The political and legal true crime thriller, Broadway Butterfly: The Lady Gangster of Jazz Age New York (Citadel Press, 2024) by New York Newsday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter Anthony M. DeStefano, examines the sensational murder case happening at a time when the Jazz Age was giving way to a dark undercurrent in the decade of Prohibition.
On February 26, 1931, reputed prostitute Vivian Gordon’s bludgeoned and garroted body was found dumped in Van Cortland Park in The Bronx. This biography unravels her tumultuous life and the headline-making murder that became an obsession for many, including then-Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The evidence Gordon left behind was damning: a diary with more than three-hundred names implicating powerful officials, philanthropists, businessmen, and major gangland figures. The murder eventually resulted in the career-ending investigation of James “Jimmy” Walker, disgraced mayor of New York City.
It also exposed New York City’s magistrate court system, where court officials and cops would force hundreds of women to make payoffs to have their cases dropped or forgotten.
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