1927 SUIT BELONGING TO VANISHED MAN.

[MudInYerEye]

Compelling back story:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290249406410&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSA:US:1123

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Pretty cool. Maybe it's haunted?

 

[Feraud]

Claude Rains called looking for his suit. Just kidding.. nice three piece!

 

[flat-top]

Pretty cool. We never really know where much of this stuff comes from, so it changes things when you've got a bit of history.

 

[Nash Buckingham]

I think he's with Jimmy Hoffa! [huh]

 

[Fletch]

78 years ago tomorrow evening Judge Joseph Crater of the New York State Supreme Court stepped into a cab after dinner with friends and was never seen again.

"His friends would remember his double-breasted brown suit, gray spats and high collar for it was the last suit they ever saw him wear."

 

[Fletch]

Consider the case of Mr. E. Ross, residing at Santa Ana, Calif., in 1927, disappeared 1940 off an eastbound sleeper out of Los Angeles.
Presumably single, as his effects went to a sister and not a wife.
Chesterfield smoker, chewer of Juicy Fruit.
Roomette traveler, indicating he had some money.
Average size man, conservatively dressed, but given to loud hankeys.

Mr. Ross' suit does look like a 1920s model - narrow cut jacket, wide lapels, wide overlap.

The 4x2 DB was also common then, less so by the '30s. The 4 button vest was definitely a '20s thing - vests by the 30s had 6 buttons or, less often, 5.

It wouldn't have looked too out of place in 1940, what with all the old suits being worn then. A clothing salesman might have noticed it, but probably no one else.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

But was it a magical suit that makes one vanish? Guess the new buyer will find out....

 

[Jay]

Neat. I'll have to remember to be this creative when I want to unload a moth-holed suit, stale cigarettes and rock hard chewing gum.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

But was it a magical suit that makes one vanish? Guess the new buyer will find out....

I think the bidder that won this suit already has Evil powers. This bidder Whistlejerk --If thou art on this forum Evil one, reveal thyself!lol -- has dogged me on many of my auctions. What I can't figure out is how he shares so many of my same interests! Either he is the fiend incarnate or he is very like me.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

I think the bidder that won this suit already has Evil powers. This bidder Whistlejerk --If thou art on this forum Evil one, reveal thyself!lol -- has dogged me on many of my auctions. What I can't figure out is how he shares so many of my same interests! Either he is the feind incarnate or he is very like me.

Well then, you should be crossing your fingers that it is a suit that makes people vanish.......

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

Perfect! From past experience the suit would remain and the wearer disappear. Tricky!

 

[Flitcraft]

Either he is the fiend incarnate or he is very like me.

Maybe both[huh] ...just sayin'

 

[Feraud]

True or not, you have to admit this is an interesting or at the very least creative story.
Much better than the usual "visited an estate sale/belonged to grandparent" line.

 

[dhermann1]

Didn't like the stripe?

I think it's very interesting that the moth wormies gobbled the material on both sides of the blue pinstripe, but didn't eat the pinstripe. Would it be a different material? Would the dye taste nasty?
There's an old Edward G Robinson movie, I believe it's "Woman in the Window", that could serve as one explanation for this mystery . . .

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

True or not, you have to admit this is an interesting or at the very least creative story.
Much better than the usual "visited an estate sale/belonged to grandparent" line.

I think an intriguing mystery short story could be written based on the story about this suit. I don't say that all jokingly either!

 

[CaramelSmoothie]

I just came across this story today after reading a comment someone made about it on a Yahoo message board of all places. This is an interesting disappearance. It's just like Jimmy Hoffa:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Force_Crater

oseph Force Crater (January 5, 1889 – after August 6, 1930) was a judge in New York City who disappeared on the night of August 6, 1930. He was last seen leaving a restaurant on 45th Street. He had stated earlier that he was planning to attend a Broadway show. His disappearance became one of the most famous in American history and pop culture, and earned him the title of "The Missingest Man in New York".
Contents

1 Early life and legal career
2 Disappearance
2.1 Receiving a phone call while on vacation
2.2 A ticket to see Dancing Partner
2.3 Last known sighting
3 Delayed responses to disappearance
4 Nationwide investigation
5 Mrs. Crater
6 Recent information
7 Legacy
8 See also
9 References
10 Further reading
11 External links

Early life and legal career

Crater was born on January 5, 1889, in Easton, Pennsylvania, the eldest of four children born to Frank Ellsworth Crater and the former Leila Virginia Montague.[1][2][3][4] He was educated at Lafayette College (Class of 1910) and Columbia University.

He was an Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court for New York County.[5] He had been appointed to the state bench by then-Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt just four months before disappearing on August 6, 1930. He issued two published opinions; the first, Rotkowitz v. Sonn, involved fraudulent conveyances and mortgage foreclosure fraud[6]. The second, Henderson v. Park Central Motors Service, dealt with a garage company's liability for an expensive car stolen and wrecked by an ex-convict[7].
Disappearance
Receiving a phone call while on vacation

In the summer of 1930, Judge Crater and his wife, Stella Mance Wheeler, were vacationing at their summer cabin at Belgrade, Maine. In late July, he received a telephone call. He offered no information to his wife about the content of the call, other than to say that he had to return to the city "to straighten those fellows out".

The next day, he arrived at his 40 Fifth Avenue apartment but instead of dealing with business, he made a trip to Atlantic City with his mistress, a showgirl named Sally Lou Ritz. He returned to Maine on August 1, and traveled back to New York on August 3. Before making this final trip, he promised his wife he would return by her birthday, on August 9. Crater's wife stated that he was in good spirits and behaving normally when he departed for New York City. On the morning of August 6, Crater spent two hours going through his files in his courthouse chambers. He then had his assistant, Joseph Mara, cash two checks for him that amounted to US$ $5,150 (equivalent to about $71,649 in today's funds[8]). At noon, he and Mara carried two locked briefcases to his apartment and he let Mara take the rest of the day off.
A ticket to see Dancing Partner

Later that evening, Crater went to a Broadway ticket agency and bought one seat for a comedy called Dancing Partner that was playing that night at the Belasco Theatre. He then went to Billy Haas’s Chophouse at 332 West 45th Street for dinner. There, he ate dinner with Sally Lou Ritz and William Klein, a lawyer friend of Crater[9]. Klein later told investigators that Crater was in a good mood that evening and gave no indication that anything was bothering him. The dinner ended a little after 9 pm, a short time after the curtain rose on the show for which Crater bought a ticket, and the small group went outside.
Last known sighting

Crater's two dinner companions entered a taxi outside the restaurant. Both later testified before a grand jury that they last saw Crater walking down the street (this differs from the popular story that Crater entered a taxi and waved to his companions before speeding away).[10] What happened to him after that remains a mystery. Theories about his disappearance have suggested that he was murdered, that he ran off with another woman, or that he had been involved in corrupt practices which were about to be revealed.[citation needed]
Delayed responses to disappearance

There was no immediate reaction to Judge Crater's disappearance. When he did not return to Maine for 10 days, his wife began making calls to their friends in New York, asking if anyone had seen him. Only when he failed to appear for the opening of the courts on August 25 did his fellow justices become alarmed. They started a private search but failed to find any trace. The police were finally notified on September 3 and after that, the missing judge was front-page news.[11][12]
Nationwide investigation

The story captivated the nation and a massive investigation was launched.[13] The official investigations started vigorously, but quickly slowed. Detectives discovered that the judge's safe deposit box had been emptied and the two briefcases that Crater and his assistant had taken to his apartment were missing. These promising leads were also quickly bogged down by the thousands of false reports coming from people claiming to have seen the missing man.[14][15][16][17] Crater's wife later found the missing money in a dresser drawer in her home, along with a note from the judge.[10]

In October, a grand jury began examining the case, calling 95 witnesses and amassing 975 pages of testimony. Interestingly, Mrs. Crater refused to appear before the grand jury.[18] The conclusion was that "The evidence is insufficient to warrant any expression of opinion as to whether Crater is alive or dead, or as to whether he has absented himself voluntarily, or is the sufferer from disease in the nature of amnesia, or is the victim of crime."[19]

None of the investigations succeeded in discovering the judge's fate or possible whereabouts. His case—Missing Persons File No. 13595—was officially closed in 1979.[20]

It is sometimes claimed that Sally Lou Ritz disappeared in August or September 1930,[21] but this is not the case. Ritz was interviewed in late September 1930 in Youngstown, Ohio, where she had gone "to be with her sick father."[22][23] As late as July 1937, Ritz was interviewed by police in Beverly Hills.[24]
Mrs. Crater

Judge Crater married Stella Mance Wheeler in 1917. Crater was her lawyer in her divorce action against her first husband; they married seven days after the divorce was finalized.[25] During the initial phase of the private search and even after police were notified and began their nationwide search, Mrs. Crater remained at their vacation home in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, until January 20, 1931. It was then that she allegedly discovered checks, stocks and bonds and a note written by the Judge in a drawer that had been empty when police checked earlier.[25] Without Crater's income, Mrs. Crater was unable to maintain residence at their fashionable Fifth Avenue apartment and was evicted.[18] By July 1937 when she petitioned to have the Judge declared officially dead, the judge's apparent widow was impoverished and reportedly living on $12 per week (equivalent to approximately $194 in today's funds[8]) she earned as a telephone operator in Belgrade Lakes, Maine.[26]

It would seem that before the Judge was declared legally dead, Mrs. Crater remarried in Elkton, Maryland, on April 23, 1938 to Carl Kunz, electrical engineer, of New York.[27] Kunz's first wife had hanged herself only eight days before the wedding.[20] The Judge was declared legally dead in absentia in 1939[28][29] and Mrs. Crater then received $20,561 in life insurance (worth approximately $343,536 in today's funds[8]). Mrs. Crater separated from Kunz in 1950, and died in 1969 aged 70.[18] Her own account of the Crater case, in which she expressed her belief that Crater had been murdered, was written with Oscar Fraley, newspaperman and freelancer and published by Doubleday in 1961.[30][31]
Recent information

On August 19, 2005, authorities revealed that they had received notes left by Stella Ferrucci-Good after her death at age 91. The writings identified a location near West Eighth Street in Coney Island, Brooklyn, at the current site of the New York Aquarium, where the woman claimed the judge was buried under the boardwalk. Moreover, the notes identified Crater's killers as NYPD officers Robert Good (her husband) and Charles Burns, also bodyguard of Abe Reles of Murder, Inc. and Burns's brother Frank, a cab driver.[32]

Police reported that no records had been found to indicate that skeletal remains were discovered at that site when it was excavated in the 1950s.[33] Richard J. Tofel, the author of Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater and the New York He Left Behind, expressed skepticism of Ferrucci-Good's account.[33]
Legacy

Though no longer in wide use, the phrase "to pull a Crater" means to disappear.[34] For many years following Crater's disappearance, "Judge Crater, call your office" was a standard gag of nightclub comedians[34] and was often heard on public address systems.

In order to promote the 1933 film Bureau of Missing Persons, Warner Bros. advertised they would pay $10,000 (equivalent to about $179,537 in today's[8] funds) to Crater if he claimed it in person at the box office.[35] In the third season episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, "Very Old Shoes, Very Old Rice", the character of Rob Petrie mistakes a judge named Judge Krata for the missing judge. A 2010 novel, The Man Who Never Returned by Peter Quinn, investigates the Crater case through the lens of a 1955 fictional detective.[36]

Judge Crater's will, marked confidential and addressed to his wife, possibly written on the day of his disappearance, was sold at auction in 1981 for $700.[37]

 

[Gin&Tonics]

Oh wikipedia; is there anything you don't know.

His odd behaviour of withdrawing all those funds suggests that he knew what was coming, either because he was the one planning it, or because he had reason to believe that someone intended to do him harm. Fascinating story!

 

[Oldsarge]

I think the bidder that won this suit already has Evil powers. This bidder Whistlejerk --If thou art on this forum Evil one, reveal thyself!lol -- has dogged me on many of my auctions. What I can't figure out is how he shares so many of my same interests! Either he is the fiend incarnate or he is very like me.

Or both!