her husband's insurance company, said the large sum of money her husband had withdrawn the day before he disappeared was probably a payoff.

He believed the judge was then killed by a gangster friend of the showgirl when he refused to give her more money. On the evening of his disappearance, Judge Crater had been seen talking to a well-known showgirl who later also was missing.

Did the flamboyant judge run off with the showgirl? Did she have something to do with his death, then skip out? Newspapers debated the case for years.

On June 6, 1939, almost nine years to the day after he went missing, Judge Crater was declared legally dead. The case was never officially closed, and reports about his reappearance continue to pop up almost 60 years later.

Randall Floyd is a syndicated writer living in Augusta.