Hey Podcast Listeners, in today’s episode we’re going back to the Jazz Age of New York City for another tale of betrayal and political corruption, but this one takes a wild turn when the murder of a vivacious red head catches everyone’s attention, including then Governor Frederick D. Roosevelt, who pushed the investigation that led to the downfall of New York City’s mayor, ending his  political career and the leading to the dissolution of a political powerhouse. I’m Amanda… and this is New York’s Dark Side. 

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Is daylight saving’s time kicking anyone else’s ass? I feel like this week has been all over the place and I can barely keep up. But I’ve got another true crime episode for you today. Today we’re discussing the murder of Vivian Gordon. Her name came up in a past episode, the Missingest Missing Man in America, New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater as the two knew each other and both had connections to a well-known mobster named Legs Diamond. Just like his disappearance captivated the nation, Vivian’s death would also garner a lot of attention and led to the end of the political career of the mayor and the dissolution of a political powerhouse. The 1930’s was an interesting era and I’ve got to say as I was researching and writing this episode the whole thing plays out in my head like an old movie and I love it. On a side note, as I was finishing up the script for this episode, I saw the news about the current investigation going on with New York City’s mayor Eric Adams… While there’s not been any accusation of wrongdoing directed at him yet, they’ve seized his electronics as part of the investigation and are looking at people involved in his campaign due to allegations of straw donations and illegal foreign influence in the 2021 mayoral race. I’ll be keeping an eye on that as more information comes out but it caught my eye just due to the timing and theme of this episode.  Let’s dive right into it. 

Benita Franklin was born in 1891 in Joliet, Illinois. Her father was a prison warden. All the sources agree she seemed to have a troubled start to life, and this would unfortunately follow her into adulthood. Her parents sent her to the Ladies of Loretto covenant. She didn’t do well there and was said to have attempted to take her own life a few times. The sisters at the covenant labeled her as insubordinate and she would end up running away and started working as a chorus girl in a burlesque show. In 1912 she met a man named John Bischoff in Charleston and they would marry and in 1915 she gave birth to a daughter that they named Benita Francisca. By 1920 however, the marriage was troubled, by this time they were living in Philadelphia, and she would pack up with their daughter and move to New York City where she bounced around living with different men. It was unclear to me when exactly she started using the name Vivian Gordon, but that’s the name she was going by at this time. The divorce proceedings from her husband were messy, and John was trying to get custody of Benita which she was trying her hardest to fight. Unfortunately, on March 9, 1923, she would lose that battle. Vivian was at the Langwell Hotel with a man named Al Marks, who was a lingerie salesman and former con man from Long Branch, New Jersey. That hotel room would be raided by a VICE patrolman named Andrew J. McLaughlin, who would charge Vivian with prostitution. Vivian would be convicted and sentenced to three years at Bedford Reformatory despite her claims at her innocence. She also lost custody of Benita to John. She was pissed, and she believed that she had been framed by her husband John… and she was likely on to something. 

This was the era of Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall was the democratic powerhouse of New York County. We talked a little bit about them in not only the Crater episode but also in our coverage of Central Park and I’m going to give a little background on them again in this episode. I’m planning out a future episode to go more in depth because there’s a lot but here's what you need to know. Tammany Hall was started as a social club for what the founders deemed as “pure Americans” whatever that means. The society started dabbling in politics in the 1790’s. In the 1840’s and 50’s during the time of the Great Famine that brought thousands of Irish Immigrants seeking refuge to America, Tammany Hall was the lead Democratic Party and would end up being an ally for many Irish Americans who began to get into politics. To be clear, some of the more well-known stories of Tammany Hall’s corrupt politicians were Irish Immigrants- Richard Crocker for example, there were equally corrupt politicians who were not. As we know, racism and bigotry paint a one-sided picture. I’ll save more of that story for another day. So, what exactly does this have to do with Vivian Gordon, you may be wondering? Well, more than you would think. 

After getting out of Bedford Reformatory, Vivian got to work. She began working in the sex trade, and she made it big. She was turning tricks, blackmailing powerful men who didn’t want their wives to find out. She started investing in real estate, opening brothels and gambling dens. She was making connections all over the city with the mob, lending them money to fund their corrupt schemes. She was becoming powerful, but she was also becoming a target. She was arrested a few more times for extortion, public intoxication, and misconduct but the charges were dropped in those instances. One of those arrests involved a reporter who she had loaned a couple thousand dollars to. He paid her back all except for two hundred dollars. Vivian threatened him telling him if she didn’t receive the rest of the money she was going to turn him in for a Mann Act violation- driving her as a sex worker over state lines. He turned this around on her though and set her up, scheduling a meeting up at a hotel to give her the rest of the money where police were lying in wait, they arrested her as soon as he handed it over. These charges would ultimately be dropped though. Through the years though, Vivian didn’t forget how her ex-husband had potentially been behind her arrest either and taken her daughter from her. By the 1930’s, Tammany Hall was largely run by the mob. There were rumors that appointed positions were just being handed out to friends of those in power, giving them access to bribes, potentially illegal property transactions, and the ability to move forward with their personal vested interests rather than working for the people. Due to these rumors, New York’s Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt would launch an investigation into the potential corruption of the city’s government. The New York State Legislature would form a joint legislative committee headed by Senator Samuel Hofstadter which became known as the Hofstadter Committee. They elected an anti-Tammany democratic judge named Samuel Seabury to be the legal counsel of the committee and they got to work in 1930 started to vet out some of these rumors. 

Vivian became aware of the Seabury investigation, and she decided this might be her opportunity to get revenge for the wrong that had been done to her and help get custody of her daughter back. She decided that she would testify to the Seabury investigation about her arrest. What’s important to note here was that Vivian was not the only woman who had been arrested for prostitution at this time. There were countless women in the 1920’s and early 1930’s who were also being arrested in hotels on the charge of prostitution that were set up by the police. These “frame ups” were put into place by corrupt police officers, they would go to the hotel and plant money in the room, then send a man to find an innocent woman, lure her back to the room and they would later bust in, question the man, find the planted money, and blame it on the poor woman. She would be arrested for prostitution and then they would extort her for more money, charging insane rates to find her not guilty of the crime she didn’t commit and then split the money between the police, the bailiff, the attorneys, and the judge who were all in on it… This is a real thing; this was one of the first things the Seabury investigation would uncover. Seabury would later write “it is impossible to estimate how many honest women in this city have been gouged under threat of arrest or conviction of a crime which they were totally innocent, but enough testimony has been given on this subject to indicate that the business of framing honest women was very well established and lucrative”. Vivian wanted to be one of the women to testify and bring this operation down, but she made a fatal error. In January of 1931, Vivian wrote to John Bischoff her ex-husband and to VICE patrolman Mclaughlin who had been the one to arrest her to tell them that she was planning to go to Seabury and testify against them. Never do that… never let them know what the plan is, that’s basically like running up the stairs in a horror movie, that’s how they get you. 

On February 7, 1931, Vivian Gordon sent a letter through her lawyer to the Seabury Commission and set up a time to meet. That meeting took place on February 20th, 1931. She appeared at 80 Centre Street and told her story to Seabury lawyer Irving Ben Cooper. She told Cooper that she had been living in the Langwell Hotel and had asked another resident of the hotel, Al Marks, to hold her mail for her. When she went to pick it up from him, she was busted for prostitution. She left that meeting promising to try to find some corroborating evidence to help bring them down. Unfortunately, she would not get that chance.

Five days later February 25, 1931, Vivian left her apartment at 156 East 37thStreet in Manhattan around 11pm. The gorgeous redhead was wearing black velvet dress with lace trim, white gloves, an ankle length mink coat, a twenty-five-hundred-dollar diamond ring, a platinum watch, and carrying her purse. I don’t think I mentioned how beautiful she was, I’ve posted some pictures on the website and on social media of her. I will warn you though that if you search for her case online, you will see crime scene photos of her they had them all over in the newspapers. She entered a seven seat Cadillac heading for the Bronx. 

The following morning, Vivian was found at Van Cortland Park near the golf course and cemetery by an oil worker on his way to work around 8:20 AM. She had been beaten, strangled, dragged behind the car and then dumped. Her ring, coat, purse, and watch were missing and some of her clothing was strewn around the area though I didn’t see any mention of sexual assault. I don’t think that’s what they were truly after though, they meant to silence her. Her murder caught the headlines of the newspapers and was featured on the cover of magazines. They would even sell fictionalized stories of her murder. The press caught the attention of Governor FDR who called in the Pinkerton Detective Agency and asked Samuel Seabury to expand his investigation to include the murder which was how she became part of New York’s City most famous corruption case. Seabury would launch an investigation into District Attorney Thomas C. Crain, the magistrates, and every department of New York City’s government. 

When investigators searched Vivian’s apartment, they would find her address book and journals. Her address book contained her network of over 300 mobster connections. She had also mentioned in her journal that she had feared for the last few years that she was going to be murdered. She feared most her lawyer, John 

Radeloff. The entries she placed in her journal would lead to the arrest of Radeloff and his associate Sam “Chowderhead” Cohen. She had put in her journal that on February 23, she had been notified by someone, she doesn’t name who, that a hit had placed on her and this wasn’t the first time that had been done by Radeloff, he was trying to hire Chowderhead to take her out. She wrote that she had thousands of dollars tied up in his office and that he wasn’t always the most forthcoming with giving her access to her money when she needed it, even to seek medical care. It was also clear in the journals that their relationship was more than just that of attorney/client. Vivian was his mistress and had confronted him recently in front of his wife, leading to an argument between the two where Radeloff told him that he was going to get his spare clothes out of her apartment in case she got killed so they wouldn’t look for him as a culprit in it. Even though they had arrested the pair, they continued to investigate and pulled in John Bischoff and Andrew McLaughlin for questioning. McLaughlin was on a cruise to Bermuda at the time of Vivian’s murder, so this apparently ruled him out… John Bischoff was working in Virginia now as a business manager for a federal reformatory, so this ruled him out. Investigators turned their attention away from the members of law enforcement as being potentially involved. This is infuriating considering they already knew that there was corruption in the police department. Just because McLaughlin wasn’t around doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved. Sadly, on March 4th Vivian’s daughter now 16-year-old Bernita would end up taking her own life, which further fueled the cries of the public for justice for Vivian… While they didn’t have any evidence that Officer McLaughlin was involved in Vivian Gordon’s murder, they did find something on him. On March 13th, investigators found that there had been a deposit of $38,500 into his bank account. This was strange because as a VICE Patrolman, his salary was $3,000/year. He was questioned on the nature of the funds, which he declined to give any information on citing his constitutional rights and claimed that Samuel Seabury was exceeding the boundaries of his investigation, which he wasn’t because FDR had asked him to look into this case. During his hearing, McLaughlin would state that he had made as many as 1200 arrests in his 10-year career working as a VICE officer. He would testify to spending his time roaming up and down Broadway, working through his lunch break, working on his own to arrest women. Unfortunately they never found the source of where he had gotten all that money, and he was quickly released without charges in the frame up of Vivian Gordon. Samuel Seabury would also interrogate the magistrate who presided over Vivian Gordon’s case, H. Stanley Renaud. While “mysteriously” at this point the transcripts from Vivian Gordon’s 1923 trial had been destroyed… They had pulled together a table of evidence showing that defendants in his court who proclaimed to be innocent would receive much worse sentences than those who pled guilty. When questioned about Vivian Gordon’s case and why she received three years at Bedford Reformatory as a first-time offender for an offense that normally wouldn’t receive a prison sentence, Renaud would tell Seabury that Bedford was a “wonderful school” that anyone who went there should be glad to go to, successfully evading the question. He would eventually admit that in his court room, people did not receive justice. The investigation would also discover many other police officers with large amounts of money in savings despite their wage, loans made to fake relatives, and rigged bidding processes. They found many network connections to mobsters and political party leaders. During the investigation, Judge Samuel Seabury, a few members of his staff, a couple of witnesses in the Seabury Commission investigation, as well as Irving Ben Cooper the attorney that Vivian Gordon had met with before her untimely death start to receive letters threatening their lives from an anonymous letter writer that signed them “Dr. X”. They continued to work the case but due to findings in their investigation so far, the City Affairs Committee started to call for the removal of New York City Mayor on March 18th who was vacationing in California at the time. We’ll get to him in a little bit. 

Meanwhile, investigators in the Vivian Gordon case continued to work the Radeloff lead, and they would find out some more information in that direction. Remember that reporter that had set up Vivian a few years back leading to an arrest? That reporter was Joseph Radeloff, the first cousin of Vivian’s lawyer John Radeloff. Vivian had given testimony to a grand jury against him regarding the money that he owed her. In addition to that previously $2,000 loan, he had also swindled her out of over $50,000. There was also a friend of her attorney that she had given a loan of a significant amount to that was coming due in April. Was this a potential motive? While they thought it was a possibility, they didn’t have evidence enough to bring John Radeloff to trial. They would piece together from Vivian’s journal entries though that Vivian Gordon had advanced funds to a Bronx racketeer named Harry Stein for a scheme in Oslo, Norway. As they started to look deepery into Harry Stein, more evidence started to be uncovered that made him a viable suspect. When they did a background check on him, they found that he had been previously arrested for an attempted strangulation. They would also receive an anonymous tip that he had been seen with Vivian’s missing coat and ring that had been taken from her body the day she was murdered. They set up tails on him and some other names that had come up in their search- Samuel Greenbert who had traveled with Harry Stein to Oslo, Norway after receiving the loan from Vivian and another man named Harry Harvey who Harry Stein had been contacting from pay phones during the time they were tailing him, which wasn’t at all suspicious right? They ended up putting a wiretap on Harry Harvey’s phone and intercepted a call from Stein to Harvey telling him that he had some money for him and setting up a meeting. Police jumped at this point to arrest Stein after he handed over the money to Harvey. Harvey and Greenberg were both questioned at this point but they didn’t have anything to hold them so they had to let them go but would continue to tail them to see if they slipped. They would end up finding out that Harry Harvey’s name was actually Harry Schlitten, and that Schlitten despite saying he didn’t know anything about Vivian Gordon’s murder actually had rented a seven seat Cadillac the night of the murder. With this new information, they picked up both Schlitten and Greenberg again for further questioning and this time they would start to get some information from Schlitten. 

Schlitten would tell investigators that Stein had approached him at a Romanian “tea house” where he was a card dealer and ask him to rent a car. When he asked what the car was needed for, Stein responded that “if I don’t get a certain party out of the way a friend of mine is going to wind up in jail”. Schlitten rented the car, picked up Stein later and Stein told him he would be receiving a few thousand dollars for his role in the events that were about to take place. He drove Stein to 100th street and Park avenue, where Stein would get out for a few minutes and returned with a package which turned out to be a new clothesline which he tucked under a seat. Stein would be dropped off back downtown leaving Schlitten with Greenberg. Schlitten asked Greenberg what was going on, Greenberg told him he was equally in the dark but knew that this was a scheme of some sort and that he had been given a role to play. Schlitten was to be the chauffer, and Greenberg was playing a sucker with a quarter of a million dollars in diamonds. The party that was supposed to be taken out that night believed they were going to be scheming him out of his diamonds and that’s how they were getting them to the car. For his testimony, Schlitten was given immunity from district attorney. Schlitten would also testify that the day after Vivian was murdered, Stein dropped in on him, gave him the money he had been promised. At this point John Radeloff had been apprehended along with Chowderhead and their pictures were in the paper, Schlitten asked Stein if he knew who Radeloff was and Stein reportedly told him that Radeloff was the one who had hired him to take out Vivian in exchange for the $1500 that Stein owed him absolving him of the debt. When Schlitten had rented the Cadilliac, he had taken a friend with him, Izzy Lewis who would also testify to parts of the tale that they were able to corroborate though they had been dropped off well before the murder took place. There were a few people that would testify that Stein had been in possession of Vivian’s mink coat and watch as he was trying to pawn them off to them. This seems like they have him in the bag right? Wrong!

Stein would provide an alibi that he was with his sister at the movies and a Chinese restaurant on the night of the murder. Greenberg would provide an alibi that he was in Shiva, mourning his mother who had passed six days earlier. Both had a sister that testified on their behalf. Both men had retained Sam Leibowitz as their attorney, a famed lawyer who had defended Al Capone and Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll. Can we pause for a minute and just appreciate the freaking mob names? I wonder what my mobster name would be if I had one. What would yours be? Let me know. Anyway, Leibowitz basically just told the jury at during closing remarks that since all the witnesses were underworld characters, they had no choice to vote not guilty due to reasonable doubt… and after 3 ½ hours of deliberation, they found both “not guilty” which got audible reaction from the onlookers of the case. Greenberg was so happy with the verdict he went up and kissed all the jurors on the cheek. Stein was immediately arrested for another crime. The chief assistant district attorney called the verdict “the greatest miscarriage of justice that ever took place in the Bronx”. Since both men were exonerated, the investigators didn’t go after John Radeloff and to this day there’s been no justice for Vivian. Which is incredibly fucking tragic. 

I mentioned earlier that this had sparked investigation into Mayor Jimmy Walker and ended his political career, so let’s shift gears to that. James J Walker had been born in Manhattan to Irish American immigrants in 1881. He grew up in Greenwich Village and developed a love of partying. His first love was music, he actually wanted to be a songwriter and he wrote a series of Tin Pan Alley hits. He began his political career when he was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1909. He then won a senate seat in 1914. He was mentored by Governor Al Smith, who would shield him from scruitiny, because when he first started out he was known to be a heavy partier into the booze and philandering. In April of 1924, Charles Murphy, the then Tammany Chief passed away and was replaced by Judge George Olvany who decided that Jimmy Walker run for mayor. This divided Tammany Hall, who wanted to re-elect Honest John Hylan and further divided them when he won the election. He had worked hard to campaign himself as a man of the people which really endeared him to the average New Yorkers. He would say “I like the company of my fellow human beings. I like the theatre and am devoted to healthy outdoor sports. Because I like these things, I have reflected my attitude in some of my legislation I have sponsored— 2.75 percent beer, Sunday Baseball, Sunday Movies, and legalized boxing. But let me allay any fear there may be that, because I believe in personal liberty, wholesome amusement, and healthy professional sport, I will not countenance for a moment any indecency or vice in New York". This was actually false. Magazines would call Walker, “the late mayor” because he would seldom report to Town Hall before noon if he came at all. He did some things during his first term in office- created the Department of Sanitation, helped unify city public hospitals, and helped improve parks and playgrounds. They also worked on approving contracts for subway systems. His image remained very much of a partier, he spent short days at city hall and long evenings at Yankee Stadium, at prize box fighting competitions, and at Broadway shows. He was often with chorus girls at the Ritz Carlton rather than home with his wife. He took seven vacations totaling 143 days in his first two years in office traveling around the country and world. His unofficial headquarters became the Casino nightclub near Central Park where he would conduct city business over drinks, and the people didn’t really care. During the Seabury investigation, they would find that Jimmy Walker had accepted over 1 million dollars in bribes and had a slush fund that businesses and politicians could use to gain favor along with a record of improper deals with contractors. He was forced to resign in September of 1932, was indicted on 15 counts of corruption and fled to Europe where he would remain until he was promised he wouldn’t face prosecution. He had been replaced by Fiorello La Guardia and took a small post under him when he returned to New York in the garment industry. He would return to the music industry and died of a brain hemorrhage in 1946.

The conflicts within Tammany Hall over elected officials would end up dropping their membership 70% and the once political powerhouse would eventually dissolve. For his part in the investigation, Samuel Seabury was offered $75,000 but he turned it down saying “as contribution to the profession of which I have the honor to be a member rendered in the effort to remedy the gross injusticies which prevailed in that court”. He was a legend. 

And that my friends is the tragic story of how the murder of Vivian Gordon spurred further investigation into the corruption of New York City’s government, ending the political career of the mayor, and helping dissolve a corrupt political powerhouse. I’ve got another true crime case on the docket for next week so make sure that you take a moment to subscribe to the show on your podcast platform of choice for updates on when new episodes drop. Follow the show on social media as well, we’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Reach out to me and let me know what your mobster name is. I hope you have a great week ahead and I hope you stay curious.