Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (87 page)

In addition to speaking with unusual slowness, Plitt also took a long time between answers. Often Plitt waited between five and 10 seconds before replying to one of Mr. Whitman’s questions. Mr. Manton timed him once or twice waiting for an answer, and complained to Judge Seabury of the long silences. Judge Seabury ignored Manton’s pleas and told Whitman to get on with his questioning of Plitt.

             
The press said Becker seemed confused during Plitt’s testimony. At times, Becker would smile sarcastically and whisper something into his lawyer’s ear. At other times, his face was a mask of apprehension. Once, Becker slid down the entire length of the defendant’s table, so he could look Plitt straight in the eye. However, Plitt just stared at the ceiling and refused to return Becker’s gaze.

Becker’s wife, Helen, sat through Plitt’s testimony with her hand on her chin. Her eyes seemed to bore a hole right through Plitt’s forehead. Helen Becker stared at Plitt, a man she knew quite well through her husband, with a mix of contempt and downright hatred.

After a 1½-hour lunch break, Becker’s attorney, Manton, attacked Plitt like a piranha would devour a school of angel fish. Manton spat seemingly innocuous questions at Plitt designed to make Plitt look like a moron.

Manton asked, “How old are you Mr. Plitt?”

Plitt hemmed and hawed, and after a few moments, interrupted by blocks of complete silence, he finally answered, “26 or 27.”

Manton ridiculed Plitt’s answer and forced him to make a decision.

Manton said, “Well sir, can’t you make up your mind? Are you 26, or 27. Surely you must know.”

Plitt was forced to admit he really didn’t know his exact age.

Smelling blood in the water, Manton said, “Well Mr. Plitt, where were you born?”

Plitt answered, “The U.S.”

Manton sneered, “What’s that?”

Plitt squirmed, “The United States.”

His voice dripping with sarcasm, Manton asked, “Can’t you give us any more definite place than that?”

Finally, Plitt narrowed down his birthplace to New York City; then he narrowed it down even further to Allen Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Plitt then reiterated he was not sure exactly what year he had been born.

Manton inquired if Plitt had ever been in an institution “for the feeble minded,” or had ever been “examined as to his sanity.”

Plitt rolled his eyes upward and waited for what seemed like an eternity before he finally replied, “Not that I can remember.”

Manton asked Plitt about his arrest for the murder of a Negro while accompanying Becker on the raid of a gambling house. District Attorney Whitman jumped to his feet and objected. Judge Seabury sustained that objection. Not realizing he didn’t have to answer the question, Plitt admitted he had been a joint defendant with Becker concerning the shooting Manton had alluded to.

Judge Seabury angrily told the jury to ignore Plitt’s remarks. But the damage had already been done.

Manton then asked Plitt, “Did you ever write to Becker in Sing Sing about that?”

“I don’t remember,” Plitt said.

Manton would not let go of his line of questioning. “Don’t you remember writing to Becker that he must get a lawyer to defend you?”

“I don’t remember what I wrote,” Plitt said.

“Did you ever put your alleged conversations with Becker in writing?” Manton asked.

Plitt replied that he had certainly not done so.

Manton pounced. “Yet, you recalled those conversations for Mr. Whitman this morning. The things you never wrote are clearer in your mind than things you wrote.”

Plitt did what he did best. He played dumb and said not another word about the subject.

Suddenly, Manton surprised Plitt, Whitman, and the court by producing a piece of paper and having Plitt write down the words “opportunity,” “sticky,” “expense,”  “minute,” “consult,” and “involuntary.” Plitt did as he was told, and when Plitt was finished, Manton asked that the court summit Plitt’s handwriting into evidence. Manton didn’t explain why, but soon it became evident.

Manton then produced letters that were allegedly sent by Plitt to Becker after Becker’s first trial, while Becker was incarcerated in Sing
Sing Prison. The letters were addressed to “My Dear Friend Charles,” and signed by “Hiram Charles.” These letters contained numerous declarations that Becker was innocent of the murder of Herman Rosenthal.

Manton asked Plitt if he was the author of those letters. After dawdling and staring at the ceiling, and after Manton reminded Plitt that Plitt had just given his handwriting samples to the court, which had been introduced into evidence, Plitt finally admitted that he was indeed the author of those letters.

At this point, Manton read to the jury a copy of the testimony to the grand jury that indicted Becker. In this testimony, Plitt had sworn that Becker was innocent and that Becker had been framed by Whitman.

Even though Manton had punched holes in Plitt’s credibility, he could not get Plitt to retract his statement that he had given that morning under questioning by Whitman. Plitt insisted that after Becker’s first trial, while Becker was being taken on the train from the Tombs to Sing
Sing Prison, Becker had asked Plitt to kill Bald Jack Rose.

After Plitt’s testimony was complete, Whitman produced a surprise witness: a Negro named James Marshall. Whitman claimed Marshall was the missing link to the “Harlem Conference” alluded to in Becker’s first trial. One of the reason’s Becker had won his appeal for a second trial was because the appeals court had ruled that there had been no independent corroboration, aside from Bald Jack Rose, Bridgey Webber, and Harry Vallon, that this meeting had ever taken place.

Mr. Marshall was an actor and a tap dancer who had appeared around the country in theatrical reviews. Whitman claimed the reason Marshall did not testify during Becker’s first trial was because Marshall was out of town and could not be located. As soon as Marshall sat in the witness stand, Whitman cemented the link between Becker and Marshall.

Whitman said, “Do you know the defendant Becker.”

“Yes sir, I do,” Marshall replied.

Marshall went on to testify that he first met Becker when Becker’s Strong Arm Squad raided a café on Twenty-Eight Street. When Marshall, along with several other Negros who were arrested, was brought to Police Headquarters, Marshall met Becker. Becker proposed to Marshall, that he would be released if Marshall began working for Becker as a “stool pigeon”; getting evidence for Becker on Negro gambling houses.

On the night of June 27, 1912, Marshall said that Becker ordered him to infiltrate a Negro gambling house on 124
th
  Street and Seventh Avenue, which Becker planned to raid later that night. After the raid was completed, Marshall said he saw Becker standing on the street corner conversing with three men. One of the men Marshall positively identified as Bald Jack Rose.

“How did you know it was Mr. Rose?” Whitman asked Marshall.

“I’ve seen his pictures,” Marshall said.

Manton jumped to his feet and said, “I object.”

Judge Seabury overruled Manton’s objection.

Whitman asked Marshall, “Have you seen the man you refer to as Mr. Rose after that meeting on the Harlem street corner?”

“Yes sir,” Marshall said. “I saw him a few weeks ago in a theatrical agency owned by Mr. Robinson. The man I saw there was the man I saw that night with Mr. Becker. I have since learned that it was Mr. Rose.”

After his questioning of Marshall, Whitman turned to Manton with a satisfied smile on his face, knowing he had now proven the existence of the “Harlem Conference” which the appeals court said Whitman had not done  in Becker’s first trial.

When it was Manton’s turn to cross-examine Marshall, his tactic was to try to trip up Marshall into contradicting parts of his testimony. But Marshall was a rock on the stand, and in fact, Marshall turned out to be one of Whitman’s most believable witnesses.

Becker’s second trial lasted 17 days. On the final day, Judge Seabury made his charge to the jury, and it was just as one-sided as Judge Goff’s had been in the first trial. It was said later, that Judge Seabury was aware that the New York press, especially the
World
, had been hostile to Becker. Judge Seabury was also aware that he needed that same press to further his political ambitions. As a result, Judge Seabury gave a detailed charge to the jury that almost exactly parroted the one District Attorney Whitman had given in his summation to the jury.

As soon as Judge Seabury finished his charge, one of Manton’s co-counsels, John B. Johnson, jumped to his feet and said, “I object to the whole charge on the grounds that is it an animated argument for the prosecution.”

On the day before the verdict was rendered and both the prosecution and the defense had finished their summations, Mrs. Helen Becker spoke to the press.

She said, “I cannot believe that any 12 sensible men can give credence to such cooked-up stories as those told by Rose, Webber, and Plitt. I don’t expect a conviction. The worst that can happen is a disagreement. Charles is innocent and he will be exonerated.”

On Friday, May 22, 1914, the jury took only one ballot and less than two hours to find Charles Becker guilty for the second time of the first-degree murder of Herman Rosenthal.

As Becker was led from the courtroom, his wife Helen threw her arms around his neck. She cried, “Oh, Charlie I’m so sorry, I didn’t expect it.”

As soon as he left his wife’s embrace, Becker was led out of the courtroom, around the corridor, and to the other side of the courthouse.

There he issued a brief statement, “I am very sorry for myself,” Becker said. “That is all I have to say.”

Then, after chains were attached around both ankles, Becker crossed the Bridge of Sighs for the final time, and he plodded back to his Tomb’s prison cell.

Helen Becker stood in the sheriff’s office for some time after her husband was led back to his cell. Relatives said she was too overcome with grief to leave immediately; and when she did, she had to be assisted out of the building and into a waiting car.

After the verdict, several people connected with the trial made statements to the press.

District Attorney Whitman puffed out his chest and said, “The verdict speaks for itself. Becker is guilty. It was proven. Now he must pay for his crimes.”

Becker’s attorney Manton had a totally different take.

Manton said, “The verdict was a complete surprise to me and my co-counsels in the case. We are all astounded. So is Becker. We were all confident of an acquittal. And of course we will file an appeal.”

Manton’s co-counsel Johnson simply said, “I am surprised.”

In front of his adoring press, Judge Seabury stuck his chin out and opined on the courtroom proceedings.

“I am not to be interviewed on the verdict,” Judge Seabury said. “But I may say that the conduct of those having business at the trial was exemplary and an aid to the dignified administration of justice.”

Even chubby and flush-faced Lillian Rosenthal offered a statement.

“The verdict was a just one and I expected it,” she told the
New York Times
. “I wish to thank the people of the State of New York for what they have done in repairing my heart in a small way. I wish to thank the jurors and the friends of the jurors who have stood behind them in this trying ordeal. I’m thankful it is all over.”

Then, Lillian Rosenthal issued a sincere shout-out to Helen Becker. 

She said, “My heart goes out to Mrs. Becker for her trust and loyalty to her husband during the hours of the trial. My heart goes out to her, for she feels like I felt at the time of the trouble which caused the death of my dear husband.”

Then she added, “I live for only one thing: to see the day that Becker pays the penalty.”

As several New York City daily newspapers called attention to in the following day’s dailies, it was almost unprecedented for a second trial to render the same verdict of “guilty in the first degree” as had the first trial. Only once before, in the entire history of the state of New York, had this anomaly taken place. 

As was pointed out in the
New York Sun
, “The jury could have saved Becker’s life even in finding him guilty if they had wanted to show mercy. Justice Seabury had told them they could choose among three degrees of murder, and two of those degrees could have meant imprisonment. But like the 24 men who had come before, the first Becker jury and the gunmen’s jury, they believed Jack Rose told the truth. Becker and his counsel never thought there was a chance in the world that 12 men, after the Court of Appeals’ decision to grant Becker a new trial, would send Becker to the chair.”

Despite the great disappointment of being found guilty a second time of the murder of Herman Rosenthal, Becker, who had not yet been sent back to Sing
Sing Prison, had no trouble sleeping in his cell at the Tombs. According to a Tombs’ keeper, after the second guilty verdict, “Becker jumped into his bed and slept like a baby until 7 a.m. the following morning.”

“That man is no longer like other men,” the keeper told the
New York Times
. “He is calloused by his experience. He saw 13 men go to the electric chair and what happened on Friday hasn’t wrecked his nerve. He is pinning his hope on the Court of Appeals and is not worrying about himself. But he grieves for his wife, and he can’t conceal that fact when she is near him.”

Some jurors spoke quite freely to the press after the verdict. There had been erroneous reports circulating in the courtroom that there had been five separate ballots, and the jurors were quite divided as to the verdict. To quell this notion, the jurors released an account of what transpired in the jury room, which spelled out their deliberations, which witnesses’ testimony they regarded well and which testimony they totally disregarded.

The jurors’ statement said that after Judge Seabury’s charge to the jury, the jurors went into the jury room, and a ballot immediately was taken. Seven jurors voted for murder in the first degree, three for murder in lessor degrees, one was blank, and one voted not guilty. Then the jury went to lunch and not a word was spoken about the case.

When they returned, the real deliberations began. While one juror smoked, another juror detailed the entire story put forth by the prosecution. The discussions were informal and never heated.

The jurors first discussed the testimony of Charles Plitt, who had once worked under Becker and had said, after Becker’s first conviction, Becker had told him to murder Jack Rose. The jury totally disregarded Plitt’s testimony as an unbelievable tale told by a man with limited intelligence.

The “Harlem Conference” and the testimony of James Marshall was discussed next. To a man, every juror said Marshall’s testimony was quite believable, and it had confirmed the testimony of Jack Rose that he, Bridgey Webber, Harry Vallon, and Becker had met in Harlem to discuss Rosenthal’s murder.

Then the jurors discussed the testimony of Bald Jack Rose. One juror said that after Rose’s testimony, “I was convinced that Becker’s relationship with Rose was more than the relationship of a police lieutenant with a stool pigeon. Rose was not a mere acquaintance of the underworld. He was a big factor in Becker’s relations with Rosenthal.”

The jury bought Rose’s main contentions that not only did Becker order Rosenthal killed, but Becker was also in constant contact with Rose soon after the murder, trying to aid and abet a cover-up.

At the end of about 40 minutes, jury foreman F. Meredith Blagden walked over to each juror one by one and looked them in the eye. Each juror nodded in the affirmative that Becker was indeed guilty of first degree murder.

Blagden then said, “I think we are all agreed. Aren’t we?”

None of the jurors dissented.

However, Blagden was concerned he and his fellow jurors had not taken long enough to come to a decision. He stepped out of the jury room and asked one of the courtroom attendants how long the first Becker jury had been out. He was told that the first jury took eight hours to find Becker guilty. This confirmed in
Blagden’s mind that maybe, not to appear like they had come to a hasty decision, the jurors should stay in the jury room somewhat longer. So Blagden and his 11 fellow jurors sat in the jury room for one more hour without saying another word about the case. The smoking juror smoked, and several other jurors closed their eyes and tried to take a nap.

When Blagden thought the time was right, he sent a message to Judge Seabury that they had reached their decision. Ten minutes later, the 12 jurors filed into the courtroom.

So, in fact, it did not take nearly two hours and five ballots to convict Becker; there was only one ballot and the entire deliberations took a mere 40 minutes.

Several of the jurors, who were approached by the press in the following days, refused to discuss their deliberations, but some were quite chatty. One juror, who asked that his name not be revealed in the newspapers, said, “I was astonished when I read in the newspapers that we had cast five ballots. That might create the impression that there was a wide difference of opinion. As a matter of fact, we were practically of one mind from the beginning.”

This same juror was asked if the summation of any of the lawyers had influenced the jury. The anonymous juror said, “I can’t answer positively for anyone but myself, but I believe District Attorney Whitman’s brilliant summing up wholly convinced one of the jurors. He came into the jury room a changed man after that speech.”

Then came the million-dollar question: did this juror think Becker had received a fair trial?

“I certainly do,” he said. “And I include in this the care and attention in the jury room.”

The anonymous juror then added something that gave credence to Becker’s co-counsel,
John B. Johnson’s, strenuous objection to Judge Seabury’s charge to the jury.

“Justice Seabury’s charge helped a great deal,” the anonymous juror said. “It put the case in sequence that made everything clear and distinct.”

Unfortunately, that was not the role of Judge Seabury, but instead of District Attorney Whitman. So there can be no doubt Judge Seabury’s inclination to side with the prosecution played a huge part in Becker’s second conviction.

Juror No. 6 was Walter Goodyear, the owner of a bookstore on Fifth Avenue and someone who considered himself an amateur psychologist. When a reporter asked if he could interview him about the Becker trial, Goodyear readily agreed.

At this interview, which took place in Goodyear’s bookstore, Goodyear surrounded himself with numerous books on psychology, to make himself appear an expert on the subject. Without much prodding from the reporter, Goodyear admitted he had applied his method of psychological analysis to Rose, Vallon, Becker, and others during the trial, which helped him reach the guilty verdict.

Goodyear categorized Rose, Webber, and Becker in the same class, which he called, “The Underworld.” Goodyear said his study of these men in the courtroom revealed to him “common motives, common ideas, and common avenues of thinking and acting.”

“My placing Becker in the same class with men like Rose, put Becker into the same groove in which these men found themselves,” Goodyear said. “Thus parallel lines of thought of Becker and Rose could easily be explained.”

The reporter asked Goodyear if he had considered Mrs. Helen Becker in reaching a verdict.

“She added sympathy in the case, of course,” Goodyear said. “I saw her every day, but she did not weigh in the evidence. You can well believe that the verdict was a strain on all of us. This is reflected in the fact that some of the jurors at first favored a lesser degree of punishment. But sympathy could not modify the verdict justified by facts, could it?”

After his second Becker win, District Attorney Charles Whitman was the “toast of the town.” In just the two days after the verdict had been rendered, Whitman received hundreds of congratulatory letters and telegrams. One man sent Whitman a long letter (which Whitman released to his adoring press) that referred to Whitman’s victory as the “triumph of the right.” The letter ended with the man saying that he would immediately send Whitman a rug “on which you can place your feet and rest.”

The Mayor of New York City, John Purroy Mitchel, also got into the act. 

Mitchel sent Whitman a letter (which again Whitman released to the press) that said, “I have just heard of the outcome of the Becker case. The whole community is under obligations to you. Your work has been splendid.”

Whitman did a few victory laps in certain New York City bars and restaurants, strutting his success in prosecuting Becker twice and winning twice. Then he easily took the Republican nomination for Governor, winning the primary against Harvey D. Hineman by the lopsided vote of 120,073 to 61,952.

In November, the Governor’s race also went easily to Whitman. He defeated the incumbent acting-governor Martin Glynn by a vote of 686,701 to 412,252. On Jan. 1, 1915, Charles Whitman was sworn in as the 41
st
Governor of New York State.

This did not bode well for Charles Becker.

J
AMES MARSHALL TAP DANCES AROUND THE TRUTH - TWICE

On February
13, 1915
a series of events occurred concerning James Marshall, the Negro who had testified at Becker’s second trial. These events resembled a comedy of errors viewed in a funhouse mirror.

First, Marshall, a professional tap dancer, who was then living in Philadelphia, gave his wife an early Valentine’s present by beating the crap out of her while he was in a drunken stupor. Marshall’s wife called the police to make a formal complaint, and both husband and wife were hustled down to the police station. While Mrs. Marshall was giving her statement to the police, she happened to mention, that in addition to being a brute, her husband was also an habitual liar. In fact, Mrs. Marshall said Mr. Marshall had lied under oath in Becker’s second trial when he said that he had seen Becker with Jack Rose on a Harlem street corner – the infamous “Harlem Conference.”