Cold Case Heats Up (Daughter of Officer Linked to 1930 Murder of Judge Says He's Innocent)

Newsday ^ | September 1, 2005 | ROCCO PARASCANDOLA

[nickcarraway]

Daughter of officer linked by letter to 1930 murder of judge says other cops had same name and he's innocent

Not my father.

Those are the words of Mary Burns, who is furious that the reputation of her dead father, former police officer Charles Burns, has been dragged through the mud, linked in a mysterious letter to the 1930 disappearance and death of Judge Joseph Crater.

"It wasn't my father," Mary Burns, 54, said yesterday from her home in Marlton, N.J. "My father was a good guy. I feel I need to fix this."

"This" is the disclosure in various media reports last month that her father's name was mentioned in a letter that a Long Island woman turned over to the NYPD after the woman's 91-year-old mother died in April.

In the letter, the deceased woman, Stella Ferrucci-Good of Bellerose, wrote that her husband told her long ago that a police officer named Charles Burns and his brother, a cabbie named Frank, played a role in killing Crater and that Crater was buried beneath the Coney Island boardwalk where the aquarium was later built.

The letter also said Charles Burns was one of the officers guarding Abe "Kid Twist" Reles when the notorious killer-turned-mob-informant went out the window of a Coney Island hotel and died in 1941.

There were three officers named Charles Burns at the time of Crater's disappearance (a fourth had retired in 1927), police sources said.

When the story broke last month, the media said that the NYPD had confirmed a single Officer Charles Burns and that he was on the force from 1926 to 1946.

That's the tenure of Mary Burns' father, specific enough information to embarrass his 93-year-old widow and his children.

[nickcarraway]

"I'm really annoyed at the Police Department, giving out his time of employment," Mary Burns said. "There were other cops named Charles Burns."