Charles Becker (1912, 1914)

The People of the State of New York v. Charles Becker 

On 16 July 1912 several gunmen shot and killed Herman Rosenthal, the owner of a gambling house, as he stepped outside the Hotel Metropole on 43rd Street near Times Square.

Earlier that month Rosenthal, angry that police had raided his gambling house, had started to identify to reporters at the New York World those senior police officials who had extorted money from him in exchange for protection from police raids.

On July 29, 1912 detectives from the District Attorney’s Office arrested a police lieutenant, Charles Becker, for the murder of Rosenthal. The jury convicted Becker on the charge of first-degree murder but the verdict was overturned on appeal. Becker was convicted at a second trial in 1914. He was executed in Sing Sing prison on July 3, 1915.

Source: Mike Dash, Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century (New York: Broadway Books, 2008)