The Disappearance of Percy Fawcett and Other Famous Vanishings

By Jane Clapp and Evan Andrews

There is nothing more disconcerting than someone vanishing into thin air. Unanswered questions abound and the mysteries only tend to grow. The Disappearance of Percy Fawcett and Other Famous Vanishings attempts to provide clarity and background on several individuals’ unexplained departures.

While looking for his mythical Lost City of Z, Percy Fawcett vanished. Amelia Earhart did the same while circling the earth on her historic flight. Much like these two historical figures, there has been a slew of cases that have never been solved—noted author Ambrose Bierce, Czar Alexander I, Judge Joseph Force Crater, famed adventurer Richard Halliburton, and others who never managed to return from their adventures. This book examines and documents each case in extensive detail, in an attempt to bring together some of the loose ends.

History.com writer Evan Andrews provides a detailed foreword to add some contemporary insight into the accounts of the vanished in The Disappearance of Percy Fawcett and Other Famous Vanishings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Racehorse
• Release date: Mar 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781631581823

Book preview

A JUDGE ON THE LAM

On a hot summer night in New York City, Judge Joseph Force Crater stepped into a taxi on West 45th Street, waved goodnight to two dinner companions, and was never seen again. The resulting investigation of his disappearance covered the United States and many foreign countries, and his jacket in the Bureau of Missing Persons of the New York City Police Department, File 13595, still marks an open case.

Judge Crater does not fit the picture of a remote white-haired jurist who spends quiet evenings playing chess and reading the Yale Review. He was a sporty character well-known on Times Square and Broadway, and some of his best friends were the long-stemmed American beauties who graced the chorus lines and name roles of popular musicals. While other disappearances from the streets of New York have received a certain notoriety (there was Dorothy Arnold who went shopping on December 12, 1910 and never came home; and Jesus de Galindez who vanished in an improbable political shuffle on March 12, 1956), the Crater case received an avalanche of publicity — and for good reason. The combination of personal scandals brought to light about the judge, and the linking of his disappearance with odorous political corruption in the city’s administration makes him the most famous missing person of that area.

The world-wide tracing of clews followed telephone tips, letters, personal visits of informants, notes written on playing cards found in floating bottles. Judge Crater was seen as the occupant of a neighboring deck chair on ocean liners; as the quiet resident of a pension in Italy; as a heavy better at the races; as a monk in a monastery in Mexico; as a visitor to Sing Sing. Although he had never learned to drive a car, Judge Crater was recognized as the driver of a variety of vehicles by motorists in many states. No missing man has ever had more doubles.

On August 6, 1930, when Judge Crater disappeared, he was forty-one years old. Today, thirty years after his disappearance, the search for him continues. Do the facts show that the judge may live a respected citizen in some community? Was he killed in a roughing-up administered by gangster friends of a woman who was blackmailing him? Did he commit suicide because of the personal and political scandals that prevented him from achieving his life-long goal? Was he robbed and murdered by a man he had never seen before? The facts are these.

In April 1930, less than four months before his disappearance, Joseph Force Crater, relatively unknown politically, was appointed Justice of the New York State Supreme Court by Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was a compromise appointment to the unexpired term of resigning Judge Proskauer, and in order to secure a full fourteen-year term as Justice, a political plum paying $22,500 a year, would face election in November of that year.

Born in a small town, Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1889, and educated in a local school, Lafayette College, in his home town, Joseph Crater had allied himself in New York City with the Tammany Democrats. For over ten years he had acted as President of the Cayuga Democratic Club in the nineteenth district. From 1920 to 1926 he was secretary to State Supreme Court Justice Robert F. Wagner. Judge Crater’s legal practice, involving many receiverships, paid well. So well that he had become a heavy and successful speculator in the stock market. One of his several brokers accounts showed a turnover of $120,000. Judge Crater’s other professional activities included teaching at Fordham University and at New York University, where he had the academic rank of Assistant Professor and the reputation of the most entertaining lecturer in the law school.

The Judge, according to his wife, the former Stella Mance Wheeler, a slim, attractive blonde, was most punctual in his habits. He always let her know when he would be away from home for dinner, and whenever he would be delayed or absent, he telephoned or sent a telegram. Perhaps he sent such messages rather frequently because he was often seen in the speak easy nightclubs of the era, and in popular restaurants. Judge Crater was described as gregarious. His friends included fellow jurists, politicians, professional men, show men, and show girls. He enjoyed the theater and frequently attended plays and