1930 - Crime

Crime

A riot in the Ohio State Penitentiary at Columbus April 21 ends with 317 dead from burns and smoke inhalation after fires have been set in an escape plot; rescuers have tried in vain to reach the victims in their cells while troops subdued 2,000 men in the yard. The prison has held 4,300 prisoners in a facility designed to accommodate 1,500.

Judge Crater disappears August 6. Appointed to administer the affairs of the bankrupt Libby Hotel on New York's Lower East Side, which was appraised at $1.2 million, Tammany lawyer Joseph Force Crater, then 40, arranged for its sale in June of last year for only $75,000 to American Bond and Mortgage Co., which sold it to the city in August for $2.85 million to be used as the site of a proposed Chrystie-Forsyth housing project. Gov. Roosevelt appointed Crater in April to fill an unexpired term on the New York Supreme Court; the judge has interrupted his summer vacation to return to the city, withdrawn all the cash in his bank account (just over $5,000), sold $16,000 worth of stock, dined with friends, stepped into a taxi outside the restaurant, and will not be heard of again (the case will be officially closed in July 1937).