Just before sun-up on August 27, 1937 someones unknown drove to Shore Boulevard and around 21st Drive in Astoria, Queens. From their vehicle they tossed a wooden cask down an embankment into the East River, hoping that the tide in the narrow known as Hell Gate would carry the object out to sea. Unfortunately for them, the tide had already gone out and the barrel wedged itself on a large rock.
A few hours later a man was walking along the shore and saw the barrel. What caught his eye more was the red hair, hand and foot that protruded from the top. Cops were called. Crammed inside the cask was the trussed up body of a woman. She had been stabbed multiple times with an ice-pick. The final jab was in her skull where the tip had broken off. She had also been shot once in the forehead with a .38.
She was quickly identified as 39 year-old Esther Gordon, widow of intra-state drug dealer Max "One-Eye" Gordon. So called because he lost an eye in a gun fight in 1922. Max died in a car accident in Texas the previous July 31, after a drug buying trip to Mexico.
Initial reports had it that the drug syndicate that Gordon worked for had his wife bumped off because she knew to much and may have been trying to get some money out of them. The following year, it was stated that police believed that the murder was orchestrated by a drug dealer named Lonnie Affronti. According to the report Affronti owed One Eye Gordon a large amount of money which his widow was in the process of trying to collect.
Esther Gordon
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