The Underworld Podcast - The Westies, Psycho Killers of Hell's Kitchen and the Last of the NYC Irish Mob

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

In the chaos of 1970’s New York, it took a lot to shock the city. But the Westies managed to leave quite the impression. Dubbed the last of the Irish mob despite being more like an anarchic gang, they terrorized the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, garnering headlines due to their penchant for daytime hits and chopping up their victims bodies.  They even managed to attract the attention of New York’s five mafia families, who took notice of their numerous hits and started contracting out to them. In less than a decade though, things would get a little too messy, and they would tear themselves apart.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. May 13th, 1977, in Woodside Queens, New York City. There's a gang war raging on the west side of Manhattan over control of the hell's kitchen neighborhood. But even though it's the 1970s, this doesn't involve New York's five families,

the controlling power of the Sicilian-American mafia. Instead, it's between two factions of Irish-American organized crime. On one side is Mickey Spillane, who's controlled the neighborhood for close to two decades. Spillane is what they call a gentleman gangster. He's handsome, dapper, not afraid of getting his hands dirty, but respectful enough to have political connections. And a true man of the neighborhood, the kind of guy who sends flowers to old women who get sick, or hands out turkeys on Thanksgiving. People like Spalane. He's always. He's always. old school. Then there's the Westies, a bunch of wild cowboy lunatics rising up. Their leader,

the charismatic James Coonan, is a man of action. Unfortunately, that action is usually killing somebody and then chopping up their body to be disposed of in the East River. With Coonan in charge, the Westies would become a force to be reckoned with, tapping into labor unions, doing hits for mob bosses like John Gotti, running guns and drugs, loan sharking, extorting, controlling gambling rackets and killing a lot of people, between 60 to 100, becoming infamous for dismembering their victims thanks to a member who trained as a butcher while in prison.

Coonin is fond of saying, no corpus delecti, no investigation. Aladdin, for no face, no case. And Coonin's right-hand man, a baby-faced, diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic Vietnam vet with substance abuse problems by the name of Mickey Featherstone, might even be more unhinged.

He'd killed three people by the time he was 21 and somehow beat cases on all of them. Kunin's had it out for Spalane, in no small part because he once kidnapped Conan's father and held him for ransom. One of the hustles Spelaine used to do when he was younger and more savage. And Spillane's been on his back foot later. Not only is he had war with the Westies, but the Genovese family, led by underboss fat Tony Salerno, is trying to move in on his territory on the west side. A new convention center is being built, and Fat Tony wants a piece.

And Spillane, he doesn't want to give him that piece. Not to mention, Coonin has been cozing up to maybe the only person in New York City more murderous than him. Roy de Mayo of the Gambino family. Meanwhile, in the last six months or so, three of Spillane's top lieutenants have been killed, and nobody is really sure who took them out. There's rumors about infamous hitman Mad Dog Sullivan being behind it. It could have been the Westies, could have been fat Tony Salerno. And New York is a madhouse.

Heroin has hit the streets like never before, and the city's on the verge of bankruptcy. Spillains had enough of the chaos of hell's kitchen and the war, and he's highted it with his family to Woodside Queens, far away from the violence. This night, though, he gets a buzz on his apartment's intercom, telling him to come down. When he gets outside, Spelaine walks over to a Cadillac and starts talking to someone in the car. Five shots ring out. Spillane, the boss of Hell's Kitchen, has been gunned down, shot dead in front of his apartment building. Nobody knows who did it at first, but whoever did, the outcome is the same.

The reign of Jimmy Coonin, Mickey Featherstone, and the Westies over Hell's Kitchen is about to begin. This is the Underworld podcast. Welcome back to the Underworld podcast, the audio experience brought to you by two journalists who have reported all over the world. Myself, Danny Gold in New York, and my colleague, Sean Williams, in New Zealand. I don't really have anything funny or cute to say right now. It's mid-August, dog days of summer.

Let's just get right into it. As always, bonus episodes on patreon.com slash underworldpodcast. You can subscribe there or on Spotify or on iTunes. Also, we've had merch for a while, but we never mention it. The link is in our episode description, or you can go to underworldpod.com. and click on merch. T-shirts,

don't Instagram your crime stuff, mugs, you know, all the usual sort of podcast swag. Yeah, anything to add, Sean?

Nah. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, let's just get it done. All right. So it's been a minute, I think, since we've done

anything historical or anything about New York, organized crime groups and gangs, but there are, you know, these are some my favorite

episodes to do. We've done so much stuff on like, the Chinatown gangs of the 70s, Vietnamese gangs in the 80s, Jamaican gangs, Italian mafia, Jewish mafias, everything basically from the 1900s on, right? We had murder ink in the 1920s and 1930s, the old school Chinatown gangs, the Albanian gangs in the 90s, Russian mobs at Brighton Beach. There's just so much to do on New York City. And I kind of, I love the New York history stuff going back to the original gangs in New York book by Herbert Asbury.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we get tons of people, especially on YouTube saying like, do a Mayo, do Los Zetas, guys, like, we do them a lot. If you're going to write in and, like, offer ideas for shows, I want, like, obscure Zerri gangs from the 70s or, like, pre-war Scottish cocaine syndicates. I don't know. I mean, I want to go back even further. Like, did the Romans have gangs, the Pirates of the Caribbean, the true story? I don't know. Is that too weird? Are people going to be into that? I would be into the true story of the Pirates of the Caribbean. I feel like that's, you know, that's pretty organized crime. I'd be, I'd get down with that. Maybe we can get, you know, Disney to sponsor us.

You know, one of the guys, I think, he was probably the best crime writer in New York, like that, like Herbert Asbury, whose books we always use as sources is T.J. English. His book is actually the definitive source on the Westies. You won't find a better old school crime writer than him by his book. I used it as probably the main source in this episode. The story begins in Hell's Kitchen, which is a neighborhood in Manhattan, just west of Times Square along the waterfront of the west side, where the Hudson River. is close to Broadway theaters, for those of you who don't know New York. Also where Madison Square Garden is, that's where the Knicks play. If you've ever seen the movie Sleepers, that's based around Hell's Kitchen.

I mean, that movie is based around the neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen. It's like a character in the movie. The two killers who go on trial are actually based on the Westies. If you haven't seen it, yeah, definitely go see it immediately. Just incredible movie. Hell's Kitchen itself is, or was, I guess you could say now, a working class neighborhood, tenement buildings, was big in terms of transportation. You know, it's very, when you picture like 1970s, 1980s, New York in movies, that's kind of,

that's what I like to picture as Hell's Kitchen. Yeah, I guess it's changed with those Hudson Yards and all that stuff. But when I moved to New York, it's mostly gay bars and theaters, I think. But I guess that's probably most of Manhattan these days. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's still, yo, there's still a couple of parts in Hell's Kitchen that I, like, holdovers of the Real New York, like on 10th Avenue or by the Port Authority. like the bus terminal.

You know, you're still going to find half a dozen people smoked out of their gourds on like fentanyl or bath salts. You can get cheap beer and free hot dogs at Rudy's. There's some real, like, old school classic New York trash situations over there. But yeah, it's definitely a lot of very expensive buildings are there now, and it's not what it was. Articles will talk about Hell's Kitchen like it has this tradition of gangsterism, but you kind of could make that case for more than a few neighborhoods in New York.

But yeah, you know, in the first half of the 20th century, it starts off as an Irish and German neighborhood before later on you get Italians, Greeks, and Puerto Ricans moving in, though it still kind of maintains the Irish character a bit. Lots of old school Irish pubs around there. It's known at that time for bars and saloons on 9th and 10th Avenue. It also has piers since it's along the water, and the docks during wartime, we're talking World War II, they boom. And after docs, you know, docs, it means there's money to be made and rackets to be controlled for organized crime. You've got unions, stealing cargo off the ships, no-show jobs, kickbacks, gambling, drugs. Some famous Irish gangsters actually originate there, like a Mad Dog Cole and Oni Madden by the second half of the 20th century. The Irish gangs in New York City, they've pretty much disappeared, right? They've first been replaced by Italian and Jewish mafias, and then other subsequent waves of immigration, you know, have brought their own sort of ethnic gangs.

And another thing that's rapidly slowing down by the 1960s is jobs from those dogs. from those peers. Hell's Kitchen, which is where a lot of those workers lived, it gets hit hard. You have lots of unemployment, housing, falling apart, these old tenement buildings that are just kind of like wasting away. You know, some of those gangsters that were active in the neighborhood basically call the quits and move elsewhere or retire. Mickey Spillane becomes the boss of the neighborhood almost by default.

He also gets married around the same time in 1960 to a woman from a very powerful family that controlled the Midtown Democratic Club, which is, you know, very much of the same thing. that old school boss tweed tamney hall type of stuff yeah i mean i might be asking a dumb question given the last few things that you've said but why is it called hell's kitchen i mean it's a it's a cool name but i don't know where it comes from you know the name there's not really in agreed upon sort of place that it came from there's a story about a police officer i think this is the late 1800s who they're watching like a riot near there and uh the rookie cop says to the veteran cop uh this place is hell itself and the guy says hell's like nothing compared to this this place is

is hell's kitchen, you know, because it was super overcrowded, all that sort of stuff. I think there's another, like, potential origin where it came from. There was a motorcycle gang there. But no one really is sure, though. I think the police officer and the, this is more like Hell's Kitchen is the sort of accepted origin story for the name. It's good, because whenever you say something like, we don't truly know, then we get like a million comments from people saying, you idiots, I know, I know the true story. what are you even journalists? I don't know.

But yeah, I'll look forward to those comments on this show. Yeah, half those comments are wrong. Every day and then, like we get, like, it's pretty like, oh, all right, that's cool. Thank you for teaching us that. But most of the time, they're not, they're not right. But like I said in the cold open, Spalene is he's a gentleman or a gangster gentleman. He operates out of a bar called the White House where he receives residents asking for favors.

You know, old school, right? He's handsome. He's popular in the neighborhood. He, uh, a bit of a Casanova. and he mostly keeps the Italian mob out. The main rackets that he has are loan sharking and gambling. And with the help of his family, he gets involved in the unions, well, you know, the family he marries into,

he gets involved in the unions and construction. But, you know, just like Sean Williams, he was involved in a lot of dirty stuff before he was this so-called gentleman and before he rose to his now comfortable position. Back in the day, he was big into kidnapping, the kind of thing where you grab local merchants and hold them for ransom.

and he just so happens to order the kidnapping of the father of James Coonan, who was a, this father was a neighborhood accountant. Coonin's dad gets roughed up, he gets pistol whipped, and Coonin ends up holding a grudge and swears revenge on Spillan, which, you know, it's kind of like, he's nothing. Coonan's like a kid at this point, and Spillane is like the neighborhood gangster, so it's kind of like a silly thing for him to do. He's just a young gunner at that stage.

He comes from a middle-class family, like we just said, his dad's an accountant. He's born in 1946 and he lives on West 49th Street. He's short, but he's a good boxer. And at 17, he drops out of high school and starts running with all these young criminals in the neighborhood. This is like the mid-60s. They're all hanging out at the bars on 9th and 10th Avenue and just kind of doing your penny anti-scams and fevery. Coonin's young, but he's fearless and he starts getting a rep. He's harassing Spillane and his people doing things like shooting at them from a rooftop with a machine gun.

Hell's kitchen is also like basically falling apart at this point. The neighborhood kids are running around crime-infested violent streets. It gets bad enough where Spillane threatens Coonin's dad to basically be like calm down your son or there's going to be problems. That seems counter-chut, but I'm not a career criminal in a place called hell, so yeah, what do I know? I don't know. It seems like, you know, tell the father straighten out the kid, otherwise things are going to get bad. Hopefully, you know, like a scared straight sort of situation. So I get what he was working with there. Basically, by the mid-60s, even though Coonin is still kind of a kid, there's a low-level war with Spalane and his crew.

And he is not a slouch. He's not taking it easy. Him and his boys are able to take out a hitman that Spelane had apparently flown in, like paid to fly in and sent after him. Coonin's crew, which includes his brother, are doing things like robbing bars and taking, you know, the proceeds to go to Connecticut and buy guns. But his brother, during one of these robberies, accidentally kills a bartender he was trying to rob and gets sent away. Around the same time, Coonin's crew mistakes two men for a hitman team that had been sent in from Texas. This is in 1966, so he would have been about 19, and they take both the men and they shoot them. One dies and one lives, and he's later able to testify.

So Coonin gets arrested and takes a plea for manslaughter. One of his crew also gets sent up for the murderer, but he gets five to ten, and eventually gets out, Coonin gets five to ten, and eventually gets out in 1970 or 1971. But his brother's still locked up and his crew was basically done for. So he's starting all over. He even gets a 9 to 5 as a carpet installer, but it only lasts a few months because he just can't hack it in like a regular job. And then he starts kidnapping merchants himself for money, hijacking and robbing warehouses.

I feel like so many of these historical shows start with, yeah, he did a murder and then he got out in a couple years. And then he carried on murdering and did more crazy stuff. like, hmm, I don't know. I feel like there's a lesson to be told somewhere here, but maybe someone else can make that jump. But yeah, I don't know. Like, is this guy just sitting in prison?

Like, okay, well, I did a murder. So what else can I add to my sheet? I mean, he sounds pretty prolific. Yeah, I think that, you know, this was just a neighborhood where, like, the young man got involved in crime, especially in, like, the 60s and 70s when New York City was falling apart. Yeah. I mean, there's a kid just, like, shooting a machine gun off the top of the building.

and that's, I don't know, that's, that's pretty out there. I mean, look, crime doesn't pay, but if the other option is being a carpet installer, like, you know, I'll, I get where he's coming from. In, in 1973, he buys a bar called the 596 Club after a failed kidnapping and all the young hooligans in the neighborhood, they start hanging out there. In fact, that's where this guy, Mickey Featherstone, hangs out. Mickey's younger than Coonan, and he grows up the last of nine kids on 45th and 10th Ave. His family's poor, way poorer than Kunans, and they live rough. In 1966, the then 17-year-old Mickey gets his mom to sign off on him going to Vietnam. And Mickey goes to war.

And here's where things get interesting in telling the story. We've talked about this before, with these historical episodes especially because you can kind of look back and see what was true, what wasn't, and how like, basically the way that lore gets created with gangsters and gangs and even murderers, you know, people like this. And it's always fascinating seeing it decades later, reading reports or watching docs on them to see some of those myths sort of where they came from. It's just sort of like, you know, how legends grow or how stories get told. So the thing with Mickey is, he gets into a special forces group, but he's not a combat soldier. He's a clerk. And he doesn't actually see any action.

But over the course of the West he's run that we're going to hear about, he's going to become this figure of this guy who kind of supposedly went to Vietnam and got seriously messed up by what he saw. and came back with like violent PTSD just completely unhinged because, you know, he saw so many dead bodies and lost so many friends. So much so that it becomes part of his criminal defense in every trial he faces. And he is completely unhinged and violent when he comes back. But again, he doesn't see any action in Vietnam. He doesn't kill anyone, doesn't see people getting killed. You know, in the book, English does go into this.

But when you read articles about the Westies, some of them don't even mention that fact. Instead, he gets portrayed as this combat vet who saw too much and now doesn't care if he lives or dies or who else lives or dies, you know? Yeah. I mean, we've covered this kind of stuff before, you know, the way that lore around gangas gets created. Okay, so Mickey hates, though. He hates being in Vietnam and not doing anything. So he develops a drinking problem, eventually gets discharged after getting into trouble a bunch and comes back a sort of drunken, violent mess. Here's the New York Times talking about him, I think later on during one.

of his trials. Quote, Featherstone left the army with a medical discharge in 1967, suffering from hallucinations and disorientation. For the next eight years, he was in and out of mental hospitals. In between stays, he killed people. They also call him a weapon waiting to be grasped by someone smarter than himself, which is, you know, kind of a great turn of phrase right there. It's also your hinge profile, isn't it?

That's pretty, it's not bad, not bad. Well done. He's only 5'7, 130 pounds, and when he comes back to New York, he mostly just drinks and gets into fights, like in bars. He gets shot when he refuses to hand over his money in a robbery and gets his nose broken by a baseball bat. So eventually he starts carrying guns.

You get the impression he truly actually does not give a fuck when it comes down to things. Then in 1968, there's this incident where these guys from Jersey starts some trouble in Hell's Kitchen outside of diner. one slaps Mickey for refusing to give him a cigarette. A fight breaks out, but the cops show up and they eventually escort the Jersey guys out of the neighborhood. But those guys come back, a fight breaks out again.

Same thing happens. This time those guys, they swear they're coming back with weapons. Mickey gets sent home by his crew, you know, because he's the youngest guy there. One of them includes one of the guys in the crew includes his older brother. So Mickey goes home, but then gets a phone call that the guys from Jersey have come back with weapons. Like I think one of them has an axe, another has like a bat. So Mickey grabs a rifle, comes back, shoots one of them, gun butts another, and he gets arrested for aggravated assault, and one of the guy he shot soon dies from the shooting. Mickey actually ends up in a hospital before he could go to trial for some infection that he has.

But the staff noticed that he's kind of, you know, out of his mind. And he gets diagnosed as an alcoholic, alcoholic, paranoid schizophrenic. He gets trebin and he tells the staff all these stories about, you know, all the stuff he saw in Nam, all the stuff you saw in Nam, all the things. violence that completely aren't true. But the whole thing I think English mentions this is that kind of like at this point, he's clinically insane. He believes the stories are true. He gets released soon enough and he's back in the bars of Hell's Kitchen in no time. So keep tally this. He's already killed one person. One night, he's with a bunch of the local gang members, including some Spillane crew members, and he's all drugged out on antipsychotics. And there's this incident that

happens where a gun is being passed around the bar. There's a numbers runner who works for Spalane who ends up pulling his own gun out, and Mickey is told to shoot him. The whole thing is super confusing and hazy, but Mickey basically ends up killing this guy. Spillane ends up not being mad about it for some reason, so he doesn't go after Mickey, and Mickey gets off on a justifiable homicide, but this is murder number two before he's even 21.

Shortly after that, he kills another guy after a bouncer and some massive dude pick a fight with him and some friends. he leaves the bar, borrows a gun from James Coonin who he'd been hanging out with and comes back. The massive guy, you know, takes him outside, pushes him, does one of these, you know, so you think you're a tough guy things. And then Mickey just shoots and kills him. He's not even part of the Westies at this time. He just knows Coonin and everyone else involved in the scene.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, it does seem like he should possibly not be on the streets at this point. Yeah, I would say that his behavior is concerning, you know? and this is like the classic you know one of those New York Post articles except now they're about like some dude who flashes people on the subway

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Now available on Disney Plus rated PG. But he, uh, yeah. So he's killed three people. I think he's like 22 at this point. Maybe 21. I'm not sure. He does get arrested that night. He goes to trial in 1972

and becomes one of the only people in like a decade plus to actually get off on an insanity plea. For the first half of the 70s, he's in and out of jail, psych wards, all that, and killing people. Meanwhile, Coonin is putting together his crew and doing crimes, plotting to take on Spillane. He's even wooing some of Spillane's guys like Eddie the butcher Comiskey, who was a bit older and a seasoned gangster. He had done time in Attica, the infamous prison, and trained as a butcher while there. Okay, and shout at this point for like oldy-worldy gang.

names because I don't know man I don't want to crap on the newer generations too much but so many gang names just now sound like Twitch profile names and stuff like this algorithmic they're not good they are not they're not good and they are not good as Eddie the butcher and his violent psychopathy which we love on this show what was the the one you just did about the dark uh dark oh yeah dope boy dope boy 10 yeah yeah I mean not come on not intimidate not intimidating but like Eddie the butcher, that's an intimidating, you know, go with like the old school sort of... Don't call yourself dope, you know, or even use dope as a man above the age of 18. I don't know.

Or boy. Oh, boy. So, Coonin and Mickey become pals. Coonin is on the rise. He's had a crew, he has his crew around him now again. I think we're talking like mid-70s at this point. They're not called the Westies then. They don't even call themselves the way.

Westies, that's going to come from the media. But I'm going to call him the Westies just to make it easier. He links up with a guy named Rudy Stein, who's a major, Ruby Stein, I'm sorry, who's a major loan shark for the Genovese family and Fat Tony Salerno, which, again, Fat Tony, another great mom name. And the Genovese's were one of New York's five families. That's the, you know, Sicilian American mafia. They were incredibly powerful during this time. And loan sharking was huge during this time because you didn't have, first of all, I don't think payday loans were on every corner and I don't think they were legal like they are now. And I don't even think credit cards were really around in the 60s, maybe in the 70s. But, you know, it was very hard to get loans

like that, especially for people like, you know, not running businesses who didn't like have suits and ties to walk into banks and get loans like that. So, you know, we're talking tens of thousands of dollars a week for your average neighborhood loan shark. And it was the bread and butter of the Westies money wise. So licking up with someone like Rudy who's connected to the five families, that's a major sort of coup for Coonan. And remember, Spillane wants to keep the Italian mob out of the neighborhood, but Coonin wants to work with him. Around this time, too, he gets into a brawl,

Coonin gets into a brawl outside, a bar, and shoots someone, gets arrested, and then figures he needs some muscle to do the dirty work when he can't be out being a wild cowboy all over the place in public. That's when he links up with Mickey Featherstone, who is easily manipulated, psychotic, and looks up to Coonan. Yeah, just FYI, first credit card in history, 1950 diners club is considered the first credit card in history. An American Express did its first one in 58.

But I guess that's just for people like, you know, eating $200 steak dinners in New York or something at that point. Yeah, it couldn't have been like something that everyone had in the 60s, could it? I don't think so. Yeah, I think cash was still. I assume by like the 70s, like people with money would have them. Yeah, that's really interesting. So, yeah, this is the time period when the Westies are really starting to form up and come together. And the name that's actually coined by police and media years later, they never actually call themselves that.

And at their max, they were actually only about 12 to 15 people. So keep all that in mind. This is around the time one of the more infamous incidents involving them happens. There's a guy named Patty Dugan, who sometimes does kidnappings with Koonin. He kills his best friend over a joke in the bar. Dugan's an addict, he's out of control Eddie and the butcher and Coonin soon kill him

and him and Eddie they decide to dismember the body this is when Coonan is said to have first uttered the phrase No Corpus DeLicti Sean am I pronouncing that right? Yeah, my Latin's a bit off these days but yeah sure So no corpus delicti no investigation

which is basically you know no face no case his niece will later testify that she saw Eddie the butcher take the head in a plastic bag down to a furnace in a basement to incinerate it. He also allegedly had a milk cart in with Dugan's genitals at a bar later that night, which is just kind of, that's just gross, man. Like, there's not even, ugh. Yeah, if you put a pair of balls in a cart on a skin milk, does that technically make it half and half? Dude, that is beneath us and beneath you. You should apologize to the listeners right now.

Yeah. In 1976, this is when Spillane is getting scared of Coonan and what he's capable of. Three of his men are killed in six months, including Eddie the Butcher. He gets out of the numbers game and Coonan gets into it. Loan sharking, extorting, his days are spent roaming the neighborhood with Mickey, collecting envelopes. Mickey also opens up an after-hour spot with Coonan's brother Jackie, who was at a prison, and ends up stabbing a patron to death. I think that's murder number four, at least, that we know of. Coonin is consolidating power. He starts having meetings with some of the Italians, including Roy DeMeo.

DeMeo is high up in the Gambino family. This is a different one of the five families. The Genovese's Ruby Stein, they're a different one. And also would eventually become infamous as the head, that's Roy, would eventually become infamous as the head of the DeMayo crew, who are said to be responsible for up the 200 murders during the time that he was running around. This is when we had that situation in the cold open, right, the three murders, and then the murder of Mickey Spillane in Queens. There's a convention center of the Jacob Javitt Center, which is still around.

It's about to break ground in Hell's Kitchen, and the Italians want a piece of the neighborhood. DeMayo apparently has that killing of Spillane done as a favor to Coonan. Right around the same time, Coonan is in debt 70K to Ruby Stein, that major loan shark that had basically taken Coonan on and taught him the ropes to the business. A bunch of other Westies are indebted to him. him too. Stein, like we said, as a major player, not the kind of got to be taken out lightly,

but Coonan and his crew kill him anyway, with help from Roy de Mayo, chop the body up and disposes of it in seven garbage bags. Unfortunately, the torso, which had been dumped in the East River, ends up washing up a few days later and Coonan laments not puncturing the lungs so it wouldn't float. All right, that's like full gold-plated pub chat father right there. So, torso's always found floating around in rivers because they don't puncture the lungs. I had no idea. That's mad. I think the lungs and the stomach, I didn't realize that our torso's always found floating in river.

Like, is that a thing? Yeah. Yeah, they were in London a few years ago for some reason. There was a famous one that was like a kid that was found floating. And they tried to find, it was called Adam and they tried to find the origins of what this torso was. And it was a kid from Nigeria or something. I don't know. But, yeah, I feel like I read that more.

than I should, which probably says a lot more about me than torsosos or rivers. Yeah, I think you want to puncture the lungs and the stomach, right? Or the intent, like, yeah, because they would fill up with gas. That's just my completely uneducated guess. This is the same as don't Instagram me crimes and always puncture the lungs of a torso that you chopped up. This is going to be one of those things where people get mad and they're like, you're a crime reporter and you don't know how to, like, what part of the body is that out that they're tort? No, I don't, I don't know that. I don't have a clue.

and if I did, I wouldn't tell you. This all happens in 1979, which is one of the craziest years in New York City ever. Like, the city is completely broke. It's a madhouse. The son of Sam is terrorizing people. The South Bronx is literally on fire. You know, the infamous the Bronx is burning line during Yankees game. And there's a massive blackout for two days that leads to violence and riots.

It is like the craziest New York summer that might possibly the city has ever had. So the Westies at that time, they might have escaped some notice with their whole murdering thing. But that changes in February 1978 when Coonin gets a message that he's been called to a sit-down with Pauli Castellano, who is the new boss of the Gambino family. The Gambino family is the largest, most powerful faction of the five families at this time, making it the most powerful organized crime group in America. And Pauly is essentially the godfather. Also, spoiler alert, he's later gunned down in front of Spark Steakhouse by John Ging, Godi's crew and possibly the most infamous mafia hit of all time, at least in New York. I've actually never been to Sparks.

I'm more of a Lugres guy, but one of these days. On this day, Castellano was at the height of his power, and the Gambinos have something like 500 soldiers, which is insane. Coonin and his crew are nervous. They think it could be retribution for the Ruby Stein hit, because remember, they did it with DeMeo, but they didn't have permission from, like, the higher-ups that Stein worked with. They all meet up in an apartment right before the city. down the whole Westies crew. They decide to send two teenagers, a relative, and her boyfriend, by the restaurant or to the

restaurant to scope it out before they get there. It's in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Kuhna and Mickey tell their crew, if we're not back in two hours, go in there blasting. They're in the apartment. All their weapons are laid out. They're loading up like a platoon. They've got grenades, machine guns, rifles, machetes even ski mess. They really thought they were going to take on the Gambinos, which would have been suicide.

Says Coon to the crew, quote, we got no choice. being called. If we don't go, we's going to get whacked. If we do go, we might still get whacked. But I swear to Christ, if we do, I want this to be the biggest fucking slaughter since the St. Valentine's Day massacre. Yeah, that is pure Rayleigh-Lot of voiceover moment. That's a good film moment. When we sell the IP for this, this is going to be the main line. I don't think anyone's coming to us for the IP for this. They're coming to teaching this. I'm sure I sold the IP 15 times over. The, uh, but Rayleigh-o de voiceovers are great. I got a friend who like with his kid,

when he's like giving him breakfast. He like narrates it and like a real-a-old thing he was telling me where he'd be like, my dad always used to give me corn pops. He's, you know, you do like the good, something you could do.

I thought it was funny. The meeting is at 7 p.m. at a restaurant called Tomasos, which is next door to the Italian social club where the Gambinos were headquartered. When they get there, Roy de Mayo ushers them into a back room, warning them not to say anything about Ruby Stein

being like, deny it, deny it. Coonin and Mickey walk into the back room where there's a dozen or so powerful members of the Gambino and Genovese families. They sit down, they eat a big Italian meal. Pauly asked about the Ruby Stein hit. Cooninin denies everything. Pauley then says, okay, you're going to work with us now.

You can use our name. We'll help you get connected with the construction and unions in house kitchen, and we are going to get 10% of your take. Also, Pauley tells them the mob is going to contract that hits to them. But if the Westies want to kill anyone, on their own, they need to clear it with them first.

This is like top-tier stuff. The Westies have reached the upper echelon of organized crime. It's such a big deal that when the cops, the NYPD first hear about it, they don't even believe it's true that Gambinos will link up with scrappers like the Westies.

Coonin and Mickey start having regular meets with the Gambinos, other made guys, de Mayo, but it's not all gravy. Coonin's guys, including Mickey, are skeptical of the Italians. They don't like them and they don't trust them. they think Coonin's wish to be in with them is making him look stupid. And another thing, the Ruby Stein hit that was supposed to have wiped out all their debts,

Cooninin is trying to collect on them now. He's also moved his family to a big house in the Jersey suburbs, and a lot of the other guys are still struggling financially. And Mickey, he doesn't like all the sit downs and meetings he needs to go to, which, you know, I get that, man, I understand. Sometimes you just want to do something. You want to have 15 meetings about it. In his book, English writes that the Italians were worried.

wary or scared of the Westies, because they were so unruly, but I kind of doubt that. For one, the DeMayo crew was actually much more violent, and like I said, the families had hundreds of soldiers. And this kind of brings me to something important to mention with how you view this story. There's dozens of articles on the Westies, but like a lot of stories like this, the information is going to come mostly from police and members of the gang turned informants. Now, there's also some undercover recordings, and T.J. English had hundreds of sources, but the primary source for his book is actually Mickey Featherstone,

which, you know, you can foreshadowing what's going to happen. So, you know, with this, when I'm talking about parts of it, you kind of have to keep that in mind, right? The only source for some of the more inside stuff, it might be Mickey and from Mickey's perspective. Yeah, fair enough. I mean, just a little tangent, but there's so much crap going on in the world.

It just seems kind of quaint to hear about murderous feuds between Irish and Italians. I don't know. It feels like more oldy-worldy, five points. it feels warm and cuddly even when there's floating torsos and balls in milk cartons. Yeah, I don't know man, the world was a pretty nasty place in the 60s

and 70s too. Especially in New York, I mean, New York was way worse, but anyway, October 78, but you know, I get what you're saying, that it's the classic old school gangster stuff. In October 78, an NYPD detective with a flare for the dramatic gives a press conference on Coon's crew

when they start digging up a lot where they get tipped off that there are two heads that are supposedly buried. They end up finding bone fragments, but it later turns out those were actually dog bones. Still, this is when the name Westies is coined

and the press start to run wild. They talk about this insanely violent Hell's Kitchen Irish mob. You know, these stories come fast. The lore starts to develop because also there weren't really that many Irish organized crime groups then. I think they were mostly gone,

so it was kind of like romanticized, I think, in a way. But at the same time, again, they had been and were still murdering people. So it's not like, you know, they weren't insanely, Yvonne. They really were, but it's kind of hard to strike a balance. Coon and Mickey end up killing a childhood friend around this time of Mickey's on

Coonin's orders over a $1,250 debt. Then Coonin blows the guy's brains out on an impulse in a bar bathroom, which is just, you know, sloppy stuff, but also they're insane. And Mickey claims that he was very much bothered by killing his childhood friend over like $1,000. But Coonin wants to send a message and his whole thing is that, like, you know, people we have a reputation and if people are scared of that reputation

it's going to make our lives a lot easier. The NYPD though is on them at this time because right around the same time two women working at a high class brothel get caught with counterfeit $100 bills at a bank

and the cops quickly ID Mickey as the guy who passed it to them. The women sort of mentioned that the guy is a tattoo of Mickey on his arm which I guess Mickey had. Again, you know, not the smartest move in the world.

And for those who don't know, counterfeiting is very bad because that's when the feds get involved and not just any fads, but the Secret Service. And, you know, back then they had a, they might have been a little better at what they, what they, what they did. Less the sake of the will. Yeah. And they have resources.

They eventually get an undercover in with Mickey who had been doing the counterfeiting as a side hustle to his Westies gig. Mickey gets raided on the counterfeit bust and then gets charged with the murder of Spillane from years back. Coon and Mickey are also charged with a different murder. Mickey pleads out to the counterfeiting. Cooninin pleads to gun possession. and the authorities are trying to get more on those murder apps, but one potential witness gets so scared that he offs himself. This is in 1979.

And the press again, they have a field day. These guys are all over the news. The tabloids like the New York Post and the Daily News, and I guess actually there were probably a dozen others during that time because, you know, print media existed. They eat it up, right? There's lots of quotes from anonymous cops on the Westies and their sick crimes. Some are inflated, but, you know, a lot of them are true.

Like they say Eddie the Butcher was linked to 30 murders when it was really like, you know, 12, which again, you know, that's still a lot of murders, you know? It's, uh, the guy's not slacking. Jimmy Breslin, who was one of the greatest columnists of all time. If you haven't read his New York Magazine article from 1969 about running for mayor with Norman Miller. I think it's called I Run to Win. You should. It's one of the best things ever written.

Anyway, he writes a sympathetic portrayal of Mickey Featherstone as this poor kid turned insane and bad and violent by Vietnam, even though, again, we know now, he saw no combat action in Vietnam. tabloids also start linking the Westies to Italian mob hits they actually had nothing to do with. It's funny because I was just reading this great shark hunt by Hunter Thompson and he mentions Mailer running in this Rolling Stone article where he tries to run for Mayor of Aspen and he kind of writes Norman Mailer off as an idiot

for going for such a big city and losing badly. I never read Brezlin's article but I don't know. This is like old school journalistic beef. It's really worth reading up on. And actually I'm going to read Breislin's article. straight after this because it sounds great. Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, they weren't really running, I think.

I think he ran with, I think it was a co-thing. Mailer and Brezna ran together. And they weren't running to, I think he calls it I run to win, but I don't think they were actually running to win. I think he admits that in the article. But I could just be making that up because I haven't read in a long time. But it's basically about how the city was failing and how the politicians had been failing it. And how they need to completely rethink what they've been.

doing and it's amazing, man. It's incredibly written. All Brezlin stuff is usually great, although he did get this really wrong. We're into 1979, 1980 now. Mickey is found not guilty of the Splain murder. Mickey and Coonan are found not guilty of another murder. Another Westie gets off on another murder charge. Another witness kills himself.

And the Westies are starting to look untouchable. They're infamous now. The lore has been created. Still, Mickey and Coonin need to do the counterfeit and gun possession sentence. as they pled to, so they both actually end up getting locked up for a few years. Coonan runs things from prison with the help of his wife, and the big thing that happens in the neighborhood is the opening of the Intrepid, which is a World War II aircraft carrier that's decommissioned and docked on the west side that has turned into an air seat

and space museum, which is still around. I saw it years ago. It's also. Still there, right? Yeah, yeah. To give you an idea of how mobbed up everything was in New York City at the time, the Westies, through the Gambinos, make a gang of cash on it and do things like control who gets hired as the ticket takers. They also skim off everything. They get kickbacks. Another union that does trucking for movie sets tries to fight back against Westies control.

The union boss even allegedly takes a hit out on Coonin, which kind of doesn't make sense because he's locked up, so I don't know if that's true. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at USAA.com slash bundle.

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Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to VANTA.com slash com. But the Westies show up to his office, they pistol whip him, they beat the crap out of him, and they threaten to kill one union member a week unless he backs down, which he does. So the Westies are getting money, right? There's kickbacks, no-show jobs, skimming, loan sharking, extortion, some members start dealing drugs, contract hits. They're apparently responsible for seven murders between 81 and 83, including one in a crowded bar where Westie pistol whips a former friend and bartender.

then sticks a gun, quote, up his rectum and pulls the trigger, which... Yeah, I mean, that's what it says, listeners. I can't even make, you know, something, something young Sean Williams back in his Berlin day's joke with that one. You know, it's just a lot. Yeah, I mean, I think you just kind of did. And our audience, which is mostly boomer evangelical Christians, are going to be rightly outraged about that. Yeah. Mickey gets out of prison in 1983.

and allegedly, well, I guess according to him, is trying to go straight. He tries to get a loan from Coonin to buy a house in the suburbs like Coonin did, but he gets turned down. Coonin says no. Mickey's also pissed because his wife and kids weren't well taken care of while he was locked up. Coonin also orders him to kill three people from prison, but he ends up saying no. Other younger shooters are taking his place in the Westies as kind of the reckless on-hinged murderer.

At this point, though, Mickey's name is so powerful, people can just use it to get what they want. So he soon gets back involved with loan sharking, money from the unions, all that. He just has to meet with people, walk up to them. And they're so scared, they basically do whatever he says. He forces one guy to give up $30,000 and his loan shark book. He's making more than 4K a week, but he's extorting people he had grown up with. He's feeling guilty and he's just pissed at at Coonan, who he thinks is like kind of, you know, not treated him well and is screwing around too much and is getting in too good with the Italians. And in December of 84, Coonin gets released and goes right back to work with the Italians, though DiMayo has been killed by his own people.

The tension in the Westies is increasing, especially because Coonin pits out a hit on another Westie that his wife had tried to cozy up to when he was locked up. He also starts trying to start legit businesses to kind of wash his money like a construction company north of the city in Tarrytown. According to Mickey, in March of 1985, he and a few Westies actually start planning to kill Coonin themselves. Then in April, there's a standard Westie's murder, but it's the first domino that sets up their fall. The victim is a union worker slash former bartender who the Westies blamed for the death of a member eight years earlier, a guy by the name of John Bochoon. The murder happens in broad daylight. The guy is shot five times by a man who gets out of a beige station wagon. Witnesses see it and the car is traced back to a place where Mickey happens to work.

It also turns out the shooter looks just like him and can be ID by witnesses. is Mickey gets arrested right away. The thing is, for the first time, like ever, Mickey's actually innocent. John Bocoon's brother, Billy, is the shooter, and he had actually wanted a disguise unknowingly that made him look just like Mickey. Well, Bokun's brother didn't know,

but another guy may have handed him to the disguise in an effort to make him look like Mickey. Either way, Mickey is arrested, but Billy Bokun, who has the same lawyer as Mickey, tearfully confesses to his lawyer at Billy's own wedding weeks later that he did it and he even offers to turn himself in. And I kind of, you know, I want you to appreciate what a wild place it is for a lawyer to be in. One of your clients is arrested for a murder, another one of your clients is done.

You can't really advise the actual killer to testify or turn himself in, right? Because you're not allowed to advise someone against their own interest, right? Yeah. The confession is privileged so they can't use it as defense unless Billy does turn himself in. I mean, it's kind of, it's crazy. Like, should, there should be an episode of this on, like, of suits, you know, with this sort of problem right here. What would Mike do? What would Harvey do? Soon enough, though, the whole neighborhood learns of it and that Mickey was innocent.

Yeah, I mean, I guess if I was a lawyer, I'd sort of throw something to the wind and go in the interest of the guy who randomly blows a lot of people's heads off over the guy who just blew one guy's head off. But it's not an ideal question to ask yourself. No, no, but probably something that defense attorneys find themselves dealing with more often than not, especially ones who work for organized crime groups. Yeah. Mickey starts thinking the whole thing is a frame-up, right? That his own people have set him up, especially when he learns Billy confessed the lawyer and that the disguise that Billy wore was picked out by another member of the Westies, a guy who was considered like his replacement for Coonan's right-hand man.

Mickey is paranoid as all hell. And for good reason, on March 28, 1986, his luck runs out and he's convicted of the murder. No witnesses get bumped off or threatened, which makes Mickey think more that the Westies leadership wanted him to be found guilty. I mean, you can kind of see where this is headed. Mickey cracks soon enough and tells the government he wants to make a deal. He agrees to plead to a lesser RICO charge, and they tell him he'll get off for the murder if he can prove his innocence.

He's also going to fill them in on everything. His wife ends up using a tape recorder from the feds and gets a few Westies to talk about how Billy had actually committed the murder. A bunch of Westies tell her about a whole lot of other crimes. It's actually a pretty wild story, like kind of insane, that she just goes and does this. I don't even think she was under the FBI's protection or their protection at this time.

It's crazy thing to do. Some of the Westies come visit Mickey in jail and he lets the feds use a secret recording as well. At that time, he gets a bunch more info. Meanwhile, the Westies are continuing to fracture with Coonin being seen as two in bed with the Italians. Castellano's been killed, so now he's dealing with John Gotti and the young gunners.

Mickey and his wife end up getting enough evidence to overturn the murder conviction and he becomes a star witness in a massive federal racket tearing case against 10 or so members of the Westies, including Coonin. Westside Khan sings Irish Lullaby is the New York Post headline, which, you know, even back then, they still had it, man. Like, that is, that's solid work.

The heat is on. The whole neighborhood is paranoid. And in December of 86, the arrests come down. There are a whole bunch of murder charges on March 26, 1987, an ambitious young attorney for the Southern District, a man known for fearlessly taking on all organized crime groups, no matter how powerful, files a superseding racketeering indictment on 10 people, which includes 16 murders with a whole bunch of witnesses, evidence, and confidential informants. And that man is, of course, that crusader against the mafia, scourge of all criminals in

New York, Rudy Giuliani. It's true young people. He wasn't always like a mad magazine cartoon. The guy put away the mob. Truly, one of the greatest narrative arcs of our time, Giuliani. It's, uh, it's, yeah, it does it. make, uh,

I mean, they were still lead into gasoline back then, right? Who knows? The effect that has on you after 30 years,

but that's, um, it's a wild one, man, especially when you read about the stuff he was doing in the 80s. Oh,

yeah, it's mad. Yeah. There's a great scene in the trial. This is reported by UPI, uh, when another Westie member

who turned witness is telling a story about how Koonan dismembered a murder victim and was saving his hands in a freezer so his fingerprints could be used on a weapon in a future planned head,

which is kind of, kind of genius. Quote, you say you're not a violent person, yet you took part in dismembering a human being, the defense attorney asked. I didn't say I saw him getting dismembered, Lusich replied. How did you know? Shargle asked. Every time I looked in the bathtub, he was getting shorter, Lusich answered. The courtroom erupted in howls of laughter, with the exception of a few jurors who looked uncomfortable. Jesus Christ.

Do you know, senses of humor were a little different back then. get away a lot more. On February 24th, 1988, every single person except for one guy is found guilty and they all get sentenced to football numbers, including Coonin, who gets 70 years. He recently was in the news last year asking to get let out early,

saying he was a changed man and making the point that House Kitchen has genderified and he didn't have any soldiers left in the neighborhood. But he was denied. And while the neighborhood has gendered for sure, you know, a ninth app still gets a little dicey sometimes. Port Authority, too. You can make a killing on fentanyl if he wanted to.

some of the last, you know, remnants of old New York left there. Making his family go into witness protection, he actually gets out, I think, at early 89, pretty solid for killing a whole bunch of people. Let this be a lesson, listeners. Start snitching. Definitely do it before your partners do. So, um, you know, lower a reality.

Here is how the New York Times describes them at one point. Quote, quote, courtroom machinations earned Mr. Coon and Mr. Featherstone a neighborhood reputation of invincibility. Moreover, by the late 1970s exaggerated yarns of the Westies exploits as the new murder ink were fed to the press and television by ambitious detectives, lawyers, and prosecutors. In fact, a detective invented the gang's name. Befogged by alcohol and drugs, most Westies led a scrably existence as criminals. Except for Mr. Coonin, who forged a link with the big boys in the mafia, including the reputed crime boss, John Gotti,

none of them prospered much from their underworld endeavors. But again, like, they did really murder a whole bunch of people in really gruesome ways, sometimes for very little reason. And they chop them up. So I kind of feel like, you know, the reputation was deserved. And Mickey was pulling it at one point, a minimum of 4K a week at like off one thing, which in the early 80s, you know, that's pretty good money. How has Scorsese not done a movie of this? It's insane. Like, how is this not a big, massive Hollywood film?

I mean, there's been a lot of all the Irish crime stories take place. in South Boston, all the movies. And I think there was one loosely based. Like I said, Sleepers has elements of this. There's one called State of Grace that came out the same day as Goodfellas, I believe, that got good reviews. But I watched it and I was kind of bored of it. But it's out there.

So I don't know. I'm not sure. But I mean, sleepers definitely rules. So there's that going on. Yeah. After this trial, the Westies are said to be no more. But so-called new members are claimed every once in a while. I'll go through that and actually more.

We've run past our time here, including there's some Jimmy Hoffer rumors. I'm going to put that in a bonus episode that you can sign up for on Spotify. iTunes are at patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. State of Grace, cast, Sean Penn, Gary Oldman,

Ed Harris, Robin Wright, John C. Riley, John Torturo. Yeah, incredible cast, I'm telling you. Sunk. Boring movie. Great reviews, but you can't go up against Goodfellas. Come on.

No. All right. That's it. Next week. Listen. More. Tell people. That's it.

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