An Excess of Burnses Keep a Case Open
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Solving old New York crime cases can prove puzzlingly difficult when investigating persons who share a popular surname. This appears to have happened last month when a handwritten letter from a deceased Long Island woman created a stir in the news. Police dusted off “cold case files” after the woman, Stella Ferrucci-Good, who died in April at the age of 91, claimed her late husband had heard over drinks that a policeman named Charles Burns was indirectly connected to the death of mobster-turned-informant Abe “Kid Twist” Reles, who plunged from a window at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island in 1941. She also claimed that Charles Burns and his cabby brother Frank played a role in killing Judge Joseph Crater, who disappeared 75 years ago, and is supposedly buried under the Coney Island boardwalk.
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