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True Crime Historian

Assassination Of The Gambler

True Crime Historian

Pulpular Media

True Crime

4.5720 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Corruption Of Lieutenant Charles Becker.

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Episode 116 is a story about police corruption in New York’s Tenderloin District at the turn of the last century. The Tenderloin District around Broadway was so named by the police because there was a lot of graft to be made and they were able to stop eating chuck steak and started eating tenderloin. Maybe that helped dull the foul taste of corruption in their mouths. The trouble starts when gambling house operator Herman Rosenthal gets double crossed by his business partner, Charles Becker, who happens to also be a police lieutenant. Rosenthal is so upset, he decides to name names in front of a grand jury. Yeah. That’s not going to end well.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Here's a vocabulary word for you today. You'll hear that the gunman in this job jumped

0:09.7

out of the automobiles to know. In old-style automobiles, the back passenger seat was

0:15.9

sometimes separate from the driver's cockpit. This was known as the Teno, but also referred to the covering over it.

0:23.6

Teno can also refer to the bed of a pickup truck if that helps you visualize it.

0:29.6

New York City, July 13th, 1912.

0:44.8

Herman Rosenthal, whose house at No. 104 West 45th Street, was rated April 15th last as a gambling club, applied yesterday to Magistrate Butz for warrants for

0:58.5

the arrest of Police Inspector Cornelius Hayes of the 4th Inspection District, and Captain William Day of the

1:05.9

West 47th Street Station. He made an affidavit charging police oppression, and magistrate butts will

1:13.8

decide this morning whether he will issue warrants for the two police officers. This move on the

1:20.9

part of Rosenthal sent a chill through the White Light District, where gambling houses have sprung

1:26.9

up as thick as hops within the last

1:29.0

year, and means an open declaration of war on the police by Rosenthal, which may involve

1:35.4

every proprietor of a gambling house in the city. Rosenthal is defiant. He declares he will

1:42.9

fight his case to a finish, regardless of cost, and he is known to have

1:48.2

influential political backing. After he applied for the warrant, he openly made serious charges

1:54.9

against the police. In the presence of six men, including a policeman, he accused a lieutenant of police of being a partner in his gambling house at the time it was raided.

2:07.7

Said Rosenthal, quote, this man and myself were the best of friends in the world before this thing came up.

2:15.3

I was as close to him as any man.

2:18.1

When I wanted to open up this house,

2:20.3

I did not have sufficient money to carry my plans through,

2:23.8

and the lieutenant asked me to be let in on it.

2:27.1

He loaned me $1,500 on a chattel mortgage on my furniture,

...

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