Ever since the murder 13 months ago of Arnold Rothstein, one of its most amiable gambler-racketeers (TIME, Dec. 24). Manhattan has been kept acutely Rothstein-conscious. Last week, when the State's sole suspect in hand—burly, big-jawed Gambler George A. McManus—was acquitted, the Rothstein spotlight seemed likely to flicker out, leaving another famed Manhattan murder in unsolved darkness.
For weeks after the murder the police dawdled over clues, questioned suspects, released them. Mayor James John Walker, fretted by his police department's impotence, fearing a political backlash, released Joseph A. Warren as Police Commissioner and installed Grover Aloysius Whalen, dapper manager of the John Wanamaker department store.
A yellow-jacketed book, In the Reign of Rothstein, appeared. Rothstein—Mathematician of Crime was published serially in a New York daily. Throughout the autumnal mayoralty campaign, candidates aspiring to Mayor Walker's desk filled the newspapers with accusations that Tammany Hall was afraid to prosecute the Rothstein case because Tammany men were too intimately connected with Rothstein's world.
The State's attorneys outlined their case against Gambler McManus. He had lost money to Rothstein at poker. Later he had taken a room at the Park Central Hotel, ordered whiskey, summoned Rothstein by telephone. Rothstein was seen staggering away from the room clutching his belly, was found at the servants' entrance of the hotel with a fatal bullet wound in his groin. He refused to name his assailant. An automatic pistol was picked up on the street under McManus' window, in the screen of which was torn a big hole.
The State's witnesses were evasive. Gamblers Alvin C. Thomas ("Titanic Thompson") and Nathan ("Nigger Nate") Raymond, describing a $300,000 stud poker game, said that McManus was a "cheerful loser." Bridget Farry, hotel chambermaid, who went to court in an emerald dress with a green ribbon in her hair, silver stockings and gilt shoes, refused to identify McManus. The prosecution could not connect McManus with the battered automatic, could not establish a motive why he should shoot Rothstein for owing him money.
The defense did not even need to call its witnesses. As soon as the sketchy pleas of the prosecution had been presented. Judge Charles C. Nott Jr. directed the jury to acquit the prisoner.
¶Defendant McManus, free on light bail while court was recessed, went to a Thanksgiving Day football game in Manhattan. Robbers entered his Riverside Drive apartment, stole $8,000 worth of jewelry and clothing.
¶A spectator at the trial was the Lord Bishop of Aberdeen, clad in black knee breeches, black gaiters. Another spectator: Edgar Wallace of England, author of many crime books, who said: "It is an open secret in New York that Rothstein was killed by a 'hophead' [narcotics addict] whom he owed an insignificant sum."