Free Island of the Damned by Alix Kirsta Page B

resigned, another disappeared overnight. Most were found to have bought their seat on the bench from a Tammany district leader; some had tacit agreements with certain leaders to drop cases involving major gangland figures, or to engineer an acquittal if a known criminal came to trial. Some judges had a conflict of interests arising from their dealings with commercial businesses, sports organisations and gambling establishments.
    The evidence of one witness was so astonishing that he regularly made the front pages. “Chile” Mapuno Acuno, from Santiago, told the court he had been hired 150 times in less than a year by the vice squad to act as their “stool pigeon.” Acuno admitted earning $150 a week throughout 1929 in return for helping police frame innocent women in regular vice raids. His role as a decoy was to engage unsuspecting women in conversation and then be “caught” by a police officer handing over money to them, at which point the woman would be arrested. Acuno named twenty eight policemen involved in these scams and admitted that he also received a share of the proceeds taken by police during raids on genuine houses of prostitution. These vice squad revelations opened a trail leading all the way to Wall Street. Over 120 policemen who took the bribes paid by innocent people in return for quashing their cases, used the money to play the stock market instead of placing it in deposit accounts.
    The evidence that emerged was so staggering that New York’s leading spokesmen and organisations, including religious leaders, appealed to Governor Roosevelt to order another, wider ranging investigation into the city’s administrative offices. At last, wanting to be seen as tough on crime, Roosevelt agreed. By now, the press and public had begun to demonise two men in particular for failing to do their job properly. One was Mayor Jimmy Walker. The other was Manhattan’s timid, elderly D.A Thomas Crain. Two august organisations, the City Club and the City Affairs Committee of New York, whose members included academics and church leaders, petitioned Governor Roosevelt for the removal of D.A Crain on the grounds that he had done nothing to investigate major crimes such as the murders of Arnold Rothstein and Vivian Gordon or to stamp out racketeering. But, while Seabury carried out a detailed investigation of the D.A’s office, he discovered only extensive inertia and inefficiency, failing to uncover evidence of corruption or bad faith. Although Seabury’s report censured Thomas Crain, he recommended to Governor Roosevelt that he should remain in office. For the moment, Crain stayed on.
    Mayor Jimmy Walker had no such easy ride. Seabury’s prime goal was to shine a spotlight on the skeletons in Walker’s cupboards, of which he knew there were many. Throughout 1932, as part of his mammoth investigation into the city’s administration, Seabury’s team ferreted out yet more evidence of racketeering and of the underworld’s power and control over the city’s services, unions and municipal businesses. Tammany leaders were found to be pocketing a cut from every function in the city from getting married or taking public transport to having a haircut, buying fish or having windows cleaned. Among scores of employees to lose their jobs was Thomas Farley, Sheriff of New York County. A police raid on the Farley Association clubhouse revealed the Sheriff relaxing in the company of the late gangster Arnold Rothstein’s associates and other mobsters with long criminal records. Eventually, when Farley failed to explain in court how he had amassed $400,000, in cash, over six years on a yearly salary of $8,500, Governor Roosevelt, on the recommendation of Judge Seabury, removed Sheriff Farley from office.
    By summer 1932, about 3,000 city workers had given evidence at the hearings, and, as revelations mounted and suspicious deposit accounts were traced, a pattern of bribery and illegal secret cash payments emerged which led right