Missing in Manhattan: The Disappearance of Judge Joseph Force Crater
Murder Sheet
MurderSheet
3.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2022
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Judge Joseph Force Crater was a man about town in Manhattan. He was powerful, political, and a perennial participant in Broadway's party scene.
Until he vanished after walking out of a popular chop house. Years of public scrutiny and speculation turned up no solid proof of his fate. But now, over ninety years since the judge's disappearance, one attorney and author investigated the disappearance in a book.
Check out Stephen J. Riegel's book "Finding Judge Crater: A Life and Phenomenal Disappearance in Jazz Age New York" here on Amazon, or wherever you buy your books:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08P53V7RV/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
And contact the New York Police Department if you happen to have information on this cold case.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The judge drifts away into the hot Manhattan darkness. |
| 0:06.4 | He knows this part of the city, Broadway, with its lights and girls and busy streets. |
| 0:13.6 | This is his town. |
| 0:16.0 | He's immersed in the bustle right now, as he departs a popular chop house and heads to |
| 0:21.3 | a nearby show. |
| 0:23.6 | He's quite late, but he hasn't given any outward indication of that. |
| 0:28.5 | Now, all that matters to us is him, a man by himself, moving down the street. |
| 0:35.6 | He'll be gone very soon, gone forever. |
| 0:40.1 | The judge is a middle-aged man with dark hair, carefully slicked and parted down the middle. |
| 0:46.4 | His face is dominated by large features, uneven eyes, a bird-like nose. |
| 0:52.0 | He wears a fashionable for-the-time suit and a hat that's later described as worn at a rakeish angle. |
| 0:59.8 | He hails a taxi, or at least that's one of the stories. |
| 1:04.0 | He climbs into the cab and the door shuts behind him. |
| 1:08.1 | Then he's gone, vanished into the stream of traffic. |
| 1:12.3 | He's never going to be seen again, at least not by anyone who's willing to cop to it. |
| 1:18.4 | You've probably guessed the judge's name by now, crater. |
| 1:24.4 | He was at the center of one of the first massive missing persons cases in this country, |
| 1:29.9 | before Charles Lindbergt, Jr., Amelia Earhart, DB Cooper, and Jimmy Hoffa. |
| 1:36.7 | The disappearance of a prominent New York City judge elicited a lot of attention from police, |
| 1:42.5 | the press, political and legal colleagues, and the public. |
| 1:47.9 | So much so that the case seeped into popular culture, pulling a crater became a widespread phrase |
| 1:54.9 | and a standard joke for comedians. But it all went nowhere. |
... |
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