charges of police laxity and indifference were made by the press. The implications, then compared to the police complicity in the 1912 murder of Herman Rosenthal, created such a scandal that then Police Commissioner Joseph Warren, a former law partner of Mayor James J. Walker, resigned due to ill health. His successor, Grover A. Whalen, immediately began investigations accusing a number of senior police officials of police inaction in regards to the Rothstein murder. Half a dozen officers would become victims of Whalen's actions. Coughlin and Chief Inspector William J. Lahey, then head of the uniformed force, were both removed from their commands on December 19 and eventually forced into retirement. Coughlin publicly defended his conduct during the murder investigation and pointed out that Commissioner Whalen was never able make any more progress then he did, with the case remaining unsolved. Coughlin was later hired as chief investigator for the Johns-Manville Corporation and held the post until 1949. He died at his Lexington Avenue home after a long illness on the morning of September 30, 1951, survived by his nephew and only living relative William Poling. References Further reading Carey, Arthur A. and McLellan, Howard. Memoirs of a Murder Man. New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1930. Duncombe, Stephen Andrew Mattson. The Bobbed Haired Bandit: A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York. New York: NYU Press, 2006. Hickey, John J. Our Police Guardians: History of the Police Department of the City of New York, and the Policing of Same for the Past One Hundred Years. New York: John J. Hickey, 1925. Lardner, James and Thomas Reppetto. NYPD: A City and Its Police. New York: Macmillan, 2001. Pietrusza, David. Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003. Willis, Clint, ed. NYPD: Stories of Survival from the World's Toughest Beat. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002. 1874 births 1951 deaths New York City Police Department officers People from Manhattan