Update on Solly Goldstein FOIA Request

Solomon Goldstein, St. Albans Daily Messenger, March 28, 1940.

Research into public records regarding Solly’s criminal career, disappearance and death fell victim to bad weather and records-purging policies. 

The response to my FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to the New York State Police informed me that a records search produced no results.  They stated, “Any records we may have had concerning (Solly Goldstein) have met our criteria for purging and therefore have been destroyed.”

In the case of the NYPD (New York Police Department), the facility that houses NYPD records “sustained severe damage during Hurricane Sandy, therefore, the requisite search for such records is precluded at the current time.”  

I seem to have reached the end of any obvious line of inquiry regarding Solly’s activities, arrests and any ensuing consequences.  Nonetheless, we now have a good deal more information to flesh out the bare-bones stories told by our fathers and mothers, Solly’s first cousins.  The numerous newspaper articles from 1935 when he disappeared and from 1940 when Prosecutor Burton Turkus investigated and brought down Murder, Inc., as well as the latter’s book, “Murder, Inc.,” paint a detailed and unsavory picture of the kind of people with whom Solly associated.  They also give us more information about his crimes, his attempt to leave the organization and his love life.  That will have to suffice, unless the NYPD ever manages to rehabilitate their soggy records.

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