Charles Becker (July 26, 1870 — July 30, 1915) was a New York City police officer in the 1890s-1910s and who was tried, convicted and executed for ordering the murder of a Manhattan gambler, Herman Rosenthal. Becker was the first American police officer to receive the death penalty for murder. The scandal that surrounded his arrest, conviction, and execution was one of the most important in Progressive Era New York in the 1890s to 1910s.
Charles Becker was born to a German-American family in the village of Calicoon Center, Sullivan County, New York. He arrived in New York City in 1890 and went to work as a bouncer in a German beer hall just off the Bowery before joining the New York City Police Department in November 1893. Becker first came to public notice in the fall of 1896 when he arrested a prostitute named Ruby Young (alias Dora Clark) on Broadway. Young was in the company of two chorus girls and the writer Stephen Crane, who appeared in court the next day to refute Becker's allegations against her. The incident led to a rather odd situation; Becker was supported in his performance of duty by the New York City Police Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, and the latter felt that Crane (already well known for The Red Badge of Courage) behaved in a despicable manner in defending a prostitute. Crane maintained Young was not acting in her professional manner when Becker accosted her. Becker was not hurt by the case, due to Roosevelt's support of him.
In 1902 and 1903 Becker was one of the leaders of a patrolman's reform movement agitating for the introduction of the Three Platoon System, which would have significantly reduced the number of hours the beat police officer was expected to work. In 1906 he was seconded to a special unit working out of police headquarters to probe the alleged corruption of Police Inspector Max Schmittberger, who had been widely hated within the NYPD since giving detailed testimony to the 1894 Lexow Committee investigating police corruption in New York. Partly as a result of Becker's work, Schmittberger subsequently stood trial, and Deputy Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo was so satisfied with his work that when Waldo became New York City Police Commissioner in 1911, he had Becker, by then a lieutenant, appointed as head of one of the city's three anti-vice squads.
Becker used his position to extort substantial sums, later shown to total in excess of $100,000, from Manhattan brothels and illegal gambling casinos in exchange for immunity from police interference. Percentages of the take were regularly delivered to politicians and other policemen.
In July 1912, he was named in the New York World as one of three senior police officials involved in the case of Herman Rosenthal. Rosenthal, a small time bookmaker, had complained to the press that his illegal casinos had been badly damaged by the greed of Becker and his associates.
Two days after the story appeared, Rosenthal walked out of the Hotel Metropole at 147 West 43rd Street, just off Times Square. He was gunned down by a crew of Jewish gangsters from the Lower East Side, Manhattan. In the aftermath, Manhattan District Attorney Charles S. Whitman, who had made an appointment with Rosenthal before his death, made no secret of his belief that the gangsters had committed the murder at Becker's behest. In the midst of a major public outcry, Lt. Becker was transferred to the Bronx and assigned to desk duty.
On July 29, 1912, Becker was approached at the precinct's closing hour by special detectives from the District Attorney's Office and placed under arrest. He was tried and convicted of first degree murder that fall. The verdict was overturned on appeal on the grounds that the presiding judge, John Goff, had been biased against the defendant. However, a retrial in 1914 affirmed his conviction. Although contemporary newspapers were unanimous in asserting his guilt, Becker went to the electric chair in Sing Sing on July 30, 1915, professing his innocence. After a Roman Catholic Requiem Mass, Charles Becker was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx, on August 2, 1915.
Although undeniably corrupt, contemporaries testified that Charles Becker was also markedly intelligent, particularly by the standards prevalent within the NYPD at that time. He showed little interest in the after-hours drinking activities of his police colleagues, preferring to return home to help his wife, a special needs schoolteacher, mark her pupils' homework. On Death Row, he gained the respect of his fellow prisoners by reading aloud to them for hours at a time from newspapers and Western dime novels.
Becker's only son, Howard P. Becker later became Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. A daughter, Charlotte Becker, conceived shortly before his arrest, died in 1913, less than a day after her birth, and is buried alongside him at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Several later authors, beginning with Henry Klein in 1927, have suggested that Becker was wrongly convicted. According to this theory, Becker and his fellow officers had simply stood back and allowed "the street" to "take care of" Rosenthal, knowing that his cooperation would put a huge target on his back. Allegedly, District Attorney Whitman then manipulated the evidence to implicate the corrupt Lieutenant, knowing that a guilty verdict for Becker would help his own political aspirations.
The Becker-Rosenthal murder is the subject of Michael Bookman's God's Rat: Jewish Mafia on the Lower East Side. A thinly fictionalized version of the murder is also described by mob boss Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Cohen, Stanley, (2006) "The Execution of Officer Becker; The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime."
Dash, Mike (2007). "Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption and New York's Trial of the Century"
Klein, Henry (1927). Sacrificed: The Story of Police Lieut. Charles Becker. New York: Privately published.
Logan, Andy (1970). Against The Evidence: The Becker-Rosenthal Affair. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Pietrusza, David (2003) Rothstein: The Life, Times and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. New York: Carroll & Graf. (contains a detailed chapter on the Becker-Rosenthal case)
Articles
"Entire force of patrolmen in revolt." April 6, 1902. New York Times.
"Three Platoon system urged by policemen." August 21, 1902. New York Times.
"The Strong Arm Squad a terror to the gangs." August 13, 1911. New York Times.
"My Story, by Mrs Charles Becker." December, 1914. McClure's Magazine.
"The Becker case: view of 'The System.'" November 11, 1951. New York Times Magazine.
