Man Arrested for Being Gay Turned Tables on Cops Who Entrapped, Extorted Him

In June 1952 two New York City patrolmen attempted to shake down 35-year-old Frederick J. Ratzlaff after entrapping him on a morals offense in the men’s room of the Apollo Theater at 223 West 42nd Street in Times Square. The police officers — 26-year-old John D. Cooke and 33-year-old Frederick Schnepf — said if Ratzlaff paid $50 they would not arrest him. However, Ratzlaff flipped the script. Before the scheduled day on which Ratzlaff was to make the payoff he went to the Legal Aid Society, and they arranged with police detectives for the arrests of the dirty cops at the rendezvous.

Among the statutes used to persecute homosexuals in New York was subdivision 8 of section 722 of the Penal Law which provides that an individual who “[f]requents or loiters about any public place soliciting men for the purpose of committing a crime against nature or other lewdness” has “committed the offense of disorderly conduct.” During the period between 1923 and 1966 “more than 50,000 men were arrested for cruising in bars, streets, parks, and subway washrooms in New York City” pursuant to this law according to historian George Chauncey in a June 25, 2019 article (“The Forgotten History of Gay Entrapment”) for The Atlantic. In addition to facing fines and imprisonment upon conviction the public exposure from such arrests could result in loss of employment and family.

Frederick Ratzlaff, a native New Yorker born in 1917 to German immigrant parents, long had embraced his gay identity. He had engaged in homosexual relations since 1933 when just a 16-year-old boy living in the Westchester County town of Mount Vernon immediately north of the Bronx. As an adult he had gay friends and lovers with whom he shared apartments in Manhattan, and he also “pick[ed] up men just anywhere including theater urinals.” Indeed, prior to his unfortunate encounter with the dirty cops on June 6, 1952 he previously had visited the Apollo Theater “three or four times,” and he had a prior disorderly conduct conviction under section 722, subdivision 8 from 1948 for soliciting sex in the men’s room at Grand Central Station. The only period during which he was not sexually active was from when he enlisted with the Army in May 1942 until his honorable discharge nearly four years later in January 1946.

He had dropped out of high school after only two years, and worked for his father in a bakery before enlisting in the Army. After the war Ratzlaff went to Whitman Design School on the G.I. Bill to study interior decorating. He initially did freelance work, then worked for Anton May Fabric House and in June 1952 at the time of the attempted extortion Ratzlaff was selling fabrics on a commission basis for Sachs Quality Furniture. In short, Frederick Ratzlaff was living the best life he possibly could as a gay man at that time under homophobic oppression.

The Apollo then was known for foreign flicks, and on Friday, June 6, it was playing “The Green Glove,” a film noir French/American co-production starring Glenn Ford and Geraldine Brooks, and “The River,” a French film directed by Jean Renoir. Ratzlaff was on his lunch break from work when he visited the theater. Ratzlaff and Schnepf “locked eyes” outside the men’s room, and then both entered it and stood before adjacent urinals. Once they finished their business and zipped up the two men lingered in the bathroom. Schnepf “moved his hand around in his pocket, as if playing with his privates,” and Ratzlaff watched him while smoking a cigarette. Ratzlaff “then proceeded to wash his hands and comb his hair, after which Schnepf sidled towards him, placed the right side of his body against [Ratzlaff], and pushed his right leg into [Ratzlaff’s] crotch in the region of his privates.” Ratzlaff responded to the physical contact by grabbing Schnepf’s crotch at which point Schnepf flashed his police shield.

Schnepf led Ratzlaff out of the men’s room, and meeting up with his partner Cooke in the theater hallway the two cops then took Ratzlaff outside to the street. Ratzlaff implored them not to arrest him or call his employer, and disclosed he had a prior conviction for public solicitation. The cops used this information to put more fear into Ratzlaff, and told him that “being a second offender, it would go rather hard on him.” The cops told Ratzlaff a defense lawyer would cost him $300, and then asked “if it would be worth that much to him if [they] forgot about it; in other words, if they let him go.” Ratzlaff protested that he did not have $300, and the most he could afford was $50 which he could pull together once he got his pay from work. The cops agreed to the fifty dollars, and “[i]t was then arranged that the three would meet at 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning, June 10th, under the clock at 8th Avenue and 42nd Street.”

In the meantime, Ratzlaff contacted Martin Erdmann at the Legal Aid Society. Erdmann had been representing indigent defendants in the criminal courts for the Legal Aid Society since 1946. Ratzlaff got himself quite the lawyer. Erdmann went on to become the Attorney-in-Chief for the Legal Aid Society’s criminal defense division and then a Criminal Court Judge. A March 12, 1971 feature (“I Have Nothing to Do with Justice”) from Life magazine on the defense lawyer called him “brilliant,” and Erdmann said “the only reason I’m any good is because I have an ego,” and “I like to win.” Incidentally, the legendary Erdmann remained a bachelor for his entire life.

Erdmann’s legal chops were evident even as a relatively young lawyer in 1952, and with Ratzlaff paid a visit to the West 47th Street police station where they apprised detectives of the shakedown attempt. The detectives arranged for Ratzlaff to pay the two patrolmen with ten one dollar bills which had been marked, and on the scheduled day and hour of the rendezvous for the payoff positioned themselves in vantage points. However, on June 10 at 10 a.m., Schnepf and Cooke sensed something was amiss when Ratzlaff offered only ten dollars rather than the agreed fifty, and refused to take the envelope with the marked bills. The dirty cops ordered Ratzlaff “to put it away,” and advised him that “he could leave now.” The two detectives then moved in, and arrested the pair.

Schnepf and Cook immediately were suspended from the police force, and charged with taking unlawful fees, attempted extortion and conspiracy. The tabloids plastered their names, home addresses and photos. At trial the judge rejected a cynical attempt by the co-defendants’ legal team to exclude Ratzlaff from testifying — they argued his homosexuality inherently made him an unreliable witness with a “psychopathic personality” — and then after hearing Ratzlaff’s testimony the jury convicted Schnepf and Cooke. The dirty cops were given suspended sentences, and five years on probation.

Even in 1952 an avowed homosexual, a Legal Aid Society lawyer, honest detectives, a fair judge and an impartial jury were able to buck an oppressive and often corrupt system. LGBTQ history is full of heroic people, and Frederick Ratzlaff is among them.