100 Years After a Murder

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

 

Becker and Rosenthal, Associated Press; Street scene, Wide World Photos Lt. Charles Becker, right, was executed for arranging the 1912 murder of Herman Rosenthal, left. The Metropole Hotel, at right, was the scene of the crime.

 

Today, the only sign that cash once flowed bountifully at 104 West 45th Street is a sleek bank branch on the ground floor of a black glass skyscraper.

A century ago, the nondescript high-stooped brownstone that stood there masked a more pretentious interior. The lavish red-carpeted second floor was dominated by a cabinet of Japanese curios, copies of masterpiece paintings and expensive faro and custom-built roulette tables.

This illegal gambling den was one of several owned by Herman Rosenthal, known as Beansy, a flamboyantly indiscreet Estonian immigrant.

Mr. Rosenthal had high hopes that his establishment would thrive in the competitive tenderloin district of Manhattan under the patronage of Big Tim Sullivan, the local Democratic political boss, and the protection of a silent partner, Lt. Charles Becker, a member of the Police Department’s vice squad and a towering former beer hall bouncer.

Mr. Rosenthal’s casino opened on March 20, 1912. Barely a month later, Lieutenant Becker raided it to appease his nominal boss, Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo, a reformer.

Mr. Rosenthal was so furious at Lieutenant Becker’s betrayal and the damage the strong-arm squad inflicted that his bitterness got the best of him: He publicly claimed that Lieutenant Becker not only held a mortgage on the place, but also collected 20 percent of the take. Three months later, at 2 a.m. on July 16, 1912, only hours before he was to testify before a Manhattan grand jury, he was murdered outside a Midtown hotel. Lieutenant Becker was accused of the crime.

 

Lieutenant Becker, holding hat, entering Sing Sing in 1914

 

After two trials and countless appeals, Lieutenant Becker died in the electric chair at Sing Sing — becoming perhaps the only police officer executed for crimes connected to his official performance. 

The Becker-Rosenthal affair became the police corruption case of the century — a crime that was recounted in “The Great Gatsby.” The case popularized a cocktail named the Jack Rose, cost Commissioner Waldo his job, catapulted District Attorney Charles S. Whitman into the governorship and still reverberates three generations later in the Becker family.