# Judge Crater **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 20, 2013, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/judge-crater/669297 "2013-09-20T11:49:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Hottius\_Maximus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hottius\_Maximus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hottius_Maximus)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/judge-crater/669297/1 "2013-09-20T11:49:55Z")
Not too many years ago it was reported that an elderly woman died and had a note sealed in an envelope to be opened upon her death. Supposedly the note gave details about what really happened to Judge Crater: that he was allegedly murdered by her cop husband and another fellow (presumable a phony taxi driver) with all the details, including the motive as well as the location of the body. Has anything more ever been reported on this? It appears that the Judge Crater case was the “Jimmy Hoffa Case” of its time. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/judge-crater/669297/2 "2013-09-20T12:33:01Z")
A quick google search found this article, among 1,790,000 others, which mentions the case: [Judge Crater Abruptly Appears, at Least in Public Consciousness](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/20/nyregion/20crater.html?_r=0), New York Times, August 20, 2005. > [@](#): > > But the death of a 91-year-old woman in Bellerose, Queens, this year, and notes she left to be read by her family upon her death, prompted New York City police detectives to retrieve the file and begin reinvestigating the mysterious disappearance as a murder, one perhaps authored by a city police officer and his cabdriver brother, both now dead. > > \< . . . \> > > The woman, Stella Ferrucci-Good, who died in early April, wrote that her husband had told her that he learned over drinks with one or both of the brothers that they, along with several other men, had killed the judge and buried him under the Coney Island Boardwalk in Brooklyn. I don’t see any record that he was ever found there, then or since. ETA: ISTM there was another case recently where they dug up somebody’s driveway because some clue turned up, but it might have been about Hoffa instead. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/judge-crater/669297/3 "2013-09-20T12:39:24Z")
The details in the envelope didn’t lead anywhere, leading to a lot of doubt about the woman’s entire story. Here’s what wikipedia has to say about it: > [@](#): > > On August 19, 2005, authorities revealed that they had received notes left by Stella Ferrucci-Good, who died at age 91. The writings identified a location near West Eighth Street in Coney Island, Brooklyn, at the current site of the New York Aquarium, where the woman claimed the judge was buried under the boardwalk. Moreover, the notes identified Crater’s killers as NYPD officers Charles Burns (also bodyguard of Abe Reles of Murder, Inc.) and Burns’s brother Frank, a cab driver.[35][36] > > Police reported that no records had been found to indicate that skeletal remains were discovered at that site when it was excavated in the 1950s.[35] Richard J. Tofel, the author of Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater and the New York He Left Behind, expressed skepticism of Ferrucci-Good’s account.[35] From here: [Joseph Force Crater - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Force_Crater)