Despite massive publicity, the missing persons case was never solved and was officially closed forty years after Crater was declared dead.

He issued two published opinions: Rotkowitz v. Sohn, February 8, 1930[11] involving fraudulent conveyances and mortgage foreclosure fraud;[12] and Henderson v. Park Central Motors Service, July 11, 1930[13] dealing with a garage company's liability for an expensive car stolen and wrecked by an ex-convict.

[14] Attention was later drawn to Crater's liquidating investments worth $16,000 and withdrawing $7,000 from his bank account that spring (together equivalent to about US $330,000 in 2023), which was possibly used as a pay-off for his judgeship.

He had also given the congratulatory speech at the dinner celebrating George Ewald's judgeship in 1927; accusations of Tammany Hall corruption in that appointment were an initial impetus in the opening of what would become the Seabury Commission in mid-1930.

[15] The next day, he arrived at his apartment at 40 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village, but instead of dealing with business, he went to Atlantic City, New Jersey, with showgirl Sally Lou Ritz.

Crater then ate dinner at Billy Haas's Chophouse at 332 West 45th Street with Ritz and William Klein, a lawyer friend.

[15][28] The jury concluded that "the evidence is insufficient to warrant any expression of opinion as to whether Crater is alive or dead, or as to whether he has absented himself voluntarily, or is the sufferer from disease in the nature of amnesia, or is the victim of crime.

Sally Lou Ritz (real name Sarah Ritzi; 1907/1908–2000) had dined with Crater the evening that he vanished and was also rumored to be his mistress; she left New York in August or September 1930.

[35] The scandal also refocused attention on the corruption investigation, which ultimately led to the resignation of Mayor Jimmy Walker and largely eliminated Tammany Hall's hold on the city, previously weakened by Rothstein and the conflict over his former empire.

[22][35] Crater's wife found envelopes containing checks, stocks, bonds, and a note from the justice on January 20, 1931, six months after his disappearance.

[28] In July 1937, when she was reportedly living on $12 per week (equivalent to $260 in 2024) working as a telephone operator in Maine, she petitioned to have the justice declared officially dead.

[28] Mrs. Crater expressed her belief that her husband had been murdered in her own account of the case, The Empty Robe, which was written with freelance writer and journalist Oscar Fraley and published by Doubleday in 1961.

[40][41] On August 19, 2005, authorities revealed that after Queens resident Stella Ferrucci-Good's death at age 91, they had received notes she wrote in which she claimed that her husband, NYPD detective Robert Good, had learned that Crater was killed by Charles Burns, an NYPD officer who also worked as a bodyguard of Murder, Inc. enforcer Abe Reles, and by Burns' brother, Frank.

According to the letter, Crater was buried near West Eighth Street in Coney Island, Brooklyn, at the current site of the New York Aquarium.

[50][51][52][53][54] In Frank O'Rourke's 1964 science-fiction novel 'Instant Gold', one unexpected result of a national dragnet is that "for a brief, glorious moment, CIA agents investigating the Lake Superior copper town of Houghton, Michigan, reported the discovery of Judge Crater".

A 1972 episode of Night Gallery titled "Rare Objects" features a character who has kidnapped a number of well-known historical figures who either disappeared or supposedly died without leaving a body, including Crater, Amelia Earhart, and Roald Amundsen.