“VICE” RACKET IN U.S.A.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18823, 11 March 1931, Page 9

“VICE” RACKET IN U.S.A.

Cause of Tragic Deaths. CITY AUTHORITIES AROUSED. United Press Association—By Klectrie Telegraph—Copyright NEW YORK, March 8. The murder of Mrs Vivian Gordon, who was found strangled in Van Courtland Park, and the suicide of her daughter, both of which were connected with the investigation into the conduct of officials alleged to be running the so-called “vice racket,” continues to arouse increasing interest owing to the further sensational developments. To-day guests at the Lincoln Hotel were terrified when the brother of the strangled woman went mad and ran about the building screaming about the murder and his niece’s suicide. The guests fled. The police arrived to find the house detectives exhausted with trying to control the maniac, who was finally removed unconscious to Bellevue Hospital. The Governor of New York State, Mr Franklin Roosevelt, announced that he would hold an immediate investigation into the charges filed by the citizens, who were thoroughly aroused. It is alleged that New York’s District Attorney, who is handing the vice investigations, is “incompetent.” The Mayor. Mr James J. Walker, on whom groups of citizens and the newspapers are calling to assume the leadership and control of matters, states that the allegations have shocked him “more or less.” He announced that he is leaving for a month’s vacation in California.

Investigations :'nto the city’s vice conditions reached a pitiable climax last week with the suicide by gas of a sixteen-year-old daughter of a woman known as Vivian Gordon, who herself was found strangled in Van Courtland Park a few days before. Gordon was found dead after she had told the authorities that she would appear in the Courts and testify against policemen who, she alleged, had “railroaded” her to gaol on false morality charges. The girl, who was living with her father and stepmother, left the following note in her diary: "I can’t face the world any longer. I am going to end it all.” Civic leaders of New York, shocked beyond measure by the revelations which are being made daily of widespread and systematic corruption in the city’s police force and magistrates’ courts, are urging Governor Roosevelt to order a city-wide invest’gation to discover to what depths of political and judicial iniquity New York’s municipal government has sunk, wrote the New York correspondent of the “Daily Express” recently. The most intense ind gnation has been aroused by the revelations concerning the “vice racket,” by means of which scores upon scores of innocent women have been trapped into compromising situations toy the paid agents of the police, and then compelled to face the alternatives of paying heavily to escape prosecution or of being sentenced to fines and imprisonment on charges of soliciting. Police Commissioner E. F. Mulrooney declared that at least twenty-seven members of the Police Force must be placed on trial if allegations which have been made can be corroborated, and Mr Charles C. Burlingham, president of the New York Bar Association, declared that “something will happen in a few days.”