The Taxi-Dancer's Death Ride
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.4 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2023
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 412 is an action-packed adventure that begins with the body of a pretty girl on a dark lonely road and includes a policeman killed in the line of duty, more than a thousand shots fired in a showdown with the villains, a couple of attempted jailbreaks, and a double-dose of lethal justice. Add in a broken-hearted mother and a moll who turns the tables, then see where it goes. The newspapers at the time compared this to a similar murder that had just taken place, the story of Vivian Gordon’s last ride.
It was the subject of True Crime Historian Episode 228 and you can listen to it at www.patreon.com/truecrimehistorian.
Culled from the historic pages of the New York Daily News and other newspapers of the era.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Popular.com |
| 0:03.0 | April 28, 1931. |
| 0:13.5 | A girl from Maine |
| 0:15.4 | who swapped rural gingham for synthetic silk |
| 0:19.2 | and became a part of the metropolis's fast sisterhood of |
| 0:23.2 | the cabarets, was the victim yesterday of a roadside murder patterned after the slaying of Vivian |
| 0:30.7 | Gordon. Tossed from an auto on Valentine Street, a lover's lane in the Dunwoody section of Yonkers. |
| 0:39.8 | The body of the girl, identified as Virginia Brannon, 23, of Bangor, Maine, was found shortly |
| 0:47.5 | after 10 a.m. yesterday. Like the slain vice witness Vivian Gordon, yesterday's murder victim was taken for her last ride |
| 0:57.1 | after she had been whined and dined in mocked chivalry by her assassins. |
| 1:03.6 | The police last night were attempting to link the murder with gangland intrigue, |
| 1:09.4 | but the quality of the girl's clothing contradicted the |
| 1:12.5 | supposition that she was a gangster's mall. Seemingly, the little girl from Bangor had tried to live |
| 1:20.1 | dangerously, as Vivian did, but she was not as successful in prolonging the experiment. Her body, garbed in the tawed refinery |
| 1:30.3 | of the 10 cents a dance girls of the Broadway Rumba Rodeos, was discovered inside the wall of St. |
| 1:38.3 | Joseph's Seminary. In her handbag, with keys, cosmetics, and minor trinkets, were found a group of speakeasy and cabaret cards, |
| 1:49.0 | many of them believed garnered during the evenings round. |
| 1:53.0 | Her girlfriend, Gertrude MacDonald, with whom she first came to New York, |
| 1:59.0 | is believed to have been the weeping young woman |
| 2:02.3 | who made the identification in company |
| 2:04.7 | with Chief of Police Edward Quirk of Yonkers. |
| 2:09.4 | Last night, Sidney Handler, |
... |
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