American Detective by Thomas A. Reppetto

Author:Thomas A. Reppetto [Reppetto, Thomas A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL014000 Political Science / Law Enforcement, HIS036060 History / United States / 20th Century
ISBN: 978-1-64012-057-0
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: 2018-04-02T04:00:00+00:00

8

New York Mysteries

The Rubel Robbery, the Disappearance of Judge Crater, and the Elusive Willie Sutton

The Rubel Robbery

When Fiorello La Guardia was elected mayor of New York City in 1933, he was the first reform candidate to win the post in twenty years. La Guardia’s chief rival for the nomination of the Fusion Party (a coalition of Republicans, Democrats, and independents) had been John F. O’Ryan, a lawyer and World War I general. So when La Guardia took office in January 1934, he named O’Ryan police commissioner, de facto the second most important post in city government. The two were not birds of a feather and disagreed strongly on police policies. When unions began staging sit-down strikes in Manhattan office buildings, O’Ryan wanted to disperse them with nightsticks. La Guardia, a former labor lawyer, did not favor that approach.

On the afternoon of August 21, 1934, when the two men met at city hall to discuss the situation, they were interrupted when word was flashed to them that an armored car had been held up in Brooklyn and the bandits had escaped with $427,500 in cash (about $7 million in today’s dollars). It would turn out to be the largest cash robbery in American history up to that time. La Guardia, visibly upset, told the commissioner, “Break this case, John,” to which O’Ryan replied, “I will put every man in the force on it.” O’Ryan’s statement was ridiculous; he was hardly going to take every cop off his beat and assign him to the holdup. Within a month, O’Ryan was out, replaced by Chief Insp. Lewis J. Valentine, a thirty-one-year veteran and a tough, demanding executive. He would remain police commissioner for the next eleven years.

At 12:45 p.m. on the day of the holdup, when the armored car approached the Rubel Ice plant on Nineteenth Street in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn, guards William Lilienthal and John Wilson and driver Joe Allen scanned the streets for anything suspicious. As was standard procedure, Lilienthal opened the front door across from the driver and stepped down. Wilson started to follow Lilienthal, but as he did so a robber shoved a machine gun through the door and held Wilson and Allen at bay. Meanwhile, other robbers had pointed guns at Lilienthal and told him to keep walking into the Rubel office.

As the guards were neutralized, a second group of robbers pulled up in two cars, a Nash and a Lincoln, and began loading the money into sacks in the vehicles. Stunned onlookers watched them without moving. As the robbers departed, one of them started to enter the rear seat of the Nash, but it lurched, and he dropped his machine gun on the pavement. While the car roared away, the guard Lilienthal retrieved the machine gun, jumped into the slow-moving armored car, and with Allen driving, began chasing the getaway vehicles. Once they even got close enough for Lilienthal to fire a few bursts at the Nash.

At police headquarters the field general for the cops, Chief of Dets.

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