The Outfit

with Alana Hope Levinson and Dan O'Sullivan

Charles Becker: The NYPD's Killer Cop

11/6/2025

1912, Ragtime-era New York. NYPD Lieutenant Charles Becker, celebrity cop, stands accused of a shocking crime: orchestrating the murder of gambler Herman Rosenthal, whose squealing to the press threatened to expose systemic police corruption. In this week's episode, Dan and Alana weigh the evidence in the case of one of the few NYPD officers to ever take a trip to death row.

Sources:

• Satan's Circus Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century by Mike Dash
• The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, The Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime by Stanley Cohen
• The Becker Scandal: A Time Remembered by Vina Delmar
• The Bowery Boys, “ Case Files of the New York Police Department 1800-1915” podcast episode
• Newspapers and magazines: American Heritage, Crime Magazine, New York Sun, The New York Times, New York Evening World, New York Tribune.