Broadway Butterfly: Vivian Gordon

A riveting, uniquely in-depth account of the sensational murder that captivated Jazz Age New York City, obsessed its then-governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, pulled back the veil on widespread corruption and political abuse, and led to the downfall of its mayor, from the Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist and author of The Deadly Don.

Like so many other pretty butterflies, Indiana-born Vivian Gordon fluttered to New York in 1920 looking for fame and fortune. Before long, the flame-haired chorus girl parlayed her youth, beauty, and ambition into more profitable means as a tough and glamorous symbol of Prohibition-era excess. She was a speakeasy owner, blackmailer, high-end escort, extortionist, racketeer, and con woman. But given her dangerously intimate associations—from ruthless underworld gangsters to corrupt high-ranking city officials—Vivian was also a woman who knew too much and who rightfully feared for her life.

On February 26, 1931, Vivian’s bludgeoned and garroted body was found dumped in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. Now, this definitive book unravels her tumultuous life and the
headline-making murder that became an obsession for so many.

The evidence Vivian left behind was damning: a diary with more than 300 names implicating powerful officials, philanthropists, businessmen, and every major gangland figure in collusion and corruption. The probe eventually resulted in the career-ending investigation of James “Jimmy” Walker, disgraced mayor of New York City. Ultimately, Broadway Butterfly finally finds a place in history for Vivian, a woman with a rare legacy in gangster lore, whose demise was as tragically inevitable as the brutality of the cozy relationship between the Mob and the NYPD.