Conville & Walsh

Nearly five million men and women have served the United States of America as police officers. Only one has been executed for murder.

In 1912, Charley Becker was the most admired policeman in New York, cleaning up an area of Manhattan famed for the gambling, whoring and drinking that went on after dark. Everyone called it the Tenderloin: the most glamorous, notorious square mile on Earth.

Then, on 16 July 1912, a gambler named Herman Rosenthal was shot dead. For the police it was the result of a gamblers’ dispute. But New York’s District Attorney thought differently, and Becker himself was charged with ordering the murder.

His arrest transformed the Rosenthal affair into the most sensational murder case New York had seen. It emerged that Becker had led a double life. In theory, he was the pillar of the law. In practice, he had been thoroughly corrupt. By the time the case came to court, New York newspaper readers knew all about Charley Becker – and the corruption that riddled New York City.

They also knew that Rosenthal was shot because he was going to talk. What they didn’t know, and the jury never heard, was that he had been killed by his fellow gamblers, terrified that Rosenthal would ruin them. Becker was a fall-guy, a man so corrupt no one would ever believe him.

This is the story of ‘the crookedest cop who ever stood behind a shield’ – and of the raucous, gaudy, utterly corrupt city that made him.