A Judge's Friends

Early in December a pretentious restaurant called the Roman Gardens in the borough of The Bronx, New York City, was the scene of a bounteous banquet. Guest of honor was handsome, thickset City Magistrate Albert H. Vitale, who had just returned from a vacation. With this vigorous representative of the Law there sat down seven men whose faces appear in Manhattan's rogues' gallery. There were also several other suspicious persons, a group of local businessmen, a police detective, and a swart gentleman called Ciro Terranova alias Morello, commonly known as the "Artichoke King,"* and believed to possess a limousine equipped with bullet-proof glass.

After Magistrate Vitale and friends had feasted, sung and speechified, there were footfalls on the stairs. Seven men entered the room and held up the crowd. One of the gunmen had a handkerchief over his face and carried two revolvers; the others worked with faces bare and bland. They acquired some $5,000 worth of cash and jewelry and several firearms. They met no resistance at all from Police Detective Arthur C. Johnson, an imposing fellow who had held that position for 17 years and thrice been recommended for bravery. His gun was one of those taken away by the hold-up men.

Police Detective Johnson was demoted to Patrolman and scheduled to be tried for conduct unbecoming an officer. It was at this trial, which began last week in New York under the personal supervision of dapper Police Commissioner Grover Aloysius Whalen, that the Bronx banquet began to seem an astonishing affair.

Patrolman Johnson testified that a few hours after the gunmen had escaped with their booty, Magistrate Vitale had called him into his office in the Tepicano Democratic Club nearby and there returned his revolver. He said he had asked the magistrate where he had procured the gun, where it had come from, and that the magistrate had replied: "I cannot tell you. . . I do not know."

Sensational evidence was provided by Inspector Joseph J. Donovan of the Bureau of Criminal Identification who declared that his subordinates had learned that the hold-up had been a fake. Alleged reason: Ciro Terranova had negotiated with a Chicago gunman to kill two famed gangsters, Frankie Marlow, who was found with three shots through his head near a Flushing, L. I., cemetery (TIME, July 8) and Frankie Yale, who was riddled while automobile driving in Brooklyn (TIME. July 9, 1928). Terranova had signed a contract agreeing to pay $20,000 for the two killings. He had delivered $5,000, but because he had withheld the rest, the killer had threatened to turn the contract over to the police. Whereupon Terranova had arranged to meet the killer at the Bronx-banquet for a settlement, had obtained the contract by means of the fake robbery.

This lurid hypothesis was dismissed by District Attorney McGeehan of The Bronx with the remark: "I see no purpose to be served in summoning Terranova." Mr. Terranova himself, interviewed in his Spanish mansion, extensively decorated with stuffed birds, in Pelham Manor, N. Y., denied that he was at the dinner, stated that there is nothing unusual about his limousine.

Meanwhile Police Commissioner Whalen entrained for Chicago where Police Commissioner William F. Russell exhibited the city's traffic situation and they discussed ballistics (study of bullets, firearms, etc.) as an aid to crime detection. And the New York Bar Association prepared to investigate the career of Magistrate Vitale. They had secured a folder inscribed with his name which was found among the records of the murdered gambler Arnold Rothstein (TIME, Dec. 24, 1928). Magistrate Vitale, finding himself enmeshed in a case which involved three of the most unsavory names in recent New York history--Marlow, Yale, Rothstein--kept his peace.

*Artichokes in the U. S., grown chiefly in California, are rare vegetables. Mr. Terranova is said to control a sales network virtually amounting to an artichoke monopoly in Manhattan markets.

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