The trial was over. Lucky had gone to prison. The prosecution still had on its hands some seventy women whom it had snatched away from lives of vice, and nearly all of whom, with a great show of sincerity, were expressing the desire to go forth and sin no more. The spirit of repentance and reform is contagious, and the House of Detention was alive with good intentions.
It was really a serious problem what to do with them. Dewey and his men did not want just to turn the girls loose on the streets, for in the course of five months they had become very good friends of these silly, weak, unsubstantial girls.
But these were not the only circumstances. Throughout the trial the defense had neglected no opportunity to smear the prosecutors with insinuations. Obviously efforts would be made by the underworld to make the girls recant their testimony and persuade them to make scurrilous charges against their recent guardians. When a lawyer is dealing with this type of witness he can’t be too careful.
Justice McCook undertook to handle both aspects of the situation. Before the girls were turned loose he had them brought in before him, one by one, put them under oath, and asked each of them whether she wanted to recant her testimony; whether she had any charges to make about being improperly treated. The girls all stood by their stories and were fulsome in their denials of all insinuations that anything scandalous or improper had occurred during their incarceration.
Justice McCook talked to each of them about her future, and in adjoining rooms he had gathered social service workers from agencies interested in this type of girl. He encouraged each of the girls to accept the assistance and advice of the appropriate religious or welfare group. Most of the girls did this.
The day the girls were released and given their accumulated witness fees resembled nothing so much as graduation day at a girls’ seminary. Some of them, we may be sure, went forth with sober resolve to lead new lives henceforth, and set about getting job!! for themselves. A good many of the others went straight across the street to the nearest bar, got themselves thoroughly ginned up and then went down to the Woolworth Building to try to get the boys to go out on a party. It was a tough job to get rid of them.
What has become of all the girls now nobody knows. It would be a pleasure to report that they all turned over a new leaf and became virtuous, useful members of the community. Some of them may have succeeded in permanently reshaping their lives, but not very many.
Bennie Spiller probably has as good information as anybody on what became of them.
After the trial Bennie, the combination’s shylock, made his peace with the prosecutor’s office. During the trial Bennie had made overtures to try to make a deal. He did that after Tommy Bull tipped him off that his hero, Little Davie, had him marked for slaughter. He had been deterred from going through with it when Davie got wind of his intention.
Bennie was kept in jail in New York City for two years and finally was given a suspended sentence by Justice McCook. Before going west to start a new life in a new community, Bennie took a walk around town to see some of his old acquaintances.
“You know,” said Bennie, “the girls are practically all back in the business. But they got wise to themselves. They are all madams now.”
The girls who had directly testified against Charlie Lucky had marked themselves out for possible revenge. They presented a special problem. All of them had been given repeated assurances of protection and of assistance in rehabilitating themselves.
When Nancy Presser and Thelma Jordan were brought in before Justice McCook to discuss the matter of their release, they were not at all in a hurry to be turned loose. They were being kept at the time under police guard in the Fifth Avenue Hotel.
“What are your plans, Nancy?” asked the judge.
“I don’t know what I am going to do. I am going to try to get a position with dresses or something like that,” said Nancy.
The judge suggested to Nancy that she talk things over with a priest, since she was a Catholic. She thought it might be a good idea.
“Are you anxious to get discharged or don’t you care?” asked the judge.
“Well, there is one thing,” said Nancy. “I am afraid.” “And the reason you don’t seek immediate discharge is before you get discharged you want some arrangements made that will protect your safety?”
“That is it.”
“And if that can be combined with getting you a job, that will be just what you want, is that it?”
“Yes,” said Nancy.
And she agreed that it would be a good idea for her to talk with the lady from the Catholic Charities.
“All right,” said the judge, “then I will say good-by to you, Nancy, and one of these days I will be signing your discharge. You have been of great service to the State and if you have nothing on your conscience I hope you will get back into a decent way of living. Do you want to?”
“I certainly do,” said Nancy. “I want to get out of it.”
One reason why Nancy was afraid was that a few days before this she and Thelma Jordan had received a telephone call from Red-haired Mary Morris, Thelma’s former roommate. Red-haired Mary was the girl friend of Johnnie Roberts, a gunman who had been Ralph Liguori’s partner, and Mary said she had been told that as soon as they were turned loose Nancy and Thelma were going to be knocked off.
The girls had reason to be scared. They said they would not be safe anywhere in America because Lucky’s organization went everywhere.
Harry Cole talked it over with Dewey and got permission to get together some private funds to send the two girls to Europe until things cooled off. After all, he had persuaded them to stick their necks out, and he had to stand by them.
Nancy and Thelma were shipped off to Europe on the S.S. Samaria about the middle of July. It is really a shame that we cannot give a play-by-play report of the two girls’ travels.
Each of them had her ticket and $200 cash, from funds privately contributed. They landed in England and they went to stay at the Hands Crescent Hotel at Knightsbridge and at the end of five days had spent $70 apiece. Then they moved over to the Regent Palace Hotel in Piccadilly Circus where they had been supposed to stay. It was cheaper there. But in a few weeks they were broke.
Nancy and Thelma had decided that they would reform. They were pretty near on the water wagon. Of course, they encountered men. One Englishman, when they were broke, lent them £7, or $35. But then they were very much disappointed in him. They even suspected he was trying to take advantage of two young girls in an improper way and didn’t appreciate how virtuous they were. After that they simply refused even to talk to him, except on the telephone.
They cabled for more money and Cole sent them some. But soon they were cabling for more.
About the middle of September Cole and Dewey decided that this thing might be getting a little bit out of hand. They cabled for the girls to come home; bought them tourist class tickets on the Berengaria.
Nancy was very mad about that. It was very funny, she said; they had been sent to Europe first class and now they were going back tourist class. They had been darlings before, said Nancy, but now—just look at how it was.
Nancy had been having a good time in England. She wrote a letter to her parents before she started home:
“I had a nice Birth day In Eng. received perfume. French by the way. I like It very much a few dozens of flowers and a nice birth day party plenty of wine and a few more gifts.
“Will tell you all about It when I see you and I hope It’s soon.
“Yesterday I went to the Windsor Castle. Saw all the old Buildings Where Henry the 8th lived and where the new King and his mother Queen Mary lives and all the Royalty. Its very old and very beautiful have more pictures will show you when I come home.
“P.S. I hope you like these pictures of the Castle.”
Nancy and Thelma were flat broke when they got back to New York early in October. They took a taxicab to the Woolworth Building and Thelma sat in it while Nancy went upstairs and got somebody to come down and pay the fare. Harry Cole gave them $10 and they went out and got a room in a hotel. They stayed in the Belleclaire Hotel on Broadway and then at the Monterey and every day they went downtown and told Harry Cole they were broke again and needed money to eat.
These girls didn’t have much sense about money. He wouldn’t give them more than $10 at a time because he knew it would go very fast. But even so, it was his own money he was giving them and he didn’t feel like undertaking the responsibility.
The girls said that they really wanted to get jobs and go to work. As a matter of fact, they seemed to be quite changed creatures from those who had been arrested months before. But plainly, the financial help had to stop. And plainly, something more had to be. done to help these girls get their new start in life.
Dewey got in touch with James Madison Blackwell, treasurer and attorney to a church mission society, an organization specializing in assisting young women who are in trouble. Ordinarily it steers clear of prostitutes, but in this case it made an exception.
The girls had a long talk with Harriet P. Scott, case supervisor.
“Both girls stated to me that they were in great terror of gang reprisals as a result of their testimony given in the Luciano trial,” recalled Miss Scott later. “Both said they were in fear of death or worse than that—torture, which they said they had seen demonstrated on other girls and they said that if they were caught by the gang and an attempt made to make them sign anything, they felt they would recant the testimony which they had given at the trial rather than undergo what they had seen other girls suffer. Both further stated that they had seen men whom they recognized as belonging to the gang hanging around their hotel, and that they feared bodily injury and murder if they did not recant. They reiterated that if they should fall into the hands of the old gang with whom they had previously associated, they would give in and sign anything lest they suffer the fate of other girls.”
“Believe me, I'd sign anything if I was tortured,” said Thelma to Marguerite Marsh, executive secretary of the mission.
The mission people sent the girls up to Kingston for a few days. It was hard to find a place to send the girls because, as they said, the racketeers had connections everywhere. Finally they agreed on Cincinnati and the girls went there.
The girls stayed in Cincinnati about a week, ran up a hotel bill, but didn’t find any job which seemed to suit them. The mission people gave the girls day-coach tickets on the railroad back to New York. Doubtless Nancy didn’t like that at all. Day-coach riding had never been her style.
When they got back they told Miss Scott that since they were in fear wherever they were sent, they believed New York City would be as safe as any place, especially since the cops in New York knew about them and probably would be more willing to protect them than the police elsewhere in case they needed protection.
Soon after this Red-haired Mary and Herman Liguori, brother of Ralph, got hold of the girls and started to talk to them. Dewey’s office saw no more of them.