The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, The Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime - Softcover
A small-time gambler shot dead in the heart of Times Square. Gangland gunmen and conspirators running for cover. A cop on the take charged with murder and facing execution. New York in 1912, a city in transformation. Award-winning journalist and author Stanley Cohen has re-created the infamous Becker-Rosenthal affair in a book that reads like a historical Law & Order. Lieutenant Charles Becker was convicted of orchestrating the slaying of Herman "Beansie" Rosenthal after Beansie had exposed the officer as the centerpiece of "The System" — the Big Apple's network of police graft and political corruption. The case was front-page news in New York City for three years until Officer Becker was sent to Sing Sing's electric chair, and its effects were felt in city hall, the state capital, and throughout the nation. The old System was dismantled, and criminal geniuses like Arnold Rothstein filled the void and created organized crime as we know it today. Yet, nearly a century later, there is still good reason to believe that Becker, while clearly a dirty cop, may have had nothing to do with the murder of Rosenthal.
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About the Author:
Stanley Cohen, a veteran award-winning newspaper and magazine journalist, is the author of The Wrong Men, The Man in the Crowd, A Magic Summer: The '69 Mets, and The Game They Played, a Sports Illustrated Top 100 Sports Book of All Time. He lives in Tomkins Cove, New York.
From Booklist:
In the summer of 1912, Beansie Rosenthal, a small-time hood, was murdered in New York's Times Square. Three years and two trials later, Charles Becker, an NYPD cop, was executed for arranging the assassination. Along the way Becker was exposed as the mastermind of a corruption ring so intricate and so well organized that it even had a name: the System. And when the System was brought down, professional criminals stepped in, and organized crime was born. The author relates this little-known but historically important story with gusto. Although it's nonfiction (complete with extensive bibliography and detailed source notes), the book reads like a novel, with rough-and--tumble dialogue and sharply drawn characters who feel as if they walked out of a Howard Hawks gangster flick. There are also tantalizing clues that Becker may not have been involved in Beansie's murder, leaving us to wonder what the criminal landscape of North America might look like today if Becker's System had not been dismantled. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherDa Capo Press
- Publication date2007
- ISBN 10 0786720301
- ISBN 13 9780786720309
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages368
- Rating
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