Few threads have disappeared so completely into history's loom than the story of Joseph Force Crater. A graduate of Columbia Law and a darling of Tammany Hall, Crater rose swiftly in the avaricious milieu of Jazz-Age New York politics; by the time then-governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Crater to the New York State Supreme Court in April 1930, the once-upstanding young jurist was awash in chorus girls and shady business deals. Vacationing in Maine that summer, Crater was called back to New York on a mysterious errand
