| |||
Summertime in the BelgradesContentsfor Printing
Article Summaries |
New Findings On Crater EruptHe was known as having a chauffeured mahogany speedboat, a wife who was a former Siegfried Follies Girl, and an unpretentious summer camp on an unnamed cove on Great Pond. His neighbors included a traditional fishing camp, Woodland Camps, and a mere handful of other property owners from away who knew he wanted the same peace and privacy that had prompted them to seek out the Belgrades. Like most summer residents in the 1920's, Judge Joseph Force Crater spent long stretches of time on the lake; his wife spent the entire summer there, perhaps to retreat from New York City, perhaps because her sister, also reputed to be former Siegfried Follies Girl summered in her own camp not far up the shore. Crater was appointed a state judge in 1930 by then New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He orbited in the company of the politically corrupt Tammany Hall, which was being taken on by FDR. The judge left Belgrade suddenly one day and was last seen exiting a New York City restaurant and getting into a taxi on August 6, 1930. He disappeared into a maze of speculation, rumor, and search — all to no avail. Over the years Crater's Great Pond Camp was occupied by his wife and her relatives and has subsequently changed hands only a few times. With time the traditional ice house became used as a woodshed, the kitchen building was put on a foundation and converted to a guest house, and the main camp has been subjected to some upkeep alterations. The gazebo over the shorefront remains as Crater left it. Periodically, the Crater legend is revived locally when writers and news-seekers visit the area to review his story, particularly his potential "burial" in one of the Belgrade lakes. Nationally, however, Crater has endured as a buzz word for mysterious and unsolved disappearances. "Pulling a Crater" has become slang for a traceless disappearance. In a long history of thousands of purported clues, a new one has now surfaced; a letter left by 91-year-old Stella Fenucci-Good of Bellerose, Queens, New York, to be opened following her death on April 2, 2005. According to a write-up in the New York Post on August 19 by Larry Celona, Lorena Mongeli and Marsha Kranes, the contents of the letter suggest that Crater was killed by a city cop and his cab-driver brother and buried under the boardwalk in Coney Island. The letter allegedly claims that Ferrucci-Good's late husband, Robert Good, along with NYPD cop Charles Burns, and the cop's cabby brother, Frank Burns, were responsible for Crater's death. Officer Burns did have suspicious connections with the mob during that period; the letter allegedly claims he was guarding Murder Inc. killer Abe "Kid Twist" Reles when Reles somehow plummeted to his death from the sixth-floor window of a Coney Island hotel in 1941 — just hours before he was due to rat out mob boss Albert Anastasia. According to the "Post" article, police sources have confirmed that five bodies were found in the boardwalk location, now the site of the New York Aquarium, in the mid-fifties and that the NYPD Cold Case Squad is investigating the latest Crater clues. One Belgrade summer resident who remembers Judge Crater is 89-year-old Esther Pierce, who has spent her lifetime just down the shore from Crater's camp. As a young girl, Esther was occasionally invited on Crater outings as a companion for his niece. She especially remembers how the bereaved Mrs. Crater would visit her mother and sob in grief long after his disappearance. If the letter left behind by Stella Fenucci-Good can't be substantiated, it might be interesting to do a search on her. She was only fourteen at the time of Crater's disappearance. When did she link up with Good (who passed away in 1975), when was the letter written, and what was either of the couple's relationship with the Burns brothers? The letter was apparently found in a metal box, which, the article says, also contained yellowed clippings about Crater's disappearance, with scribbled notations in the margins. By whom and what did they say? Judge Crater may have gone away, but the mystery of his disappearance lingers. | ||