10/16/2026
SPHS Centennial Celebration Series:
42/ CORNELIUS J. MCCARTHY
The death of South Plainfield Police Chief Cornelius J. McCarthy marked a watershed moment, the end of an era for the community he had served since its incorporation 21 years earlier.
Scores of uniformed officers, borough officials, relatives, friends, and associates attended his services at a solemn Mass of Requiem at Sacred Heart Church on Tuesday morning, June 18, 1947. His pallbearers were department colleagues Judson Ten Eyck, John Hogan, Andrew Phillips, Dominic Spinelli, John Walen, William Sloan, Frank Cirigliano, and Thomas Sexton, Jr.
McCarthy, a Plainfield native, began his career in 1907 at age twenty-two as a patrol officer in his hometown but resigned in 1915. His employment over the next five years is unclear, although the 1920 census lists him as an insurance salesperson. He returned to law enforcement in Piscataway in 1920, after the township replaced its volunteer citizen-constable system with a Police Department. McCarthy was the sole officer serving the 27.39 mi² community of approximately 4,200 residents, then concentrated in Stelton, New Market, Arbor, and South Plainfield. Named Piscataway’s Chief in 1924, he was joined by patrolmen Ten Eyck and Hogan. Two years later, McCarthy was chosen to lead the newly incorporated borough’s police force, with Ten Eyck and Hogan jumping ship to join him. The Council also appointed four special police officers who would be on-call if necessary: George Rolande, Thomas Brennan, Frank A. Diana, and John Bochter.
The 8.31 mi² community he inherited was quiet and close-knit, with modest homes, mom-and-pop stores, three schools, two churches, several truck farms, and a workforce largely employed by Spicer Manufacturing, Harris Steel, and the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Neighbors knew one another, doors went unlocked, and the streets were safe after dark. Overall, serious crimes were virtually nonexistent in the borough. The Police Department focused on local ordinance violations, enforcement of the Volstead Act (Prohibition), motor vehicle accidents, and barking-dog complaints.
However, McCarthy would earn a reputation as one of the most feared and hated police officers in New Jersey from a few high-profile arrests in South Plainfield including the breakup of a car theft ring run from a garage on Spicer Avenue that had already sent 29 vehicles to Panama; the arrest of the armed night prowler who attempted to kidnap millionaire J. Seward Johnson’s infant in 1936; and the 1926 “Bum” Rogers incident.
The latter story first came to the attention of the South Plainfield Historical Society in a 2003 interview with a resident who was 13 in 1926. His remembrance of the confrontation centered on a blazing gun battle and the arrest of one of the 1920s’ notorious gangsters – John J. “Bum” Rogers. However, a fact-check years later revealed a different story: a coordinated operation by local police led by McCarthy and outside law enforcement agencies that never endangered the public — an especially important achievement given the gang’s callous regard for killing bystanders.
The true story of McCarthy and the Rogers’ gang began in late June 1926.
Cars with out-of-town plates were common in summer, especially near Holly Park and Holly Crest on Park Avenue, where Milton Mendel sold vacation homes to New York clients. That summer, however, more visitors than usual arrived in high-end vehicles known for speed—a Lincoln, a Peerless, a Rickenbacker, and a Nash Coupe. All parked near the same house on Park Avenue, then a sparsely settled area near Oak Tree. Suspecting more than coincidence, McCarthy placed the house under surveillance on July 2. He was mindful of a recent wave of bank robberies, postal-truck holdups, and payroll thefts, including the recent June 26 robbery at Merck & Co. in Linden.
Independence Day passed amid the customary barrage of firecrackers and detonators. But the Police Department contingent was conspicuously absent from South Plainfield’s 300-member delegation in Plainfield’s Sesquicentennial Parade.
McCarthy, Ten Eyck, and Hogan were staking out the Park Avenue house, recording the license plates, makes, and models of arriving and departing cars. The occupants stayed inside by day and usually ventured out after dark.
More strangers arrived late on July 6, the same day McCarthy learned of a payroll theft at Castle’s Ice Cream Company in Perth Amboy, eight miles away. He shared the license-plate numbers and vehicle descriptions with nearby police departments and authorities in New York. The information proved invaluable.
Over the next several days, two other men visited separately on several occasions. Early one morning, one was driven to the New Brunswick train station, where he departed for New York City. McCarthy identified him as “Bum” Rogers; the other man was Rogers’ right-hand man.
Identifying the notorious Rogers revealed the danger of the situation, prompting police to alert federal authorities. Rogers, an associate of James “Killer” Cunniffe, was wanted for bank robbery and murder. Despite several arrests and convictions, he repeatedly eluded custody. His presence in South Plainfield with at least four gang members suggested that a major crime was being planned. Police adopted a divide-and-conquer strategy, and arrests soon followed.
The first arrest came on Saturday afternoon, July 17, when Plainfield Officer Mack Gerard, directing traffic at Park Avenue and Second Street, spotted a Nash Coupe with a plate number on McCarthy’s list. The car stopped at the Plainfield Trust Company, where the passenger entered a hardware store. Gerard approached the driver, Charles Casaleggi, and arrested him. When the passenger emerged, he slipped into the gathering crowd and escaped. He was later identified as William Dwyer, also known as Frederick Edward Spencer and George Kent. At the jail, Casaleggi told McCarthy he was the gang’s errand boy and drove its members wherever they wished. He also revealed that the gang had used a Woodbridge hideout about a month earlier — six miles from the Merck payroll robbery — and that three of the four men from that location were now staying at the South Plainfield house.
The next arrest came later that afternoon when detectives from Rahway and Elizabeth apprehended Dwyer on Oak Tree Avenue as he walked toward the Park Avenue hideout. Dwyer, who had served time in Leavenworth, was arrested without incident. He carried “a number of valuable papers” and $712 in cash and owned the Rickenbacker still parked in the hideout’s garage. Meanwhile, North Plainfield police arrested Frank Sylvester, owner of the Park Avenue house, at his Somerset Street home.
The fourth member’s whereabouts remained unknown. Was he at the house, perhaps with Rogers? With most of the gang tucked away behind bars, McCarthy prepared to raid the hideout. After consulting colleagues in Perth Amboy, Rahway, Elizabeth, Union, and New York, he summoned about a dozen officers late that afternoon to assist the borough police.
“With a cordon surrounding the house, Chief McCarthy boldly went to the side door and when no response came to his knock for admission, he smashed in the door and entered the premises,” the Courier-News reported. The house was empty. Officers Ten Eyck and Hogan then searched it thoroughly.
“There was a closet door that was locked,” John Hogan Jr. recalled, retelling his father’s account. “Ten Eyck was pulling on it, pulling on it [the doorknob],” but the door would not budge. Ten Eyck drew his revolver, aimed at the doorknob, and told Hogan to “stand back, I’ll take care of it.” Hogan stopped him and fetched a screwdriver from the patrol car. After they removed the hinges and lifted the door away, they found several bottles of nitroglycerin sitting on a wooden crate, “enough to blow up a whole community.”
“What is said by police to be the most complete equipment of gunmen’s paraphernalia ever seized in a single haul, was found in the house,” the Courier-News reported. The cache included “nine revolvers of different calibers, fully loaded, two sawed-off sh****ns, about 20,000 rounds of am******on, enough nitroglycerin to blow up a whole community and about a half pint of nitric acid.” Police also recovered a canvas bag containing about $2,000 in silver, believed to be proceeds from the Castle’s Ice Cream Company robbery. Empty drug bottles bearing the Merck & Co. name linked the gang to the June 26 robbery. Officers also found law books and works on chemistry and welding.
One arrest remained, again involving the sharp-eyed traffic officer Gerard. Apparently unaware of the South Plainfield raid, suspect William Turner was picked up driving his Peerless three miles from the hideout. After questioning Turner, alias Walter Legenza, authorities concluded that he belonged to Rogers’ gang and that Rogers and his lieutenant had served as advisers at the hideout.
One can only guess what mayhem could have ensued had McCarthy not broken up the gang. These were dangerous times. McCarthy and his staff kept South Plainfield safe. He was succeeded by Andrew Phillips.
Postscript: Rodgers name re-emerge on October 4 as Piscataway authorities sought him and Cunniffe in the killing of a passing motorist and his teenage son on Stelton Road during a failed nighttime attempt to hijack a US mail truck bound for Hadley Field from the New Brunswick train station. The perpetrators escaped. Ten days later, eight bandits armed with machine guns robbed a U.S. mail truck carrying $300,000 in Elizabeth, killing the driver and wounding two others. Authorities suspected Rogers and Cunniffe. They escaped.
Rogers' run ended just two weeks after the Elizabeth mail robbery. On October 28, 1926, he was cornered in Manhattan and shot dead. Cunniffe met a violent end when he was shot to death in Detroit, Michigan, on October 31, 1926, by a fellow gang member.
