Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode, author Michael Wolraich and Gary discuss his book, The Bishop and the Buterfly. This is about the murder of Vivian Gordon, a prostitute connected to wealthy men, and Prohibition-era organized crime figures like Arnold Rothstein, Legs Diamond, Dutch Schultz, and others. The author explains the corruption within the government and political system, highlighting the investigation’s challenges and media coverage. We learned the investigators uncovered a collection of diaries with incriminating information about gangsters, leading to demands for an anti-corruption investigation. The climax occurs during a meeting between Mayor Jimmy Walker, investigator Samuel Seabury, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. We also touch on the history of New York City and Mayor LaGuardia’s efforts to clean up the city.

 

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Transcript

[0:00] Welcome all you wiretappers out there back here in the studio of Gangland Wire.

Retired intelligence unit detective Gary Jenkins coming from Kansas City.

And guys, I have Michael Wolraich here with us in the studio or on the Zoom.

And he has a book called The Bishop and the Butterfly. I’ll have links to how you buy that book in the show notes.

Here’s a picture of the cover. If you’re on YouTube, you’ll see that.

It’s a really interesting look at New York City. The son of the seamy underbelly and the corruption of New York City during the 1930s just come out of prohibition, really, and going into the Depression era during this time.

And there’s a prostitute named Vivian Gordon that has been murdered.

A good murder mystery always starts out with a body.

And so we start out with a body. Right, Michael?

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, she was, you know, they discovered her and they didn’t know who she was at first. Her body was found in a gully in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, which is a number.

It was a popular dumping ground for bodies in the 1930s, maybe still is.

Kind of describe, where did she fit in society? She was a prostitute and she was connected to the famous Polly Adler in some manner.

And that Manhattan at the time, especially in New York City, was a smaller town.

People knew each other. So how was she connected into that Simi underbelly, the mob and the rest of the people that were doing crimes?

[1:25] Well, she was much more than a prostitute. That’s what she was originally convicted for in 1923, although that conviction is a little dubious.

She claimed she was framed by her ex-husband who was seeking custody of her child, her eight-year-old child.

And she was arrested and sent to the Bedford Reformatory upstate.

And after that experience, she’s bitter, bitter. She’s lost her daughter.

She’s branded as a prostitute. Then she turned to a life of crime.

And she did some prostitution, but she was much more than that.

She was best known for seducing wealthy men, wealthy New Yorkers, prominent businessmen, some politicians, and often blackmailing them as well, or blackmailing them after the affair was over.

She ran stock frauds. she ran a call girl service.

She did work for Polly Adler as a high-end prostitute sometimes, but they had a falling out in the late 1920s that the journalist reported that there was ...