Did the murder of a New York woman in 1931 bring down the city’s notoriously corrupt, Irish-dominated Tammany Hall political machine? That’s the question posed and answered in The Bishop and the Butterfly, a page-turning account of Manhattan’s seedy underworld that offers a ringside seat to battles between reformers and crooked politicians at the outset of the Great Depression.
The body of Vivian Gordon, a sex worker, madam and blackmailer, was found in a Bronx park. She had been strangled. A search of her apartment turned up diaries filled with references to unsavory characters, shady deals and people who wanted her dead. But the most startling discovery was an invitation to supply information to an inquiry that was exposing vice squad officers who had charged innocent women with soliciting, then colluded with prosecutors and judges to force them to pay up to avoid a conviction and jail term.
Author and journalist Michael Wolraich, who explored American politics on the eve of the Jazz Age in a previous book, captures the press frenzy that erupted after Gordon’s death and recreates Tammany Hall’s efforts to stop the scandal from toppling its handpicked mayor, the flamboyant, wisecracking Jimmy Walker.
Was Gordon murdered to keep her from talking? Samuel Seabury, the former judge heading the investigation into the NYPD’s vice squad – a crusader for justice whose nickname, “the Bishop,” inspired the book’s title – was suspicious. So was Franklin Roosevelt, New York’s governor, but he could not risk a direct attack on the powerful Tammany Hall as he eyed a presidential run in 1932. It fell to Seabury to lead a wider probe that would expose the crooks running New York City.
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While Gordon had once been the victim of a vice squad shakedown, the police were never implicated in her death. A couple of thugs stood trial for her murder amid allegations her crooked lawyer had ordered the killing. To New Yorkers fed up with government graft and dishonest cops, however, the murder became a symbol of Tammany Hall’s arrogant rule.
“If Vivian Gordon hadn’t been murdered,” Wolraich concludes, “Seabury’s anti-corruption drive might have ended with ... the removal of a few judges, prosecutors and police officers.” Read this engrossing, deeply researched book to find out how one woman’s death emboldened reformers, toppled a corrupt regime, and transformed a city.
Dean Jobb’s A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue (Algonquin Books) will be released in June.
