Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: She was constantly nursing thoughts and dreams of revenge, revenge
Speaker 2: against her husband, revenge against the vice cop Andrew McLaughlin,
Speaker 2: and hopes of one day being reunited with her daughter.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stories. I had never heard of
Speaker 1: the tragic case of former vaudeville star Vivian Gordon in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties New York. She had threatened some of the
Speaker 1: city's most powerful men, and at least one of them
Speaker 1: wanted her dead. Her murder in nineteen thirty one caused
Speaker 1: the downfall of the mayor of New York City. Author
Speaker 1: Michael Woolrich wrote a book about Gordon and her death
Speaker 1: called The Bishop and the Butterfly, Murder, Politics and the
Speaker 1: End of the jazz Age. So this book, really, I know,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of corruption. Deep history can tell how
Speaker 1: much research that you've done on it. But to me,
Speaker 1: what I took away from it was it really boils
Speaker 1: down to the victim. We know now that victims, particularly
Speaker 1: female victims, can just get lost in everything, all of
Speaker 1: the media, all of the who's involved, the speculation, the
Speaker 1: corruption that comes from it. Who is to blame. So
Speaker 1: let's start with Vivian Gordon, who we know is going
Speaker 1: to be the victim. So tell me about her from
Speaker 1: the beginning, what you know about her that sort of
Speaker 1: sets up her character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we don't know a lot about her childhood
Speaker 2: and younger days. She was born in Indiana in Michigan City, Indiana,
Speaker 2: to middle class family. Her father was a prison warden
Speaker 2: in Chicago. She had a tough upbringing. There were reports
Speaker 2: of her being in a Catholic boarding school and attempting suicide.
Speaker 2: Definitely had a challenging home life. At one point, she
Speaker 2: and her siblings were in an orphanage in Chicago, and
Speaker 2: it's not exactly clear why, because both her parents were around.
Speaker 2: Her mother was living somewhere else. Her father was not
Speaker 2: listed in the census. Later on he filed for divorce,
Speaker 2: accusing her of poisoning him. So a lot of times
Speaker 2: you children end up in orphanages not because their parents
Speaker 2: had died, but because they couldn't raise them. My assumption
Speaker 2: is that her mother was probably unfit and her father
Speaker 2: was a prison warden, so at this time they were
Speaker 2: briefly in the orphanage and then off to the boarding school.
Speaker 2: So she definitely had a troubled youth, but seemed to
Speaker 2: pull it together, you know, by the time she came
Speaker 2: an adult, she was She became a vaudeville actor and
Speaker 2: would would tour the East Coast. She was born beneath
Speaker 2: Franklin and then met her husband while on the stage,
Speaker 2: John Bischoff, so she became Benita Bischoff, and they settled
Speaker 2: down in Philadelphia and had a daughter, also named Benita.
Speaker 2: I'm going to refer to the elder Bernita as Viaving Gordon,
Speaker 2: because that's, you know, how she was later known, and
Speaker 2: that also distinguished her from her daughter, So she was
Speaker 2: devoted to her daughter, Bernita. Her her friends talked about,
Speaker 2: you know, how much she loved her daughter and how
Speaker 2: important her daughter was to her life. But she was also,
Speaker 2: like some parents, kind of made the mistake of transferring
Speaker 2: her own failed ambitions onto her daughter. So she taught
Speaker 2: her daughter to dance. He taught Benita to dance, and
Speaker 2: Anita was very talented, was actually performing professionally at the
Speaker 2: age of her around seven in Philadelphia. This caused friction
Speaker 2: in her marriage because her husband, John Bischoff did not
Speaker 2: want Benita to be performing professionally. They fought, apparently fought
Speaker 2: rather badly, and Vivian Gordon left. She took her daughter
Speaker 2: to New York. They checked into a hotel near Times
Speaker 2: Square that would be convenient for auditions, and Benita was
Speaker 2: trying out for the stage because you know, in the
Speaker 2: New York was where it's at before Hollywood. New York
Speaker 2: was where you came to make it, and there were
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of the stars of the
Speaker 2: era were actually had begun their careers as children. May West, Fred.
Speaker 1: Astaire, Shirley Temple, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So Vivin wanted this for her daughter, and they were
Speaker 2: trying to make it and then something happened that changed
Speaker 2: their lives. It was on March ninth, nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 2: Vivian Gordon was arrested on prostitution charges. It was actually
Speaker 2: the charge was vacancy. They didn't have There was no
Speaker 2: official crime of prostitution. Vagrancy was as catch all that
Speaker 2: included homelessness, alcoholism, but in the case of young women
Speaker 2: it was invariably prostitution. And they had a special court
Speaker 2: down in Greenwich Village was a beautiful red brick courthouse.
Speaker 2: There was a court that was specifically for women and
Speaker 2: it was a bit of a scene, you know, men
Speaker 2: New Yorkers would come, men from New York and wo
Speaker 2: would come and sit in the galleries and ogel the
Speaker 2: accused sex workers as they were being tried. And this
Speaker 2: is what happened to Vivin Gordon. On the advice of
Speaker 2: her lawyer, she pleaded guilty and asked for mercy from
Speaker 2: the judge. From the magistrates as they called them, did
Speaker 2: not give her mercy. It was her verse conviction. She
Speaker 2: should have been paroled, she also had a young daughter. Instead,
Speaker 2: he sentenced her to a reformatory upstate that was supposed
Speaker 2: to reform wayward women. And while she was incarcerated, her
Speaker 2: husband sued for divorce, took custody full custody of their daughter, Benita,
Speaker 2: and prohibited Viving Gordon from ever seeing her daughter. Again.
Speaker 1: Let's go back and talk about the timeline. So she
Speaker 1: and Benita, younger Benita go to New York and you
Speaker 1: said they started staying at like what a boarding house
Speaker 1: or a hotel or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love New York. Stayed and there were residential hotels.
Speaker 2: They would have short term and long term rentals.
Speaker 1: Okay, so was younger Benita? She was seven at the time,
Speaker 1: she was eight, she was eight. How old was Vivian
Speaker 1: Gordon at this time? Do we know, like in their twenties?
Speaker 2: Maybe she was twenty nine?
Speaker 1: Okay, So how many years is it while they are
Speaker 1: struggling in all of this until she is arrested for vagrancy?
Speaker 1: And do we have evidence that she was a sex worker?
Speaker 2: So she was only it was only a few months.
Speaker 2: I mean she had she had started seeing other men
Speaker 2: while she was in New York. We don't have evidence
Speaker 2: other than that one cops testimony that she was a
Speaker 2: sex worker. She told her parole officer that she had met.
Speaker 2: This officer's name was Andrew McLaughlin. She had told him
Speaker 2: she was she was running out of money, and she
Speaker 2: told him her sobs story about you know, trying to
Speaker 2: make it in New York, and she said that he
Speaker 2: slipped twenty dollars into her stocking and then arrested her. Wow,
Speaker 2: So she told the parole officer. Despite seeing guilty, she
Speaker 2: told the parole officer that she'd been framed. And she
Speaker 2: surmised that her ex husband had actually conspired with the
Speaker 2: vice Andrew McLaughlin to arrest her in order to win
Speaker 2: custody at Benita.
Speaker 1: Her husband, John would have reached out from Philadelphia to
Speaker 1: New York to set this whole thing up. Is that
Speaker 1: your understanding.
Speaker 2: That's what she thought he did. He was politically connected,
Speaker 2: So it's it's certainly possible.
Speaker 1: So she is arrested and she is sent to this reformatory.
Speaker 1: You said it's upstate, Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's in Bedford Hills. It's in Westchester. The reformatory
Speaker 2: was supposed to be was supposed to reform women, show them,
Speaker 2: you know, how to teach them skills that they could find,
Speaker 2: you know, legal respectable work on the outside. But as
Speaker 2: as Vivian wrote to her sister, it was, it was
Speaker 2: quite the opposite. First of all, it was a prison,
Speaker 2: you know, despite the trappings, there was physical punishment. Women
Speaker 2: were like hung from their wrists for infractions. There were
Speaker 2: riots at this place, and there were abuses by the
Speaker 2: ward and the people who ran it. So Vivian wrote
Speaker 2: to her sister, you know, this place is supposed to
Speaker 2: reform me, but it's actually achieved the opposite. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of women here. She described them as dreadful.
Speaker 2: She said, she learned everything everything in the underworld I
Speaker 2: learned from these women. And these skills were actually quite
Speaker 2: helpful to her when she got to the outside, but
Speaker 2: not in the way that the authorities had hoped.
Speaker 1: So her daughter is now with her now ex husband
Speaker 1: back in Philadelphia, right, and she is released after how long.
Speaker 2: So she was in and out. She was first paroled
Speaker 2: after six months, but then sent back for parole violations,
Speaker 2: one of which was traveling out of state because she
Speaker 2: tried to go to Philadelphia to see her daughter, and
Speaker 2: there were other infractions at that point. At that point,
Speaker 2: she actually had become a sex worker, and we started
Speaker 2: to engage in a number of other crimes that eventually
Speaker 2: made her quite successful in the in the underworld.
Speaker 1: So Vivian Gordon goes from a vaudeville actor to you know,
Speaker 1: marrying this man, having an unhappy marriage and kind of
Speaker 1: scooping her daughter up and trying to have a better
Speaker 1: life in New York, only for it to completely devolve
Speaker 1: sounds like pretty quickly. And I have no doubt between
Speaker 1: prohibition and you know, the cracking down of crime as
Speaker 1: much as possible in that time period. In nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: she gets swept up in something and then just numerous
Speaker 1: wrong turns based on who she's surrounded by. Is that
Speaker 1: a pretty a brief summary of where we are with
Speaker 1: this story up until what nineteen twenty four? Maybe?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say so, I mean into this kind
Speaker 2: of continued into through the nineteen twenties. It was after
Speaker 2: the prison when she ad adopted this alias Vivian Gordon,
Speaker 2: and she started off essentially kind of a pretty conventional
Speaker 2: sex worker, but she she had a lot of other talents.
Speaker 2: You know, at this time, this was a big time
Speaker 2: for the braws in New York. They were the brothels
Speaker 2: were cool, intellectuals, writers, journalists, hung out men as well
Speaker 2: as women would they'd hang out in the salons before
Speaker 2: migrating to the bedroom, and so at the high end
Speaker 2: brothels such as that Polly Adler was one of the
Speaker 2: famous New York Adams of the era. A conversation and
Speaker 2: culture and sophistication were expected, and Viving Gordon had all these.
Speaker 2: She was very intelligent, she was accomplished. She was a painter,
Speaker 2: a musician, very well read. So she really thrived in
Speaker 2: that kind of atmosphere, in that kind of situation, and
Speaker 2: then she branched out into other ways of making money.
Speaker 2: She recruited a network of cabby's and bus boys at hotels,
Speaker 2: and they would steer potential customers targets towards to her,
Speaker 2: to her hotel room, to her table at the nightclub,
Speaker 2: and she would, you know what they called. Then she
Speaker 2: would make money as a gold digar. She would entertain
Speaker 2: these men and live off their largesse at least as
Speaker 2: long as it lasted, and then oftentimes after the fair
Speaker 2: was over, she would blackmail them.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, And this would have inevitably to tease
Speaker 1: what's going to happen going forward? Really put her in
Speaker 1: some significant danger. I'm presuming from a lot of different angles,
Speaker 1: if she has potentially powerful men coming in in vulnerable
Speaker 1: positions with her, and then she's blackmailing as in what
Speaker 1: I'm going to your wife to tell you what happened,
Speaker 1: or I'm pregnant and you're going to have to support
Speaker 1: the child, or what.
Speaker 2: Different ways you know, she would she would hide her
Speaker 2: mink coat and then you know, you know, accuse the
Speaker 2: man of stealing it. She would you know, threaten to
Speaker 2: create a scene and you know the police would come over,
Speaker 2: so you know, whatever she could do to embarrass the
Speaker 2: man to kind of course him into giving her money.
Speaker 2: And then she had she had a boyfriend who was
Speaker 2: Aklan lawyer who had a clean reputation but worked with
Speaker 2: her on these crimes, and he would go to the
Speaker 2: man and collect the money.
Speaker 1: Did you get a sense from her, just from what
Speaker 1: you know of Vivian Gordon, that this was a challenge
Speaker 1: that she enjoyed, she enjoyed the criminal enterprise, or really
Speaker 1: was at its heart pain that she was going through
Speaker 1: losing her daughter and she had hardened and this was
Speaker 1: survival for her or was there somewhere in between.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll go with see all the above. I mean,
Speaker 2: she did seem to enjoy thrills, she did like living
Speaker 2: on the edge, but she was also extremely bitter and
Speaker 2: extremely cynical. I mean, her life had been destroyed her.
Speaker 2: You know, what mattered most to her had been taken
Speaker 2: away from her, and she didn't care anymore. She didn't
Speaker 2: care about you know, she no longer formed these kind
Speaker 2: of attachments. She no longer had as much of a conscience,
Speaker 2: and she was constantly nursing kind of thoughts and dreams
Speaker 2: of revenge, revenge against her husband, revenge against the vice
Speaker 2: cop Andrew McLaughlin, and hopes of one day being reunited
Speaker 2: with her daughter.
Speaker 1: What would have been her likely outcome? Do you think
Speaker 1: had she not met Andrew McLaughlin and he had if
Speaker 1: she's telling the truth, which I would assume she is
Speaker 1: at this point, had slipped in this twenty dollars and
Speaker 1: had her arrested, would she have gone back? Do you
Speaker 1: think at some point or did she have any kind
Speaker 1: of a backup plan that you know of, if Benita young,
Speaker 1: Benita's acting career or dance career had not come through.
Speaker 2: I suspect, you know, this was the nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 2: it was you know, it was very difficult. There were
Speaker 2: professional women, but it was very difficult to have a
Speaker 2: legal profession as a woman. And while she was very intelligent,
Speaker 2: she didn't have, you know, a particular skill set other
Speaker 2: than the acting that she could fall back on. My
Speaker 2: guess is that she would have, you know, try to
Speaker 2: find a wealthy boyfriend who would support her. And you know,
Speaker 2: she thought, she hoped that this Andrew McLoughlin would, because
Speaker 2: he was undercover, pretending to be just this rich guy.
Speaker 2: You know, perhaps she saw him as a potential savior.
Speaker 1: Now did she ever see him again over this decade
Speaker 1: after she had been released from the reformatory, but before
Speaker 1: what happens to her happens.
Speaker 2: She did not see him, but she did write him. Okay,
Speaker 2: there's a bit of background I need to bring out here.
Speaker 2: She's doing quite well through nineteen twenty nine. You know,
Speaker 2: it's the roaring twenties. Business is booming. There are lots
Speaker 2: of men around with swollen wallets and swollen libidos that
Speaker 2: you know, she was able to take advantage of. She
Speaker 2: even you know, she recruited younger women to work for her.
Speaker 2: She called them her young forty nine ers, and she
Speaker 2: taught them her trade. She loaned money to gangsters, she
Speaker 2: invested in a bank robbery and Norway of all places.
Speaker 2: But then the crash happened in nineteen twenty nine. She
Speaker 2: amassed a fair amount of money she got invest in
Speaker 2: real estate and stocks. All that quickly became worthless and
Speaker 2: her income sources dried up. Now this was happening to
Speaker 2: a lot of New Yorkers at this time in different ways.
Speaker 2: And you know, people during the Roaring twenties, when life
Speaker 2: was good, people didn't pay too much attention to corruption
Speaker 2: or what was going on city government or among the cops,
Speaker 2: as long as they were getting their paycheck and having
Speaker 2: fun at the nightclubs and the speakeasies. But after the
Speaker 2: depression set in, people started to take a second look
Speaker 2: at what had happened to their city during this prohibition era,
Speaker 2: and you know, started seeing all the corruption and the
Speaker 2: crime that had happened. And after a series of scandals,
Speaker 2: the governor at that time, Franklin Delana Roosevelt, under political pressure,
Speaker 2: decided to launch an investigation into corruption in New York City.
Speaker 2: And that investigation turned up, you know, judges taking bribes,
Speaker 2: It turned up some mobster connections. What really shook the
Speaker 2: city was they uncovered a conspiracy in the women's court
Speaker 2: where Vieven Gordon had been convicted seven years earlier. A
Speaker 2: conspiracy between cops, defense attorneys, bail bondsmen, and prosecutors to
Speaker 2: frame innocent women for prostitution.
Speaker 1: And how did they do that? Did they have somebody
Speaker 1: who was a whistleblower or how was it? How do
Speaker 1: you uncover something like that that clearly encompasses so many
Speaker 1: people in order for the framework to stay up and
Speaker 1: they can continue to convict people.
Speaker 2: So to arrest women, in particular for vagrancy, they would
Speaker 2: use civilians known as stool pigeons, and they would pay
Speaker 2: these men, sometimes as much as fifty dollars a day,
Speaker 2: which was a lot, to solicit women and give them
Speaker 2: marked bills. And then as soon as that had happened,
Speaker 2: the cops than Russian and arrest the women. Now question
Speaker 2: was how did the cops pay, you know, on their
Speaker 2: meager salaries, pay for these tool pigeons. One of these
Speaker 2: tool pigeons, he was a Chilean immigrant. His name was
Speaker 2: Chili a Cuna. He walked into the office one day
Speaker 2: of the lead investigator. The lead investigator's name was Samuel Seabury.
Speaker 2: He was a former judge whom FDR had handpicked to
Speaker 2: run this investigation. Very moralistic, upright guy. Chili Acuna came
Speaker 2: into his office and said he had a story to tell.
Speaker 2: He told Seabury and the other investigators about how he
Speaker 2: had been making his living for the past few years.
Speaker 2: He said he was rapped by guilt. He wanted to
Speaker 2: get out of this life, but he couldn't because he
Speaker 2: feared for his life from the cops who had employed him.
Speaker 2: He explained what he'd been doing for the cops, and
Speaker 2: he told Seabury that many of the women that whose
Speaker 2: arrest he'd participated in had actually been innocent. He told
Speaker 2: one story about how he went into one a landlady's
Speaker 2: apartment and you know, asked, you know, said he was
Speaker 2: interested and having good time, and she kicked him out,
Speaker 2: and the cops said, no, we need to make a
Speaker 2: caller go back in there. So he goes back in there,
Speaker 2: decides he's going to offer money. He's like, sorry, I
Speaker 2: made a mistake. I really just want to rent a room,
Speaker 2: and he hadn't even given her money, and then the
Speaker 2: cops rushed in, arrested her, beat up her husband, who
Speaker 2: you know, was accused of running a disorderly house. And
Speaker 2: what they would do then, ascun explained to Seabury. They
Speaker 2: would take these women down to the women's court. They
Speaker 2: would drop them off with the bondsman who was in
Speaker 2: on the scheme, and the bondsman would you know, charge
Speaker 2: the woman a very high fee, and then he would
Speaker 2: transfer her, you know, refer her to a defense attorney
Speaker 2: who work in the same office, and that defense attorney
Speaker 2: would charge an even higher fee, and he'd said, if
Speaker 2: you pay my fee, I can get you off. And
Speaker 2: if the woman had money and paid his fee, then
Speaker 2: he would distribute kickbacks to the bondsman, to the cop,
Speaker 2: he'd bribe the prosecutor, and he'd arrange for the woman
Speaker 2: to get off. Either the cop wouldn't show up, or
Speaker 2: the prosecutor would drop the charges and the woman would
Speaker 2: you know, emerge with her reputation intact. If, on the
Speaker 2: other hand, this woman couldn't afford the lawyer, then she
Speaker 2: was almost invariably convicted and sent to bed for just
Speaker 2: like Phabean Gordon.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I was wondering how that was working, where
Speaker 1: the money was coming from, how these people were getting kickbacks.
Speaker 1: So that's an interesting scheme. How long was this women's
Speaker 1: court conspiracy going on? As far as you can tell, I.
Speaker 2: Would say at least a decade. Wow, you know this
Speaker 2: was of course, once this news broke, I mean New
Speaker 2: Yorkers were outraged, you know, and they started the FDR.
Speaker 2: You made a statement, He's like, I will pardon any
Speaker 2: woman who's been a victim of these heinous crimes. And
Speaker 2: Seaberry and his investigators started grilling cops and you know,
Speaker 2: they checked, they found out, you know, they have you know,
Speaker 2: all these wealthy cops who are you know, clearly getting
Speaker 2: money from somewhere else, and they would grill them about,
Speaker 2: you know, where they get their money, and the cops
Speaker 2: would say like, oh, you know I had a rich uncle,
Speaker 2: or I won the money in the horses. So Gordon
Speaker 2: was reading these you know, reading these stories in the
Speaker 2: press and validated whathich she believed had happened to her,
Speaker 2: especially when that Andrew McLaughlin turned out to be one
Speaker 2: of the cops who was dragged into this scandal. So
Speaker 2: she now at last had her means of revenge. Revenge
Speaker 2: and you know, hopefully being reunited with her daughter. So
Speaker 2: she met with one of Seabury's investigators. She told her story.
Speaker 2: He you know, said, okay, we need some evidence to
Speaker 2: back this up. You know, go back, collect some evidence
Speaker 2: and we'll meet again. And she at that point, somewhat
Speaker 2: inadvisedly sent a letter to Andrew McLachlin and to her husband,
Speaker 2: John Bischoff, the's gloating triumphant letters, warning them that she
Speaker 2: had you know, that she was going to tell everything
Speaker 2: to the Seabird investigation and they were going to get
Speaker 2: her due and then you know, she would get her
Speaker 2: daughter back. She did not meet with the investigator again.
Speaker 2: Five days after their meeting, she was murdered.
Speaker 1: I have a question that's just sort of been bugging me.
Speaker 1: So she is caught doing something that probably she really
Speaker 1: wasn't doing. You know, we believe her. Andrew McLaughlin set
Speaker 1: her up. She is sent to this reformatory and everything
Speaker 1: falls apart for her, and yet she has never caught
Speaker 1: for every flippant illegal thing she did after that? Is
Speaker 1: that right? She has never caught after that? Why? Because
Speaker 1: she's so smart that she learned everything in the reformatory.
Speaker 2: She was smart She was occasionally arrested but never convicted.
Speaker 2: Her only conviction was that time in nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 2: She was careful about how she did it, and there
Speaker 2: was a lot of crime going on in New York
Speaker 2: at that time. There were a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: very serious gangsters, bootleggers, making a lot of money, and
Speaker 2: they weren't getting caught either. So it was you know,
Speaker 2: the system, the cops. Many of the cops, they weren't
Speaker 2: just corrupt, they were also incompetent. Some of them. A
Speaker 2: lot of times they weren't even interested in solving the case,
Speaker 2: especially if there was some connection back to the police department.
Speaker 1: So the main part of the story takes place February
Speaker 1: twenty fifth, nineteen thirty one. Are we still in prohibition.
Speaker 2: We're still a few years before the end of prohibition,
Speaker 2: so it's still prohibition.
Speaker 1: Lots of gangster activity happening there too, because we know
Speaker 1: she's loaned them money, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Vivian. You know some of the famous gangsters
Speaker 2: Legs Diamond for example, you know she would hang out with.
Speaker 2: So it's still that period, although it's rapidly starting to unravel.
Speaker 2: You know, the depression has set in nobody's making as
Speaker 2: much money as they were. It's a bleak February morning
Speaker 2: on the twenty sixth when a pedestrian walking through a
Speaker 2: Van Cortland park in the Bronx notices a white glove
Speaker 2: hanging from a bush, and he investigates further and he
Speaker 2: discovers the body, Davian Gordon's body.
Speaker 1: How quickly is she identified? And of course what's the
Speaker 1: state of her body? We can start there too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she had only been murdered a few hours before.
Speaker 2: There was no identification on her, but she was. They
Speaker 2: saw that she was an attractive woman in stylish clothing,
Speaker 2: although she had no jewelry and no coat, which was
Speaker 2: odd considering how she was dressed and the weather outside.
Speaker 2: So at first, you know, they didn't know what to think.
Speaker 2: They were like, oh, maybe it's a maniac, as one
Speaker 2: of the detectives said. But they were quickly able to
Speaker 2: identify her from her fingerprints because of her original conviction,
Speaker 2: because of some subsequent arrests, and from those arrests they
Speaker 2: had they got an address. She lived in murray Hill,
Speaker 2: which was then is still a fashionable area of Manhattan.
Speaker 2: She lived in a nice apartment there in a new
Speaker 2: Elevator building, and when they went there the cops found.
Speaker 2: First of all, they found some black books, some of
Speaker 2: which were lists of men whom she'd targeted, some of
Speaker 2: whom were lists of young women, including physical descriptions and
Speaker 2: naked photographs. These were the women who worked for her
Speaker 2: as escorts, essentially. And they also found diary that described
Speaker 2: her life for the last three years before her.
Speaker 1: Murder, which I'm assuming is one of your sources in
Speaker 1: the book.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so a lot of what happened to her
Speaker 2: came from these diaries. And the diaries were I mean,
Speaker 2: it was actually a date book, but she used them
Speaker 2: as diaries, and some of them were very business oriented about,
Speaker 2: you know, collecting debts that were owed to her. Others
Speaker 2: were ominous. That boyfriend I mentioned the Brooklyn lawyer name
Speaker 2: was John Radloff, and she multiple times in the diary said,
Speaker 2: if anything happens to me, John Radloff is to blame.
Speaker 2: He's the one enemy of mine, and she documented threats
Speaker 2: he made against her life. He had a henchman. His
Speaker 2: name was Sam Cohen. People called him Chowderhead Cohen. He
Speaker 2: was a thug and a thief, and Radloff said, you know,
Speaker 2: Chowderhead can take you out into the woods where nobody
Speaker 2: will ever find you, and take your ring and your
Speaker 2: ring coat. There were a lot of warnings pointing at
Speaker 2: John Rattloff in the diary. But then there were also,
Speaker 2: you know, so many other suspects. I mean, there was
Speaker 2: John Bischoff, Andrew McLaughlin, there were all the men that
Speaker 2: she had targeted. There were you know, some of the
Speaker 2: younger women whom she had crossed. So at one point,
Speaker 2: you know, the district attorney very frustrated and asked if
Speaker 2: they had any suspects. His answer was yes, everybody in
Speaker 2: New York.
Speaker 1: It makes it difficult when you have this phrase drives
Speaker 1: me crazy. But like the imperfect victim, you know, the
Speaker 1: person who in some ways is a perpetrator, right, she
Speaker 1: is turning other people into victims. I have a couple
Speaker 1: of questions sort of along those lines that'll just take
Speaker 1: us down a couple of tiny little pathways for a second.
Speaker 1: What is your read on her as a victim? As in,
Speaker 1: how do you frame Vivian Gordon as someone who people
Speaker 1: need to understand that this was a life, she deserved justice.
Speaker 1: She is murdered, but look at all the wrong she did,
Speaker 1: and it is difficult, I think for some audience members
Speaker 1: to not have a tiny little voice that says, well,
Speaker 1: she shouldn't have done all that stuff, you know, So
Speaker 1: how do you reconcile that? Because I always struggle in
Speaker 1: my books about stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Vivin Gordon was certainly an imperfect person, as you put it,
Speaker 2: and she was aware of it. She wrote. She wrote
Speaker 2: poetry kind of talking about, you know, what she'd done,
Speaker 2: and predicting that she would come to a bad end.
Speaker 2: She told her friends, you know, someday, somebody's gonna slit
Speaker 2: my throat. So she was aware of it. All I
Speaker 2: can do as an author is can provide whatever evidence
Speaker 2: I have and bring, you know, my own perspective to
Speaker 2: her story. And to me, what drives my sympathy for
Speaker 2: her was the wrong that she'd experienced, the difficult life
Speaker 2: that she'd had that had sent her down this path.
Speaker 1: Lots of struggles that she had to overcome. And also,
Speaker 1: you know, something that is good for us to point
Speaker 1: out is that women had so little agency in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties and three. I mean, they just had no power.
Speaker 1: This was one area where she could have power, right,
Speaker 1: I mean besides sex, just like being able to get
Speaker 1: away with things, having that sort of business savvy that
Speaker 1: she had, even if it was illegal, there were just
Speaker 1: so few options. What would have happened with her if
Speaker 1: just a few other decisions have been made differently?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I mean in a way, you know, she
Speaker 2: turned the tables, you know, from you know, here were
Speaker 2: these rich, privileged, you know, white men who were you know,
Speaker 2: saw women as you know, somebody that they could you know,
Speaker 2: in one of her paramours would walk around. He had
Speaker 2: a money belts that he would you know, fill with
Speaker 2: one hundred dollar bills. He'd go out in the evening
Speaker 2: and he would hand one hundred dollars bills to you know,
Speaker 2: young women who caught his fancy. And so you know,
Speaker 2: these these victims were not admirable themselves, and they were
Speaker 2: you know, they were accustomed to getting away with everything.
Speaker 2: She exploited them as they were attempting to exploit her.
Speaker 2: So there is power in that. You know, you could
Speaker 2: also look at what happened in terms of those vice cops.
Speaker 2: In a way, she did achieve a kind of posthumous
Speaker 2: revenge against them. Her case was so sensational that it
Speaker 2: led FDR to increase the authority of the investigators in
Speaker 2: the scope of the investigation. And many of these cops,
Speaker 2: some were convicted, most were fired, dismissed from the force.
Speaker 2: They lost their cash cow, they lost their money and
Speaker 2: the power that they that they'd had. So, you know,
Speaker 2: she did achieve this in a way, not in the
Speaker 2: way that, of course she had hoped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. Okay, So we have a host of suspects,
Speaker 1: and before we get into who might have done this,
Speaker 1: which just seems like the media or the police had said,
Speaker 1: you know, it was the entire city and then some
Speaker 1: of Philadelphia, obviously, let's talk about the body. So she
Speaker 1: has found and you said she had no jacket, she
Speaker 1: didn't have her ear rings in and you know, no identification.
Speaker 1: What was the cause of death if it had been
Speaker 1: just a few hours before.
Speaker 2: She'd been strangled. There was a dirty it looked like
Speaker 2: a rope, It looked like a clothesline wrapped around her neck,
Speaker 2: nodded tightly. She was bruised, but the police suspected that
Speaker 2: that was mainly because she'd been dragged. Her body had
Speaker 2: been dragged through the woods after her murder. The police
Speaker 2: suspected that she'd been not murdered there. There was no
Speaker 2: sign of struggle in the bushes, so they believe she
Speaker 2: was murdered somewhere else, possibly in an automobile. And then
Speaker 2: you know, her body left there in the woods.
Speaker 1: Now, so the police did this signal gangsters just blatantly
Speaker 1: laying out somebody where a pedestrian is probably going to
Speaker 1: find them at some point.
Speaker 2: You know, certainly, given her criminal connections, gangsters were suspected.
Speaker 2: I would say much of the public assumed it wasn't gangsters,
Speaker 2: assumed it was the cops that had silenced her to
Speaker 2: keep her from speaking to investigators, and it was. You know,
Speaker 2: people believe that she had all sorts of secrets that
Speaker 2: she might might have spilled to the investigators if she'd
Speaker 2: been allowed to talk.
Speaker 1: Now, is the corrupt cop who set her up to
Speaker 1: begin with, Andrew McLachlin. Is he still on the force
Speaker 1: when she dies?
Speaker 2: Yes, but he is in Bermuda at the time of
Speaker 2: her death.
Speaker 1: Oh okay.
Speaker 2: You know, this is a practice that I was surprised
Speaker 2: to find out still goes on, where cruise ships will
Speaker 2: offer free passage to handsome men who entertain the single
Speaker 2: ladies on the cruise.
Speaker 1: What I've not heard that. What ships are these some.
Speaker 2: Of the big ones, they're called like gentlemen hosts. I
Speaker 2: think google it, you'll see.
Speaker 1: So Andrew mclachlin's doing that. Is he some handsome guy?
Speaker 1: And he was.
Speaker 2: He was very handsome. They called him the Sheikh of
Speaker 2: the Vice Squad.
Speaker 1: Okay, so is this an alibi, like a for real alibi.
Speaker 1: He could have hired somebody to do it. But has
Speaker 1: he crossed off the list or do they still have
Speaker 1: an eye on him?
Speaker 2: No, so he is crossed off the list, at least
Speaker 2: t himself. You know, one of the women I write about,
Speaker 2: actually I was a journalist and Grace Robinson, who was
Speaker 2: the top crime reporter for the Daily News, and she
Speaker 2: was all over this case. She just was was everywhere.
Speaker 2: You know. I started when I was writing about her,
Speaker 2: I just quoted her article, you know, quoted her reporting.
Speaker 2: And then you know, as I found her in more
Speaker 2: and more places and learn more about her, it's like
Speaker 2: she has to come into the story. And so she
Speaker 2: has a role in the story. And she you know,
Speaker 2: one of her scoops was she boarded the Andrew mcgloughfin's
Speaker 2: boat when it stopped for quarantine out in the harbor,
Speaker 2: she boarded it, got an exclusive interview with him on
Speaker 2: the way back into New York and then he you know,
Speaker 2: was cuffed and taken to you know, taking in for
Speaker 2: questioning when he got off ship. So he was definitely
Speaker 2: in Bermuda. They did not find evidence against him or
Speaker 2: Vivian Gordon's ex husband, John Bischoff. Many people were suspicious,
Speaker 2: but there was not. The police didn't feel like they
Speaker 2: had anything to go on with those two.
Speaker 1: So who do they return to? Are we looking back
Speaker 1: at the He was an attorney, right, the boyfriend or
Speaker 1: ex boyfriend of Vivian whom she said, if I end
Speaker 1: up dead, you need to talk to John about this.
Speaker 2: Yes, John Radloff. So the first people they arrested, the
Speaker 2: people they believed did it, the lead detective believe did
Speaker 2: it were John Radloff and the henchman I'd mentioned, Chatterhead Cohen.
Speaker 2: They did not, however, have any solid evidence. All they
Speaker 2: had were the diaries, which weren't even admissible in court.
Speaker 2: So they booked them as material witnesses and were able
Speaker 2: to hold them as material witnesses as unwilling witnesses for
Speaker 2: weeks as they tried to find evidence. They couldn't find anything.
Speaker 2: They had nothing to go on. Both of those men
Speaker 2: had alibis, not nearly as solid as Andrew McLaughlin's, but
Speaker 2: they had alibis, so eventually they released them for lack
Speaker 2: of evidence. They were determined. They were desperate to solve
Speaker 2: this case because it was such an embarrassment to the
Speaker 2: police and they had you know, the governor FDR breathing
Speaker 2: down their next telling them you have to solve this case.
Speaker 2: He was worried he was going to interfere because he
Speaker 2: was already planning to run for president. He was worried
Speaker 2: that this was going to you know, slow him down
Speaker 2: or interfere with his campaign. So he was really pushing
Speaker 2: them hard to solve the case. They assigned like two
Speaker 2: hundred officers to the case. They hired the Pinkerton Detective
Speaker 2: private detective agents to interview people. You know, it was
Speaker 2: a huge case. It was all you know. It was
Speaker 2: in the headlines for months, not only in New York,
Speaker 2: there were it was the headlines all over the country.
Speaker 2: I found articles about it in Sydney, Australia, Singapore. It
Speaker 2: was such a big deal and so they really wanted
Speaker 2: to solve it, but they for a long time had
Speaker 2: nothing to go on.
Speaker 1: What do you think were the check marks on a
Speaker 1: huge media story that this checked off? Because we're talking
Speaker 1: about ultimately a sex worker and someone who was extorting
Speaker 1: men and I know attractive. Is that what it took
Speaker 1: was being wrapped up in you know, this conspiracy. Normally
Speaker 1: I would think, well, maybe this wouldn't have been that
Speaker 1: big of a media story just because it didn't involve
Speaker 1: some prem you know, housewife who had this secret life.
Speaker 1: It seems like there had to have been something much deeper.
Speaker 1: It triggered people in the media.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean there were two things. First of all,
Speaker 2: if she wasn't this obscure sex worker they had, you know,
Speaker 2: she was dealing with some of the most prominent men
Speaker 2: in New York City, you know, some of the richest
Speaker 2: you know, former state Secretary of State, a judge, you know,
Speaker 2: there were these were people of prominence that she would
Speaker 2: interacting with who then became suspects. So there was that,
Speaker 2: But what really made it a huge story was her
Speaker 2: meeting with the anti corruption investigators. That investigation was threatening,
Speaker 2: you know, not just a few cops in the forest,
Speaker 2: that was threatening the entire political structure of New York City.
Speaker 2: It was you know, the city was run by this
Speaker 2: political machine, Tammany Hall, this notorious political machine that had
Speaker 2: ruled New York for over a century. You know, we've
Speaker 2: been talking all about the murder, but in fact, there
Speaker 2: are two narratives in my book, and the Vivian Gordon
Speaker 2: and her murders one of them. The other narrative thread
Speaker 2: is all about this investigation that intersected and was affected
Speaker 2: by her murder, and that investigation had tremendous historic importance
Speaker 2: for New York City and even the country.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about that. I'm interested in Samuel Seabury
Speaker 1: and where he comes in, and I know he's been
Speaker 1: involved already. He's the head of this investigation at this point, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. So you know, FDR actually didn't want such
Speaker 2: a big investigation. He had an alliance with this political machine,
Speaker 2: with Tammany Hall. He needed their support, you know, they
Speaker 2: had supported him to become governor. He felt that he
Speaker 2: needed their support to win the Democratic presidential nomination and
Speaker 2: to win New York State in the general election. So
Speaker 2: he did not want to antagonize the bosses. But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, he didn't want to look weak. He
Speaker 2: didn't want to look like, oh he was, you know,
Speaker 2: turning to her cheek. You know, as all this, all
Speaker 2: this horrible corruption was happening in his home state. So
Speaker 2: he kind of started with this smaller investigation, but picked
Speaker 2: Samuel Seabury, who was, you know, a man of immaculate reputation.
Speaker 2: He was blue blooded, he came his great great grandfather
Speaker 2: was was also Samuel Seaberry, was the America's first episcopalian bishop.
Speaker 2: You know, Hamilton fans will recognize the name because he
Speaker 2: tangled with with Alexander Hamilton before the Revolution. He was
Speaker 2: a loyalist. You know. The book was called The Bishop
Speaker 2: and the Butterfly, but Fly refers to Vivian Gordon. She
Speaker 2: was called Broadway Butterfly. The Bishop was a nickname that
Speaker 2: people used for Samuel Seabury, partly because of his his ancestor,
Speaker 2: partly because of his his manner. He was just so moralistic,
Speaker 2: and he was also very tenacious, and so he really
Speaker 2: took this investigation a lot further than FDR had ever intended.
Speaker 1: So what's the next step they're trying to call the
Speaker 1: list of suspects they've crossed off the ex husband. They've
Speaker 1: crossed off the sleasy cop, flash mail entertainer, whatever that
Speaker 1: is in Bermuda. And we could not get enough on
Speaker 1: the ex boyfriend who was violent and his henchman named
Speaker 1: Chowder inexplicably. So what is the next step here?
Speaker 2: You know Seabury at this point he digs into a
Speaker 2: little bit, but then he's more focused on the bigger
Speaker 2: picture on Tammany Hall, okay, and you know, the major
Speaker 2: graft in the city. The cops now go back to
Speaker 2: Vivian Gordon's diaries and they see a reference to someone
Speaker 2: named Henry Saunders who she has loaned money to for
Speaker 2: a bank job in Oslo, and they don't know who
Speaker 2: he is. They're like interviewing all the Henry Saunders or
Speaker 2: related names they can find, and they can't. They can't
Speaker 2: figure out who he is. But she mentions the date
Speaker 2: of his travel, and on a hunch, one of the
Speaker 2: detectives looks through the ship records and finds three men,
Speaker 2: not Henry Saunders, but Samuel Cohen, who is the chatterhead Cohen.
Speaker 2: And you know, the man is not actually chatterhead Cohen,
Speaker 2: but there is a connection there, and he had used
Speaker 2: sam He had used the name and the passport of
Speaker 2: Sam of Cohen to travel to Oslo. And then they
Speaker 2: also were able to identify Henry Sanders from his signature.
Speaker 2: They matched it to a convict from sing sing named
Speaker 2: Harry Stein, So you know, they kind of looked into
Speaker 2: what these guys were doing. They went to another friend
Speaker 2: from Sing Singh who was Norwegian, had invited them out
Speaker 2: to do an inside job in Oslo and they'd borrowed
Speaker 2: money from Viving Gordon to do it. You know, they
Speaker 2: rented a cottage outside Oslo and told the neighbors that
Speaker 2: they were filming a movie and that they were all
Speaker 2: these you know, one was a Hollywood mogul, one was
Speaker 2: a railroad air and had some machine with wires coming
Speaker 2: out of it that they'd show to the locals. The
Speaker 2: deal fell through for unfair reasons. They did not rub
Speaker 2: the bank and so they owed Viving Gordon money and
Speaker 2: in her diary she reports, you know that she's you know,
Speaker 2: after they return, she's hounding them to try to get
Speaker 2: her money back. And this Harry Stein's a bad character.
Speaker 2: He has a long record of not murder, but some
Speaker 2: very serious assaults and he's done a lot of time
Speaker 2: and So at this point they suspected him, but they
Speaker 2: still don't have the evidence to nail him.
Speaker 1: So what's the next step. Because now you've got see Berry,
Speaker 1: who is sort of balancing two different investigations. They've figured
Speaker 1: out harry Stein is a potential suspect because she has
Speaker 1: by the way, I had no idea that you could
Speaker 1: invest in a bank robbery. But she has loaned money
Speaker 1: and I'm assuming was going to get probably a pretty
Speaker 1: good amount of interest back on it, and she is demanding,
Speaker 1: according to her diary, that she wants this money back
Speaker 1: and is pressuring harry Stein and whoever his other accomplices are.
Speaker 2: So they get from an unrelated source they can lead
Speaker 2: at this point, and it's the police commissioner of New
Speaker 2: York City. His name was Edward mulrooney. He received a
Speaker 2: tip from somebody he never named who it was, said
Speaker 2: it was, you know, he said it was somebody who
Speaker 2: had credible information, and the tip sent him off to Revere,
Speaker 2: which is a suburb of Boston. He basically said, you know,
Speaker 2: he gave his deputy responsibility for running the police and
Speaker 2: said I'm going to solve this myself. Goes off to
Speaker 2: Boston and comes back with evidence of a certain fence
Speaker 2: named David Butterman has possession of even Gordon's min coat
Speaker 2: or has had possession of Vivian Gordon's mean cooat and
Speaker 2: diamond ring and diamond watch and was trying to sell them.
Speaker 2: The cops raid his home and he and his wife,
Speaker 2: you know, they break down. They say it was Harry Stein.
Speaker 2: Harry Stein gave us the coat to try to sell,
Speaker 2: gave us the ring and the watch to try to
Speaker 2: sell them. They didn't have more about that, They didn't
Speaker 2: know the details, but they were able to provide more
Speaker 2: evidence against Harry Stein.
Speaker 1: So what's the next step. It's them versus Harry Stein.
Speaker 1: And I'm assuming Harry Stein saying I didn't do anything.
Speaker 2: Oh, they didn't even arrest him. They didn't, you know,
Speaker 2: they kept it quiet. They knew they didn't have enough
Speaker 2: evidence to proscute, so they followed him. They tapped his phone,
Speaker 2: you know, they trapped him. They've discovered one of his cronies,
Speaker 2: who is Samuel Greenberg, who was one of the ones
Speaker 2: who had gone with him to Oslo. And they found
Speaker 2: a third guy using an alias Harry but it was
Speaker 2: a different Harry and found him talking to Greenberg. His
Speaker 2: name was Harry Schlitten, and they arrested him and eventually
Speaker 2: broke him to get the full story. So they arrest
Speaker 2: this guy, the young guy, Harry Schlitten, and you know,
Speaker 2: after you know, a night or two of interrogation, he breaks.
Speaker 2: He says he was hired by Harry Stein to drive
Speaker 2: the murder car, and he gives the whole story about
Speaker 2: how he rented the car and picked up Harry and
Speaker 2: this the same with Greenberg. Greene, they called him. They
Speaker 2: drove up, found a spot and remote spot in the Bronx,
Speaker 2: and then drove back down, dropped off Harry Stein near
Speaker 2: Vivangordn's apartment. Then they drove up back to the meeting spot.
Speaker 2: Harry Stein goes to Viving Gordon's apartment, tells her a story.
Speaker 2: He says, there's this guy Greenie who has these uncut
Speaker 2: diamonds that he's trying to unload. I want to take
Speaker 2: them from him and you can, you know, get part
Speaker 2: of that loot. So the plan is that he tells
Speaker 2: Vivin Gordon she's going to talk up this Greenberg and
Speaker 2: while he's not paying attention, Stein will jump him and
Speaker 2: take the diamonds, so it was pretty far fit story.
Speaker 2: It was supposed to be like a quarter a million,
Speaker 2: which was more money than Harry Stein certainly had ever
Speaker 2: had any access to. But Viving Gordon was desperate for
Speaker 2: money at this point. You know, she'd written in her
Speaker 2: diaries she'd written stony meaning Stony broke. So she went
Speaker 2: with him. They went up to the spot, This is
Speaker 2: according to Schlytton's confession, and you know she got into
Speaker 2: the car and started flirting with Greenberg, and then Stein
Speaker 2: grabbed a rope and pulled it around her neck.
Speaker 1: And this is all over the money that she loaned
Speaker 1: them for the Norway watched robbery, which they didn't spend
Speaker 1: the money, right or did they spend the money, and
Speaker 1: then then they didn't have anything?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had. They tooled around Europe looking for some
Speaker 2: other gigs. So they had spent the money. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't all about the money. According to Schlitten, it was Radloff,
Speaker 2: John Radeloff, the Brooklyn lawyer who had hired Stein in
Speaker 2: Greenberg to pump off Viaving Gordon. And what was his motivation, Well,
Speaker 2: he had many He controlled some of her investments, so
Speaker 2: he had financial motive she had told his wife about
Speaker 2: their affair. I think probably most likely was he knew
Speaker 2: all about her testifying with the Seaberry Commission, and I
Speaker 2: think he was worried that she was going to talk
Speaker 2: about their criminal dealings, so this was his way of
Speaker 2: silencing her.
Speaker 1: So what ultimately happens with this case, are these people
Speaker 1: convicted of her murder?
Speaker 2: Not convicted? They hire well Stein doesn't have any money,
Speaker 2: but there's a very hot lawyer. Samuel Leebowitz famously defended
Speaker 2: the Scottsboro Boys a year or two after this was
Speaker 2: a famous case down in Mississippi. He was a very
Speaker 2: good lawyer. He was also a publicity hound, and he
Speaker 2: took on this case because it was such a huge
Speaker 2: case and he believed it would, you know, boost his
Speaker 2: fame outside of New York, which indeed did, and he
Speaker 2: played off of the suspicions that everyone had. You know,
Speaker 2: he said, you know, the cops clearly did this. You know,
Speaker 2: they set up Hart Harry Stein's at Patsy. They're trying
Speaker 2: to cover up what they did. You know. He was
Speaker 2: very persuasive, very convincing, and at this point, you know,
Speaker 2: the reputation of the New York Police was terrible. They
Speaker 2: were doing a lot of criminal, corrupt activities, so no
Speaker 2: one trusted them, and Leebwitz was able to convince the
Speaker 2: jury that Stein didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Nobody paid the price for this.
Speaker 2: Case is technically still open.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, what is the lesson here for for you?
Speaker 1: What do you take away from this book? Just about
Speaker 1: society in general, not even specifically about the case or
Speaker 1: about this woman Vivian Gordon.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, I think what this story brings to me is
Speaker 2: this sense of accountability. That without accountability, whether it's you know,
Speaker 2: the mayor, whether it's cops, whether it's a building inspector,
Speaker 2: without that, things can quickly turn towards corruption, and that
Speaker 2: that corruption is not just money. It's not just like, oh,
Speaker 2: they get kickbacks, and you know from the city coffers,
Speaker 2: you know there are real victims here, and you know
Speaker 2: we need that accountability at all times, at city government,
Speaker 2: state government, federal government, you know, to protect all of us.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and Don't Forget There are
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Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
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