Controversy
Several later authors, beginning with Henry Klein in 1927, have suggested that Becker was wrongly convicted. According to this theory, Becker and his fellow officers had simply stood back and allowed "the street" to "take care of" Rosenthal, knowing that his cooperation would put a huge target on his back. Allegedly, District Attorney Whitman then manipulated the evidence to implicate the corrupt Lieutenant, knowing that a guilty verdict for Becker would help his own political aspirations.
The Becker-Rosenthal murder is the subject of Michael Bookman's God's Rat: Jewish Mafia on the Lower East Side and Mike Dash's Satan's Circus. It also figures prominently in the 1999 novel Dreamland by Kevin Baker. A thinly fictionalized version of the murder is also described by mob boss Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Read more about this topic: Charles Becker
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
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