Westies

The Westies are a predominantly Irish American organized crime gang hailing from the Hell's Kitchen area of the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. They were most influential in the period 1965 - 1986. Though first active in the 1960s, the Westies of New York did not get their nickname until 1977, from a detective investigating the murder of Genovese crime family-affiliated loanshark Charles "Ruby" Stein.

According to crime author T.J. English, "Although never comprised of more than twelve to twenty four members- "The Westies managed to control Organized Crime on New York's "West Side", for over 20 years, and were often more feared by other criminals then even the Mafia.

The most notorious Westie figures were Michael "Mickey" Spillane, James "Jimmy" Coonan and Francis "Mickey" Featherstone.

Spillane years

In the early 1960's, Mickey Spillane, (no relation to the author of the same name), had stepped into a power vacuum that had existed in Hell's Kitchen since gang leaders had fled the area in the early 1950's to avoid prosecution. A mobster from Queens named Hughie Mulligan had been running Hell's Kitchen since then; Spillane, a Hell's Kitchen native, was his apprentice until inheriting the fief.

Spillane ran the area with a "Godfather" style, sending flowers to neighbors in the hospital and providing turkeys to needy families during Thanksgiving in addition to running gambling enterprises such as bookmaking and policy, accompanied inevitably by loansharking. Loansharking naturally leads to assault, and Spillane had burglary arrests as well. However, among all his criminal activities, it was a mistake in his "snatch" racket (kidnapping and holding local businessmen and members of other crime organizations for ransom) which probably contributed most to his eventual downfall.

Nonetheless, he was able to add to his neighborhood prominence by marrying Maureen McManus, a daughter of the prestigious McManus family which had run the Midtown Democratic Club since 1905. The union of political power with criminal activity enhanced the Westies' ability to control union jobs and labor racketeering, moving away from the declining waterfront and more strongly into construction jobs and service work at the New York Coliseum, Madison Square Garden, and, later, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

Spillane-Coonan Wars

In the mid-1960s, Spillane attracted the negative attention of New York's Italian mobster community when he "snatched" a numbers operator named Eli Zicardi, who worked for Fat Tony Salerno, boss of the Genovese Crime Family. Zicardi's ransom was paid, but Zicardi vanished. Spillane also had internal problems. A young man from the neighborhood, Jimmy Coonan, had vowed revenge for Spillane's snatch of his father, an accountant whom Spillane pistol-whipped before his release after the ransom was paid.

By 1966, when Coonan was only 18, the Coonan-Spillane Wars were in full swing, with murders, beatings, "snatchings" and other acts of vengeance forcing the entire neighborhood to take sides or risk retribution. Coonan was eventually imprisoned for a brief time, but was released at the age of 25 and immediately resumed his criminal career, opening a bar and becoming a prominent neighborhood loanshark. He chose a troubled 24 year old Vietnam War veteran named Mickey Featherstone as his bodyguard and right-hand man.

By the mid-1970s, Spillane had moved out of Hell's Kitchen but Coonan had not, and had steadily encroached on the criminal activities which provided much of the Westies' income under Spillane's rule. Spillane was murdered in front of his apartment in Woodside, Queens the night of May 13, 1977. Featherstone stood trial for, but was not convicted of, the murder, which permitted Coonan to take over. According to T.J. English, Featherstone had nothing to do with it; the murder was performed as a favor to Coonan by the Gambino crime family, cementing the Westies' ties to existing Italian crime syndicates and resolving the tension between Spillane and the Italians after the unsuccessful ransom of Eli Zacardi.

Coonan and Featherstone

During the late 1970s, Coonan tightened his alliance between the Westies and the Gambino organization then run by Paul Castellano. Coonan's main contact was Roy DeMeo, who had brought him word of Spillane's assassination. In the late seventies, the brutality of Coonan and Featherstone ensured a stranglehold on the organized crime scene in Hell's Kitchen. In 1979, both Coonan and Featherstone were acquitted of the murder of a bartender. Another Westie, Jimmy McElroy was acquitted of the murder of a Teamster in 1980.

Even as both Westies leaders were imprisoned in 1980, (Coonan on gun possession charges, Featherstone on a federal counterfeiting rap), the gambling, loansharking and union shakedowns continued on the streets of the West Side. After DeMeo himself was murdered, Coonan's Gambino Family connection became Danny Marino, a capo in Brooklyn. Coonan eventually interacted directly with the don, John Gotti, who took over the Gambino Family after the murder of Castellano in December of 1985. From time to time, even briefly into the Gotti regime immediately before their collapse, the Westies worked for the Gambino Family as a contract murder squad.

Bad blood between Coonan and Featherstone, in part due to Featherstone's distaste for Coonan's Italian mob connections, eventually led to Featherstone being framed for the murder of Michael Holly, a construction worker and ex-criminal who was a known enemy of the Westies gang. The murder was committed in April, 1985 by Westie member Billy Bokun while wearing a wig and moustache to impersonate Featherstone, and renting a car identical to the one Featherstone was driving.

Featherstone was convicted in early 1986, and began cooperating with the government in hopes of getting the murder conviction overturned. The information he and his wife Sissy provided, and the recordings they helped make, achieved this aim. In September of 1986, the prosecutor who oversaw Featherstone's conviction in the Holly frame told the presiding judge that post-conviction investigation had revealed Featherstone was innocent of that particular crime. The judge immediately overturned the verdict.

At that point, the information provided by the Featherstones resulted in the arrest of Coonan and several other Westies on state charges of murder and other crimes. Shortly afterward, federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani announced a devastating RICO indictment against Coonan and others for criminal activities going back twenty years. Featherstone testified in open court for four weeks in the trial which began in September of 1987 and concluded with major convictions in 1988. Jimmy Coonan was sentenced to sixty years in prison on assorted charges. Almost all of the other gang members received stiff sentences.

The NYPD Organized Crime Bureau, the FBI, and other organized crime experts, believe that the Westies murdered 60-100 people between 1965 and 1985. During this twenty year period, the Westies were considered one of the most brutal, and feared crime groups in New York.

Westies Gang Members

It is said that there were never more then a dozen to 24 men in the gang, yet it is still hard to classify who was an "official" gang member. This is a list under Jimmy Coonan's reign: James "Jimmy" Coonan, Francis "Mickey" Featherstone, Eddie "the Butcher" Cummiskey, Kevin Kelly, Kenny Shannon, Billy Bokun, James McElroy, Richie Ryan, Tommy Collins, Richard "Mugsy" Ritter, Patrick "Paddy" Dugan, Denis Curley, Tommy Hess, William "Rabbit" Hall

Murders

Bobby Lagville
Jerry Morales
Mike "the Yugo" Yelovich
Paddy Dugan
Charles "Ruby" Stein
Walter Curtis killed by Eddie Cummiskey
Rickey Tassiello killed by Jimmy Coonan
William Walker killed by Jimmy McElroy
Harold "Whitey" Whitehead killed by Jimmy Coonan
Henry Diaz
Tommy Hess killed by Richie Ryan
Tommy "Butter" Moresco
Vincent Leone killed by Kevin Kelly
Michael Holly killed by Billy Bokun

Kevin Kelly and Kenny Shannon

In the late 1980s Kevin Kelly and his sidekick, Kenny Shannon, became the most active racketeers on the West Side. Sports gambling and dealing coke to the young professionals on the East Side became their primary rackets. But after a while on the lam, they could no longer take the heat, so they surrendered to the authorities. Rudolph Giuliani, who was a federal prosecutor at the time, claimed they were the last ruling body of the Westies. He was wrong.

The Yugo and the New Era

By the early '90s, the old neighborhood had disappeared. The blue-collar Irish-American residents had been replaced by wealthy yuppies and a mix of Hispanic and black residents. With this demographics change came a decrease in street crime and a new name for the gentrified neighborhood, Clinton. But the Westies weren’t dead yet.

A Serbian born thug, Bosco “The Yugo” Radonjich started out as a low-level associate of Jimmy Coonan, but in the absence of the old leaders, he was able to take control over the still predominantly Irish-American gang. Among his underlings, was Brian Bentley, an Irish-American who used two Hispanic associates to execute a long-lasting burglary ring until his arrest in the early ‘90s. When, the law enforcement official who had been tracking Bentley was asked how much of the Westies remained by a journalist, he replied “Too much”. Around this time, the kingpin, Radonjich fled the country to avoid jail time. These occurrences bring the changing face of the Westies into focus.

The Modern Westies

To this day, small groups of loosely allied Irish-American career criminals continue to control the majority of the rackets on the West Side. But, like Hell's Kitchen, they are, by no means, what they used to be. Less powerful and less violent, along with a lower profile and a more willingness to initiate other ethnicities are the key differences between the old Hell's Kichen racketeers and the modern day Westies.

Popular culture

The 2002 film Gangs of New York directed by Martin Scorsese provided a riveting, lightly fictionalized history of the Civil War-era origin of the competing Irish immigrant crime crews which dominated Five Points. The movie explains the social tradition of enduring, if not actually shielding, Irish gangs in Manhattan's Irish neighborhoods, which led to the eventual ascendancy of the Westies in the mid-to-late 20th Century.

The 1990 movie State of Grace, also paints a largely fictionalized portrait of the Westies as they were under Jimmy Coonan. The film centers around the return to the neighborhood of an undercover cop who infiltrates the gang and finds himself torn betweeen the neighborhood code of silence and the badge he wears.

On March 17, 2006, The History Channel premiered a two-hour history of Irish-American organized crime which prominently profiled the Westies. Titled Paddy Whacked, it featured narrative interviews with crime historians such as T.J. English, author of a book by the same name, and Rose Keefe.

In the 2001 John Favreau film "Made" the lead characters are assaulted by Westies while acting as hired muscle by a black gang in a coke deal.

References

The Westies, T. J. English (1991) St Martin's Paperbacks ISBN 0312924291

Paddy Whacked, T.J. English (2005) Regan Books ISBN 0060590025