In July 1912, Lieutenant Charles Becker was named in the New York World as one of three senior police officials involved in the case of Herman Rosenthal, a small-time bookmaker and gambler who had complained to the press that his illegal casinos had been affected by the greed of Becker and his associates. Rosenthal accused the police of demanding a large percentage of his illegal profits as protection for allowing him to continue to operate. At 2 am on July 16, two days after the New York World article was published, Rosenthal was murdered on the street after leaving the Hotel Metropole at 147 West 43rd Street, just off Times Square. He was gunned down by men found to be a crew of Jewish gangsters from the Lower East Side. In the aftermath, Manhattan District Attorney Charles S. Whitman, who had made an appointment with Rosenthal before his death, said that he believed the gangsters had committed the murder at Becker's behest. John J. Reisler, also known as "John the Barber", told the police that he'd seen "Bridgey" Webber running away from the crime scene directly following the killing. After he recanted the next week, likely after being threatened by gangsters, he was charged with perjury. The New York Times and other major newspapers covered the murder investigation for months, with the Times featuring it on the front page, as it led into complex criminal activities. The events were so complex that the NYPD recalled thirty detectives from retirement to help investigate; they were said "to know most of the gangsters". One of the recalled detectives, Detective Frank Upton, formerly of the NYPD "Italian Squad", was instrumental in the July 25, 1912, arrest of "Dago" Frank Cirofici, one of the suspected killers. He and his companion, Regina Gorden, were "so stupefied by opium that they offered no objection to their arrests", according to The New York Times. The department then had one of its police women Mary A. Sullivan go undercover to gain the trust of Gorden. She befriended the woman as well as other girlfriends and wives of the suspects, helping to break the case.
Defendants
Convicted and sentenced to death
Charles Becker, NYPD lieutenant charged with ordering the murder and having protected and extorted from illegal gamblers, executed
Francisco Cirofici, aka Dago Frank, gunman, executed
Charles Seymour Whitman, district attorney, elected in 1914 as governor of New York
Jack Zelig, murdered before he could testify for the prosecution.
In popular culture
British writer P.G. Wodehouse wrote a foreword to his novel Psmith Journalist, noting the Rosenthal case by way of showing how common gang murders in New York were at the time. He did not discuss he complicity of the police.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, fictional gambler Meyer Wolfsheim mentions having been present in the Metropole with Rosenthal moments before the latter was murdered.
Writer Viña Delmar wrote about the murder in her 1968 book ‘‘The Becker Scandal, A Time Remembered’’.
