Benita (Franklin) Bischoff was known as Vivian Gordon in the New York night life.

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Seek Strangler, Attractive Girl

    New York, Feb. 27 - Aroused by the greatest tumult since the killing of Herman Rosenthal in 1912, 100 policemen today sought the strangler of Vivian Gordon, attractive night club habitue, who was found murdered shortly before her scheduled appearance before the Seabury Appellate Court Division's inquiry into cases of police framing of women.

    Authorities said the present crime recalled the one 19 years ago, which sent Police Lieutenant Charles Becker to the electric chair. Both came at the peak of drives against police corruption.

    The body of the woman who had written to the Seabury investigators that she had important information for them, was found yesterday in Van Cortlandt Park, where it had been dragged or thrown.

    Three diaries found in the woman's apartment were said by police to contain names of "important people." From information obtained from the books police took into custody two men and held them for questioning. They gave their names as John Radeloff of Brooklyn, attorney for Mrs. Gordon, and Sam Cohen, a client of the attorney.

~ Olean Evening News (New York), Fri., 27 Feb 1931, pg. 1

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    Philadelphia, March 2 – The strange life of Vivian Gordon, New York's strangled night life figure, was revealed here today by Dr. Ann Tomkins Gibson. Dr. Gibson, of the staff of the Woman's College Hospital, said she was probably one of the woman's few friends.

    "Vivian was purely the victim of a plan she had nurtured for years in the hopes of vindicating herself in the eyes of her 16-year-old daughter," Dr. Gibson declared.

    "Her impelling motive in life was to prove that she had been 'framed' on immorality charges and that she was not the woman she had been painted as being. When the present New York vice investigation commenced, she likely felt that she would clear her name.

    "I think she hoped that she could make her daughter, Benita, see that her mother was the victim of circumstances. It is quite possible when word leaked out that she intended to tell what she knew to the investigators, someone who feared an expose, killed her. However, I feel that her so-called expose was purely a matter of personal vindication.

    "She was a good girl who tried to rise above her early environment, but she was attracted by bright lights and the easy ways of life which had been her heritage.

    "She was extremely beautiful, and everyone who knew her loved her. A true mother at heart, she loved her daughter with an all consuming love. I have known few women in my medical career with greater mother love than hers.

    "Before she went to the reformatory she had the child were inseparable and she was happy. When she came out she was cold and bitter and calculating. She wanted to be good, she told me, but it seemed impossible to her after her sentence at New Bedford."

    Dr. Gibson said that she had received a phone call from Vivian four days before she was found slain. She was anxious about her daughter, who lives with her father, John E. C. Bischoff and her step-mother in Audubon, N. J., Dr. Gibson said.

~ Olean Evening Times (New York), Mon., 2 Mar 1931, pg. 1

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. . . Then he [her brother] followed her on what was probably the most deserted burial ever seen in Mt. Hope Cemetery. He placed a spray of flowers on her coffin and knelt, a solitary mourner, as they lowered her into the grave. . .

~ Standard Union (Brooklyn, New York), Mon., 9 Mar 1931