true-crime

Fascinating Politics

The Strange Case of Edward Livernash


Recently, a major case in which guilt or innocence hinges on a person’s state of mind is the Lindsay Clancy case. Given this and the upcoming election, it brings to mind the story of the man who won a Congressional seat in San Francisco in 1902, Edward Livernash (1866-1938). He had defeated incumbent Republican Julius Kahn, the one and only time Kahn would lose a Congressional election. Not only would you not read a sentence like this today, you also would not have expected Livernash to reach Congress, especially when you consider his story.

Brilliant…But Peculiar

Livernash was an interesting combination, in that he possessed both brilliance and touches of madness. At 16, he established a successful newspaper and at 21 he passed the bar exam. By the time of his marriage at 24 to Jessie Overton, daughter of Judge A.P. Overton, he was the editor of the Healdsburg Enterprise. Livernash was also an active Democrat which would help his career later on.

In June 1891, Livernash purchased the Livermore Herald from W.P. Bartlett, but only three months later his troubles began when its office burned to the ground, a serious financial blow to him. However, he was able to continue publishing the paper by entering a contract with a printer in Oakland (Santa Rosa History, 2022). He also had been getting help from Dr. John W. Robertson, owner of the Livermore Sanitarium, for insomnia. On the day of the fire, he was spotted by a police sergeant in San Francisco waiting to board a ferry, dressed as a black woman with a veil. Said the sergeant, “You are a man, sir, masquerading in female attire” and after Livernash responded in an unconvincing feminine impression, “How dare you attempt to insult me, Mr. Officer? I am a lady, if I am black”, the sergeant again said “You are a man…it is against the law for one of your sex to appear in public in petticoats. I shall have to take you in” and upon grabbing the veil, Livernash was revealed with black grease paint (Santa Rosa History, 2022).

San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle illustrations of the incident.

When asked his name, Livernash gave the alias “George Jones”. Once the police searched his satchel, they found some highly suspicious items. Recounted the San Francisco Chronicle, “Nothing of any importance was found about the prisoner’s person but the opening of the satchel created a sensation. First was fished out a pound bottle of chloroform which had not been opened. Next were produced two one-pound bottles labeled prussic acid, likewise unopened…By this time the police were genuinely interested, and pressed Jones for explanations. But he had nothing to say” (Santa Rosa History, 2022). Livernash did indeed later have things to say about what he had on him. He claimed the chloroform was for his insomnia and that his disguise was to play a prank, although he would not divulge on who he was going to play the prank. Livernash later said it was to be a prank on his wife. After having Dr. Robertson back up his defense that he was under hypnosis (caused by himself) at the time, he was convicted of a misdemeanor and fined.

Criminal Escalation

Just one month later, he made contact with Darius Ethridge, a wealthy 71-year-old bachelor with no known heirs, and visited him at his property in Cloverdale under the pretense that he was staying in town for the night and wanted to conduct a business deal, namely, the selling of his livery stable. Livernash brought a gift of a bottle of wine and told him that his father-in-law and others would be coming around later to buy his livery stable and then went to his hotel. However, Livernash returned to the property at 2 AM. After waking him, he saw pictures of other family members who Etheridge identified as his niece and nephew, with him commenting, “I thought you had no relatives” (Elliott). This revelation seemed to upset his plans. After putting $150 on the table for an initial payment for the livery stable and removing it, he pointed two revolvers at him, and demanded, “Make out your will in my favor or I will kill you, God damn you!” (Elliott). After Ethridge refused, He shot at him seven times, with four bullets hitting his face. Amazingly, the man survived with minor injuries and was able to flee to his physician neighbor’s house, where he got treated. The wine, it turns out, had been poisoned with prussic acid, but Ethridge had not opened the bottle.

On his arrest by a marshal, Livernash proclaimed, “I am the king of Siam” and claimed to have murdered several people, including shooting a judge 43 times (Elliott). After being taken to court for a sanity hearing, he was committed to the Napa asylum. However, given his connections, the local Santa Rosa newspaper, a Democratic paper, gave the case incredibly gentle coverage (Elliott). In his first trial, Livernash claimed in his defense that he was a somnambulist and thus had no idea what he was doing while attempting murder. The case resulted in a hung jury, with eight voting to convict and four voting to acquit. In his second trial, Livernash dropped the somnambulist defense and instead cited a history of insanity in his family and that he had been in a state of insanity while attempting murder. He managed to get Congressman Thomas J. Geary as a character witness, and the jury acquitted him! Author Jeff Elliott (2021), examining the case, concluded that Livernash was a strange and brilliant man, but a rational man who faked somnambulism and insanity to get out of trouble for his criminal activities. Indeed, before the trial Livernash attempted to bribe a constable to let him sneak back to the scene of the crime (Elliott).

The Rest of the Story

Livernash resumed his journalistic and political activities after the trial, being hired by the San Francisco Examiner and in 1897 he was sent by the paper to the Klondike region of Canada to report on the gold rush with poet Joaquin Miller. There, he befriended and allied himself with the laborers, who appointed him as their representative to petition the government to modify labor laws.

In 1902, Livernash ran for Congress to represent San Francisco, running on both the Democratic and Union Labor tickets with strong support from labor unions and in support of continuing Chinese exclusion. That year, both Republicans representing the San Francisco area, Kahn and Eugene Loud, lost reelection. The Republicans would not be out long, with Kahn defeating Livernash by 26 points in 1904 and Everis Hayes winning back the other seat. Per DW-Nominate, Livernash was one of the least liberal Democrats in the House, his score being a -0.044. One example of him being less liberal than other Democrats was being one of five Democratic votes against an amendment on February 9, 1905, strengthening the railroad rate setting powers of the Interstate Commission. Livernash also was one of eight Democrats to vote for the Republican appropriations bill passed on April 26, 1904, under the reign of famously conservative Speaker Joe Cannon (R-Ill.). After his time in Congress, Livernash continued his career in journalism, divorced his wife, and resided in France from 1909 to 1912. While in France, he discovered that he was descended from nobility and that he was legitimately a Count. He then changed his name to Edward James de Nivernais, the French spelling of his last name. For the remainder of his life he engaged in study and literary pursuits, dying in Agnew (now part of Santa Clara), California, on June 1, 1938.

References

Elliott, J. (2021, January 10). The Murderous Somnambulist. Santa Rosa History.

Retrieved from

http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/2021/01/the-murderous-somnambulist/

Livernash, Edward James. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/5714/edward-james-livernash

Such a Very Strange Man. (2022, January 20). Santa Rosa History.

Retrieved from

http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/category/livernash/

The Career of Edward Livernash, Livermore Herald Editor. (2009, May/June). Livermore Heritage Guild.

Retrieved from

https://www.lhg.org/Documents/Newsletters/News2006-2009/2009May.pdf

Fascinating Politics

Was the Only Cop Sent to the Electric Chair in U.S. History for Crimes in Office Framed?

There are people out there, who I think are fools and communists, who subscribe to “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards) and would trust gangsters over cops. I usually try not to be so biased in writing, but I have a strong contempt for this viewpoint, and it is my impression that it comes from people who are both strongly left and have an overdeveloped antipathy for hypocrisy. No, I don’t like hypocrisy either, but I’d take flawed cops over flawed gangsters any day of the week. Subscribers to the ACAB view may be pleased to hear of the case of Lieutenant Charles Becker of the NYPD, who was executed in 1915 for having allegedly masterminded a murder of his partner in crime. However, there have been questions regarding his guilt. Is it possible that the only officer known to have been executed for crimes as an officer was framed?

NYPD Lieutenant Charles Becker (1870-1915)

Like much of the NYPD of the time, Lt. Becker was no saint. While many NYPD officers looked the other way with illegal establishments, Becker had a partner in illicit business in Herman “Beansie” Rosenthal, who established an illegal casino in 1912. Only a month after Rosenthal’s casino opened, Becker’s men raided the establishment, an effort to please the new reformer police commissioner, Rhinelander Waldo. Rosenthal was furious over this betrayal and thus he went public, giving reporter Herbert Bayard Swope the story that Becker held a mortgage over the property and got 20% of the profits from this establishment, and he was scheduled to testify in court on this matter on July 16th. However, only hours before, he was gunned down by four gangsters known as Lefty Louie, Whitey Lewis, Dago Frank and Gyp the Blood (Crime Files). Although Becker had a formidable defense counsel, including former Congressman and Winston Churchill mentor W. Bourke Cockran, the timing of the murder as well as Becker having a strong motive and means to pull off this hit plus testimony from three prisoners resulted in Lt. Becker being executed by electric chair on July 30, 1915, after being convicted of masterminding a hit on ol’ Beansie. Although Becker is not a sympathetic figure as a dirty cop, there have been some doubts surrounding his guilt.

The Case For Becker’s Innocence

Although Becker, as noted, was not a saint, a murderer he may not have been. There were some significant issues regarding Becker’s trial. There was, for instance, only one witness to Becker allegedly conspiring, a waiter who claimed to have overheard him with the conspirators. Furthermore, the three prisoners had very strong motive to testify against Becker; they were trying to save themselves from the electric chair. There was also no firm tie ever established between Becker and the four gangsters who were also executed for their role. Also, Becker’s first trial was overturned by the court of appeals for being “shockingly against the weight of evidence” (Snow). The judge in the case was also intensely biased against Becker and it showed in the trial, thus the overturning. However, a second trial resulted in conviction. In 1927, former police reporter Henry H. Klein wrote a book that claimed that Becker was the victim of a conspiracy between politicians and gamblers. He wrote, “It was primarily to save their own lives that Rose, Webber and Vallon, with the aid of Schepps, ‘framed’ Becker, and it was only because of the anxiety of certain politicians to keep their names out of the gambling scandal that the frame-up succeeded. Becker, though an intelligent man was no mental match for either the gamblers or the politicians. No sooner were Rose and Vallon arrested than the job of keeping names out of the scandal and out of the trial was put up to (the late) ‘Big Tom Foley, and though many statements were issued from the District Attorney’s office, none of them, so far as the writer can learn, contained the names of any politicians or any important gamblers” (The New York Times). Other authors later wrote accounts alleging that Becker had been framed, including Andy Logan’s Against the Evidence (1970) and Mike Dash’s Satan’s Circus (2006). Furthermore, Becker was far from the only person who wanted “Beansie” dead for spilling his guts. Indeed, the four gangsters who shot him were normally paid by mobster Jack Zelig (Crime Files). Zelig was going to testify for the prosecution, but he was murdered by another gangster before this could happen, which although the story was that it was a financial beef between them, suspicion fell once again on Becker, but he was not prosecuted. Becker was, per this narrative, a convenient individual to sacrifice in the name of police reform, the careers of certain political actors, and to further the political career of the crusading prosecutor, Charles S. Whitman, who would be elected governor in 1914 and who signed off on Becker’s execution. The best case for Becker frankly is that many people had the motive and means to place a hit on “Beansie”.

The Case for Becker’s Guilt

As an officer, Becker went hard into an “I am the law” sort of policing. Historian Richard Snow (1978) described him as “a ruthless believer in the efficacy of the nightstick”, frequently using brutality in the course of his duties, thus murder may have also been in his repertoire. The narrative of the prosecution against Becker is that through gambler “Bald Jack” Rose he got gangster Jack Zelig to supply four gangsters to take out Rosenthal. However, Zelig denied that he agreed to supply the four gangsters (Levine). Furthermore, there was some damaging testimony against him from Rose, who testified that Becker had said to him, “It was a pleasing sight to me to see that squealing Jew lying there and … I would [like to] have cut out his tongue and hung it on the Times Building as a warning to future squealers” (Snow). Worse yet, a witness presumably for the defense, Jewish gambler Morris Luban, testified that he, Rose, and Becker had been at a Turkish bathhouse the week before the murder. Luban said that he heard Becker say that if Rose and his gang didn’t take out Rosenthal, that he’d have to do so himself (Forward). And, as noted before, Becker had strong motive to want to have Rosenthal killed and quick, as he was due to testify against him when he was murdered. Becker had the means and the motive for the crime.

So…was Lieutenant Becker framed? I can’t say I’m sure, and this is simply because here were many people who had reason to want Rosenthal dead for snitching to the press and who could have hired the four colorfully nicknamed gangsters to take him out. Becker’s widow, for one, believed that he was framed for the murder, and she had inscribed on his headstone:

Charles Becker

Murdered July 30,1915

By Governor Whitman

References

Klein’s Book Calls Becker Innocent. (1927, April 25). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Levine, A. (2023, April 30). The Hectic, Violent, and Relatively Short Life of Big Jack Zelig. Tablet Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/death-gangster-big-jack-zelig-lower-east-side

Looking Back. (2012, October 12). Forward.

Retrieved from

https://forward.com/culture/163912/looking-back-october-12-2012

Roberts, S. (2012, July 15). 100 Years After a Murder, Questions About a Police Officer’s Guilt. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

https://archive.nytimes.com/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/100-years-after-a-murder-questions-about-a-police-officers-guilt

Snow, R.F. (1978, December). Charles Becker. American Heritage, 30(1).

Retrieved from

https://www.americanheritage.com/charles-becker

The Gambler, the Policeman, and a killer named Gyp the Blood. Crime Files.

Retrieved from

The Gambler, the Policeman, and a killer named Gyp the Blood