When he was arrested in September 1950, Brooklyn's swart, smart Big Bookie Harry Gross lost a gambling empire but gained a fearsome and ironic political power. He used it for all it was worth. By talking his head off before a grand jury about cop-bribing during Mayor Bill O'Dwyer's regime, he exploded the biggest New York corruption scandal since the days of Jimmie Walker. Then, after a total of 77 blue-coats had been named as defendants or coconspirators, Gross managed, with consummate gall, to spring them all.
His method was simple. Despite the tears of Brooklyn District Attorney Miles F. McDonald and shrieks of rage from Brooklyn Judge Samuel S. Leibowitz— who threatened to send Gross to jail "for a thousand years"—he just clammed up on the witness stand. Having brought the cops to trial en masse, the prosecution was barred by laws against double jeopardy from trying to bring them to book again. Gross went off, bloody but unbowed, to serve out twelve years in City Prison.
Uninhibited Encore. Last week, called as a witness at a departmental trial of five of the policemen (held only to determine whether they are to be discharged from the force and stripped of pension rights), Gross began to sing again. In doing so, he not only cast new embarrassment upon O'Dwyer, but managed to question the political purity of his archfoe, the crusading Brooklyn D.A.
He did so by naming four of O'Dwyer's high police officials (all now retired) who had never been publicly accused in connection with the gambling scandal. Witness Gross testified that he had not only bribed Chief Inspector August W. Flath, Seventh Deputy Police Commissioner Frank C. Bals, onetime head of a special "mayor's squad," and Chief of Detectives William T. Whalen, but also former Police Commissioner William P. O'Brien, a man of whom O'Dwyer said in 1950: "I believe Bill O'Brien is as honest a man as I have ever known."
When Gross was asked why these big shots had not been named in the indictment last year, he answered: "To quote Judge Leibowitz, maybe some money changed hands." He swore he had testified about all of them before the grand jury, and had later asked an assistant D.A. if the high police officials were being left alone out of favoritism. He had been told: "Don't be a lawyer."
Before he had done for the week, Gross mentioned nearly 200 different policemen, and painted a shocking and fascinating picture of the methods by which he virtually controlled whole police divisions in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens at the peak of his career. During 1947, '48 and '49, he poured out $1,000,000 annually in graft and gifts.