Westies

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Westies
Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States[1]
Years activeMid-1960s–1988
TerritoryManhattan and New Jersey[2]
EthnicityIrish American[2]
Membership (est.)15 members and 100 associates[2]
ActivitiesRacketeering, assault, burglary, kidnapping, illegal gambling, fraud, extortion, drug trafficking, counterfeiting, robbery, murder[1]
AlliesGambino crime family[1]
RivalsMickey Spillane's gang[1]
Notable membersJames Coonan
Edward Cummiskey
Mickey Featherstone
James McElroy
Boško Radonjić

The Westies were a

Italian-American Mafia and operated out of the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan.[3]

According to crime author

T.J. English
, "Although never more than twelve to twenty members—depending on who was in or out of jail at any given time— the Westies became synonymous with the last generation of Irish in the birthplace of the
Irish Mob."[4] According to the NYPD Organized Crime Squad and the FBI, the Westies were responsible for 60–100 murders between 1968 and 1986.[citation needed]

History

Spillane years

In the early 1960s,

Hell's Kitchen since gang leaders fled the area in the early 1950s to avoid prosecution. A mobster from Queens, named Hughie Mulligan
, had been running Hell's Kitchen; Spillane, a native, was his apprentice until assuming leadership.

Spillane sent flowers to neighbors in the hospital and provided turkeys to needy families during

loansharking. Loansharking led to assault, and Spillane had burglary arrests as well.[citation needed] However, among all his criminal activities, the most audacious was his "snatch" racket (kidnapping and holding local businessmen and members of other crime organizations for ransom).[citation needed
]

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 gang's 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

]

Irish–Italian war of the 1970s

In the 1970s, the Irish mob saw an increased threat from the Italian Mafia as the

Tom "the Greek" Kapatos, three of Spillane's top lieutenants.[5]

In 1977, Spillane was assassinated by

Jimmy Coonan, who wanted to take over from Spillane. Coonan recruited the infamous DeMeo after a deal was struck between the two. By rubbing out Spillane, DeMeo's crew would then do business with his successor. DeMeo initially came into contact with Coonan after the latter had murdered and dismembered loan shark Ruby Stein.[6]

Spillane–Coonan wars

The war began when an 18-year old Coonan swore revenge against Spillane, following the Spillane-initiated kidnapping and pistol whipping of Coonan's father. In 1966, Coonan fired a machine gun at Spillane and his associates from atop a Hell's Kitchen tenement building. Although Coonan wounded no one, Spillane understood that the younger hoodlum was not to be taken lightly. Spillane went to Coonan's father, slapped him around and told him to get his son under control. Coonan was imprisoned for a short period for murder and kidnapping charges that were pleaded down to Class C Manslaughter. He was released in late 1971 and continued his war with the Westside Gang.

Trouble with the Genovese family

Hell's Kitchen was no longer safe for Spillane and his family, and he moved to the then-Irish working-class neighborhood of

Commission, Spillane was still viewed as the Irish Mob boss on the Westside, putting the Javits Convention Center construction site under his control. Anthony Salerno, a high-ranking member of the Genovese crime family
, wanted the center for himself and reached an agreement with Jimmy Coonan. If Coonan became boss, Salerno would run the construction site and give Coonan a taste of the proceeds.

Salerno then reached out to Buffalo Crime Family associate and freelance

Tom Kapatos, and Edward Cummiskey. Cummiskey had apparently switched sides to the Coonan camp after they both killed and dismembered Patrick "Paddy" Dugan for killing Cummiskey's best friend,[3] but Salerno and Sullivan were not aware of the switch. Devaney and Cummiskey were killed in late 1976, and Kapatos was killed in January 1977. Spillane was out of the picture, and Coonan was the undisputed boss of Hell's Kitchen. It was felt that Spillane still had to die. Roy DeMeo, a Gambino crime family soldier, murdered Spillane as a favor to Coonan. Mickey Featherstone
stood trial for the murder and was found not guilty.

Coonan and Featherstone

During the late 1970s, Coonan tightened the alliance between the Westies and the Gambinos, then run by Paul Castellano. Coonan's main contact was Roy DeMeo. In 1979 both Coonan and Featherstone were acquitted of the murder of a bartender, Harold Whitehead. Another Westie (and top enforcer), James McElroy, was acquitted of the murder of a Teamster in 1980.

Although 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 West Side. After DeMeo himself was murdered, Coonan's Gambino connection became Daniel Marino, a capo from Brooklyn. Coonan eventually interacted directly with John Gotti, who took over the Gambinos after Castellano's murder in December 1985. Gotti appointed Joe Watts as the liaison to the Westies. From time to time, the Westies worked for the Gambinos as a contract killer squad.

Featherstone was convicted of murder in early 1986 and began cooperating with the government in hopes of getting the conviction overturned, and because he believed the rest of the Westies had framed him for the murder. The information he and his wife Sissy provided, and the recordings they helped make, achieved this aim. In September 1986 the prosecutor who oversaw Featherstone's conviction told the presiding judge that post-conviction investigation had revealed that Featherstone was innocent. The judge 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

loan-sharking
and drug related charges.

The Yugo era

By the early 1990s, the old demographic of the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood was disappearing. The

Bosko Radonjich, an American-Serbian nationalist and onetime anti-communist started his Westies affiliation as a low-level associate of Jimmy Coonan in 1983.[7] He became the boss of the Westies when Kelly went on the lam and was instrumental in the "fixing" of John Gotti's 1986 racketeering trial.[8]

Around 1992, Radonjich fled the country to avoid

U.S. Customs officials during a stopover in Miami, Florida, in 1999. However, Radonjich was released when the main witness in the case, Sammy Gravano, was deemed unreliable. Radonjich returned to his native Serbia where he operated a casino and nightclub until he died in 2011 from poor health.[8] In 1992, a man named Brian Bentley was identified as a member of the Westies and was implicated in a burglary ring responsible for victimizing over 1,000 businesses throughout Manhattan. When Michael G. Cherkasky, chief of the investigations division of the district attorney's office, was asked how much still remained of the Westies, he said: "Too much," and that "it's not the end" of the gang."[9]

21st Century

For nearly two decades following the end of the "Yugo Era", there was little mention of the activities or even continued existence of The Westies. But in 2012, the New York Post reported that the Westies resurfaced under the leadership of John Bokun, who was caught, along with accomplices, smuggling marijuana into the US.[10] The New York Times noted that, aside from being the nephew of former Westies, Bokun had no connection to any group using that name.[11] However, "The Westies" is a title created by members of the press in the mid-1980s to refer to the gang; as pointed out by English, at no point did members of "The Westies" ever adopt the label or refer to themselves as such.[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f United States of America v. James Coonan, Kevin Kelly, James McElroy, Kenneth Shannon, William Bokun, John Halo, Edna Coonan, Richard Ritter, Thomas Collins, Florence Collins Justia (February 4, 1991) Archived October 26, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ a b c The Westies: Last of the Irish-American Mobsters Rick Hampson, Associated Press (December 17, 1986) Archived January 20, 2022, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ .
  4. . Retrieved 1 December 2011.
  5. .
  6. ^ Capeci, Gerry. Murder Machine. Penguin Publishing, 1993.
  7. ^ Hevesi, Dennis (9 April 2011). "Bosko Radonjich, Gambino Family Ally, Dies at 67". The New York Times.
  8. ^ a b Jaccarino, Mike (10 April 2011). "Bosko Radonjich, former John Gotti henchman & ex-Westies crime boss known as 'Yugo', dies in Belgrade". Daily News. New York. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
  9. ^ Pérez-Peña, Richard (14 November 1992). "3 Arrests Hit Burglary Ring In Manhattan". The New York Times.
  10. ^ Maddux, Mitchel (20 February 2012). "Westies fly high: gang re-emerges moving weed in jets". New York Post. Retrieved 28 November 2016.
  11. ^ Goldstein, Joseph (3 December 2012). "Gang Said to Have Been Vanquished in '80s Makes Cameo in Extortion Case". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 November 2016.
  12. ^ "The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob by T.J. English".

Further reading