R. Marc Kantrowitz, The Daily Record Newswire
Upon returning from a business trip to Chicago, the man meekly explained to his wife that he had foolishly lost his wallet while away. He didn’t bother telling her that he hadn’t reported it to the police. They were, after all, the last people he wanted involved.
Some weeks later, a few men claiming to be from the police morals squad knocked on the man’s door and asked to speak with him privately. They showed him his wallet and told him that they knew what he was up to while he was on his trip. For a reasonable accommodation, he’d be able to buy the welcome silence of the police.
He paid. They always did.
The men weren’t from the police department. They were gangsters working a national scam. Their other cons weren’t as subtle as the one in Chicago.
In New York, for instance, the married and moneyed businessman picked up the “chicken,” a young man in his late teens or early 20s, and brought him back to his hotel room. After a brief period of getting comfortable, the “police” burst in, literally catching them in the act. After the chicken was told to scram, a price was paid to make the matter disappear.
It was happening all over the nation during the early 1960s: entrapping men who had engaged in the highly forbidden act of homosexuality. Those who were blackmailed had much to lose if they were exposed. The climate against them was a Siberian one. Shunned by society, they had no rights.
The victims included businessmen, television and movie stars, musicians, church and military leaders, academics and even the president of the American Medical Association, which at the time labeled homosexuality a deviant aberration.
And at the center of the operation, or seemingly so, was Edward “The Skull” Murphy.
Edward Murphy seemed destined to a life of crime, starting at the tender age of 9. After various unprovoked displays of mindless violence, he was sent away. Upon his release, he did his patriotic duty by enlisting in the Army in 1943. He served in Europe, returning to New York after the war ended.
He took advantage of his burly physique and threatening demeanor and entered the world of professional wrestling. His shaved head gave him an even more menacing look, resulting in the moniker “The Skull.” Murphy’s violence in the ring and his special death grip earned him the enmity of the wrestling crowd.
Seeking a more lucrative line of work, he teamed up with a gay friend and stole the gold that was delivered to dental offices for crowns. After more than 70 such heists, he was finally caught and, in 1947, given a 10-year prison sentence. Needless to say, his sentence was not reduced due to good behavior.
Upon his release, he put his criminal contacts to good use, finding work in a series of gay bars, which, not surprisingly, were owned by the Mob. Whenever there was a strong demand for an illegal activity, organized crime was there.
Since gays could not legally fraternize, they were relegated to dank and dingy “private bottle clubs” that served watered-down drinks in dirty glasses at hefty prices. Who were they to complain to? The police were not only openly hostile to their lifestyle, they were paid off to look the other way.
Murphy was in the middle of it all, selling stolen booze and cigarettes and running gay prostitution and drug rings from where he worked. An industrious criminal, he even moonlighted, finding work, oddly enough, as a house detective in a New York City hotel where he quickly set up a blackmailing scheme trapping the well-to-do who had engaged in homosexual acts.
Before long he branched out and, with the help of others, targeted more than a thousand men across the nation, extorting millions of dollars over the course of a decade.
The brazenness of their enterprise was mindboggling. One time they confronted a New Jersey congressman on Capitol Hill, who was soon on a plane back home, securing a hefty payoff. A surgeon was pulled out of surgery to make a payment.
Soon, though, the empire came crumbling down. Arrests were made. Murphy was charged with extortion, to which he ultimately pleaded guilty. Given his nefarious background, he was facing significant punishment. Many were understandably shocked, thus, when he was sentenced to five years’ probation.
How had Murphy dodged the lethal prison bullet? Was it due to the difficulty the feds had in securing witnesses? Or was it a far more basic reason? Murphy was a rat, an informant against the Mob and, as such, treated with the softest of kids gloves.
Or was it, as some have opined, that among those he was blackmailing was the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, who for years refused to even acknowledge that organized crime existed?
Whatever the truth, Murphy was never punished for his brash lawlessness.
Perhaps hoping to atone for his many past sins, The Skull went from sinner to saint, becoming an outspoken critic of both the Mob and police corruption. He served on a state crime commission and also worked with the mentally challenged, with whom he had an open and warm, if not loving, relationship.
In 1989, he died of AIDs.
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R. Marc Kantrowitz is an Appeals Court judge. He can be contacted at rmarckantrowitz@comcast.net. Lindsay Smith and Morgan Herrell assisted in the preliminary research of this column, which is based primarily on “Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution” by David Carter.
