JOSEPH FORCE CRATER was born in 1889 in a small town near New York City. In about 1910, he began accompanying his father on regular trips into the City. After high school, he attended a local college. When he graduated, he insisted—against his father’s objections—on attending law school at Columbia University.
He excelled as a law student, and started working as a clerk at Tammany Hall, the heart of New York City’s Democratic political machine. A hard worker who quickly learned real politics on the streets and in the backrooms, Crater moved up fast in the ranks of political operatives and thugs at Tammany while he continued his formal education. He was a handsome young man, respected by the men he worked with and very attractive to women. While still in law school, he met and romanced pretty, young Stella Wheeler, who was, however, already married. In 1917, after graduating law school, he got Stella a divorce, then immediately married her.
Crater didn’t go to World War I, but his brother did. He came back with a bad case of what was called "shell shock." In 1922, his brother died under strange circumstances that may have been suicide.
As a young lawyer, Crater’s career developed rapidly. While he worked hard, he was also adept at making the right connections. Soon he was teaching at Columbia—and elected president of the Cayuga Club—an organization with close ties to Tammany Hall. In the mid-1920’s, he was appointed legal secretary to State Supreme Court Justice Robert F. Wagner. Crater seemed to be spending money far in excess of his earnings, but it was the 20’s, and, for a while, everybody seemed rich and nobody asked any questions.
Crater had powerful ambitions to be a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In addition to his work for Wagner, he set up his own law practice specializing in criminal defense cases. By 1926, he and Stella were living in an expensive apartment at 40 Fifth Avenue. That year Wagner was elected to the U.S. Senate, leaving Crater more time for his private law practice, which was growing rapidly. In 1928, notorious New York City gangster Arnold Rothstein was murdered, and it was reported later by his wife that Crater had been extraordinarily upset by the event. He also became involved in a number of business dealings at the time, some of which were later found to be illegal. The stock market crash in ’29 didn’t seem to limit their income, and the Craters continued their lavish lifestyle—obviously not feeling any need to cut back.
In 1930, through his political connections at Tammany Hall, Crater was appointed to fill the remaining term of a retiring State Supreme Court judge by Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Crater was expecting to be appointed to the next full term in the fall. In fact, he had already illegally bought the judgeship--but that wasn’t discovered until later. In late spring, the State Supreme Court was to rule on the death sentence appeal of a noted gangster, and associates noted that Crater seemed inordinately disturbed about the case.
By summer, Crater appeared to be both tired and worried, and he and Stella went on vacation to their summer home in Maine. Leaving Stella in Maine, he returned to the city, saying he had work to complete, after which he promised to return. The next day, Crater went to his office, removed a number of boxes of papers, withdrew $5,150 from the bank in cash and left for home. On the 6th, after dinner at a restaurant with friends, he said he was going to a Broadway show. Crater then stepped into a cab on 45th Street, and was never seen again.
Stella Crater’s interesting, revealing story of these events was later recounted in a book called The Empty Robe. She was especially mystified by his disappearance, despite the fact that he had been behaving strangely during the preceding months and weeks. After he vanished, Stella took part in both police and private investigations, hoping to discover his fate. At the same time, her mental state deteriorated as the months passed and it became increasingly clear that the judge was not to be found.
In January, 1931--six months after Crater disappeared--four envelopes containing money, papers listing his debtors, and a will appeared mysteriously in the Crater’s apartment. This event stimulated new hope that he was still alive in New York City somewhere. But he was not found nor did he make himself known, and no further signs of his passage appeared. Stella's optimism dissolved into depression and heartache again.
By early 1931, the police had thoroughly investigated the case and produced no signifcant leads. The appearance of the envelopes set off a new wave of investigations. They revealed some interesting facts, such as the discovery of a coat that belonged to Crater in the flat of a murdered prostitute. Stella thought it must have been stolen, as she believed he would never be in the company of a prostitute. Also, police turned up a new line of underworld characters--some were women with less than savory reputations--all of whom identified the picture of Crater they were shown. But they knew him as "Joe Krane," or, more often, "JK."
In late 1931, a Grand Jury was empaneled to look into the judge's disappearance. After several months, it concluded, “The evidence is insufficient to warrant any expression of opinion as to whether Judge Crater is alive or dead, or as to whether he had absented himself voluntarily, or is a sufferer from . . . amnesia, or is the victim of a crime."
The cash that had been left in the envelope for Stella didn’t last long, and most of Crater's debtors failed to pay her anything. In early 1932, Stella petitioned the court for the right to collect the missing judge's insurance. Her affidavit read,
Petitioner knows of no reason why he should have left her or abandoned his career. Petitioner does not believe he would have done so if he was of normal mind, nor believes that he would remain away, if still alive, save by reason of mental infirmity or constraint. Petitioner concludes that he may be dead, or has become a lunatic or has been secreted, confined or otherwise unlawfully made away with.
In the first year after Crater's disappearance, reports of sightings came in from all over the US--He was an inmate at Sing-Sing prison in New York. He was seen at Texas Guinan's nightclub on Long Island. He was seen on a steamship heading for Europe. Most sightings were found to be mistaken. Some remained unexplained. Several ransom notes were sent asking for money in exchange for Crater’s safe return, but they were later found to be frauds.
The sensation of Crater's disappearance did not die out as the years passed. Throughout the 1930's, every now and then, a new sighting report came in, was investigated, and found wanting. In 1936, a popular detective magazine surveyed the case again and concluded, "But few in the know believe Crater is dead. The man's disappearance is a grim jest in New York. Of anyone who vanishes voluntarily it is said, 'Oh, he pulled a Crater.'" The Crater's Fifth Avenue apartment eventually became a landmark pointed out to tourists.
Still unwilling to give her husband up for dead, in 1938 Stella enlisted the services of an attorney to further investigate the disappearance. He discovered new and interesting information not previously uncovered by the police. He located a newspaperman who reported having attempted to catch a man he thought was Crater who was living with a showgirl just a short while after the judge's disappearance. Although the attempt was unsuccessful, the attorney launched a search for the girl, June Brice, and eventually found her in a Long Island mental hospital, unable to talk coherently about anything.
In 1940, information from organized crime investigations in New York revealed that Crater had been involved in a payoff scheme that didn't work out as planned. This was supposed to have been the motive for his murder by the wronged gangsters.
By the 1950's, reports of sightings tapered off sharply as the Crater case faded into history and other, more horrifying, cases took its place in the popular imagination. Stella finally resigned herself to the idea that she would never see her missing husband again, and the police did not hold out much hope of ever solving their famous missing persons file No. 13595--"Joseph Force Crater."
In 1955, a freelance writer began looking into Judge Crater's disappearance for Life Magazine. Murray Teigh Bloom took the revolutionary approach for the time of seeking psychic assistance in his search for Judge Crater. He visited Gerard Croiset, a Dutch clairvoyant, gave him a picture of the long-missing judge, and asked him to do a reading. During the seance, Croiset drew a map that looked like New York City and its five boroughs. On this map he drew two X's—one, he said, where the judge disappeared and one where his body would be found. On the map, the second X was in the area that could have been identified as Westchester.
Westchester had actually figured in the Crater story in several ways—most notably, it was known to be a meeting place of Cayuga Club members for parties and secret meetings.
Starting in the late 1930's, Gerard Croiset gained a reputation in Europe for using his psychic abilities, not only to help people find lost objects and animals, but also in helping the police locate missing persons and solve crimes. Although there was controversy regarding the direct usefulness of his psychic powers in solving many crimes he worked on, the repeated use of his powers in revealing the unknown over the next forty years until his death, in 1980, demonstrated that he was not a phony. He had regularly exercised authentic psychic abilities.
Since the Crater disappearance had stirred little publicity in Europe in 1930--when Croiset was only 21 years old--it is unlikely that he read anything about the case originally. If he had, it was unlikely that he could recall it instantly 25 years later. He was not informed in advance whose picture the writer presented to him in 1955, either. Therefore, it is doubtful that he had any opportunity of researching the case before the reading took place.
Report of this seance in Harper's Magazine in 1959 stimulated a new wave of interest in the search for Judge Crater. This publicity brought up a memory from the family of a New York butcher, Henry Krauss—by then, of course, dead. They recalled that in the early 1930's, Krauss owned a house in Westchester where the Cayuga Club regularly held meetings or parties.
Following this lead, Life Magazine sent a reporter who found the house still standing. He paid the owners to allow him to dig in search of Crater's remains. Referring back to Croiset's reading and sketch, he assumed that a body would have been buried in the backyard. They dug several large square holes which resembled open graves. They found no human remains. The graves were empty.
