Michael J. Spillane (July 13, 1933 – May 13, 1977) was an Irish-American mobster who controlled
Hell's Kitchen
Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton, is a neighborhood on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is considered to be bordered by 34th Street (or 41st Street) to the south, 59th Street to the north, Eighth Avenue to the ea ...
in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. Spillane, the so-called “Gentleman Gangster", was a marked contrast to the violent
Westies
The Westies were a New York City-based Irish American organized crime gang, responsible for racketeering, drug trafficking, and contract killing. They were partnered with the Italian-American Mafia and operated out of the Hell's Kitchen neighb ...
mob members who succeeded him in Hell's Kitchen.
Life
Spillane was born on July 13, 1933, to Michael Anthony Spillane and Margaret Curran. At 16 or 17, he attempted to rob a movie theater, but was shot by a police officer. He spent four years in prison.
After his release from prison, Spillane started as a
numbers runner for various
organized crime
Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...
figures in Hell's Kitchen. In 1960, Mickey took over the rackets left to him by his predecessor
Hughie Mulligan
Hughie Mulligan (died 1973) was a New York mobster and bookmaker who headed criminal activities of the "Irish Mob" in Hell's Kitchen during the 1950s. His protégés included Jimmy Burke, an associate of the Lucchese crime family, and his eventua ...
. He married Maureen McManus, the daughter of the powerful Hell's Kitchen Democratic district leader Eugene McManus.
Though Italian mobsters dominated organized crime in the city, the Italian mob stayed out of Hell's Kitchen while Spillane was the boss. Often, Spillane would kidnap members of the Italian Mafia and hold them for ransom to raise money for his operations. Although he ran the rackets such as gambling and loansharking, he never allowed the sale of drugs.
It was Spillane's refusal to allow the Italian mobsters to participate in the rackets in Hell's Kitchen and along the west side of Manhattan that led to his downfall.
The
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center was being built on Spillane's westside.
The amount of money the new convention center was going to generate was enormous. Coupled with the amount Spillane was already generating from
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, colloquially known as The Garden or by its initials MSG, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in New York City. It is located in Midtown Manhattan between Seventh and Eighth avenues from 31st to 33rd Street, above Pennsylva ...
, the Hudson River waterfront and the local unions and Spillane would have been powerful enough to challenge the Italians for control of the city. So began the infamous Irish-Italian Mob War of 1970s.
Irish-Italian Mob War
In the 1970s, under Spillane, the Irish mob became organized and expanded their control out of Hell's Kitchen to most of the west side of Manhattan. The Italian Mafia, seeing this as a threat, demanded involvement in the soon-to-be-built
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The convention center was being constructed in the Chelsea neighborhood of NYC just south of Hell's Kitchen. Spillane refused to allow any involvement by the Italians. The Italian gangsters greatly outnumbered the members of the Irish mob, but Spillane was successful in keeping control of the convention center. The Italians, frustrated and embarrassed by their defeat to Spillane and the Irish gangsters, responded by hiring a rogue Irish-American hitman named
Joseph "Mad Dog" Sullivan to assassinate
Tom Devaney
Tom Devaney (died July 20, 1976) was a New York mobster and an enforcer to Mickey Spillane during the 1960s and 70s. As Spillane's chief lieutenant, Devaney played a leading role in the growing animosity between Spillane and the Genovese crime f ...
,
Eddie "the Butcher" Cummiskey, and
Tom "the Greek" Kapatos, three of Spillane's chief lieutenants. By the mid-1970s, Spillane had moved his family out of Hell's Kitchen to
Woodside, Queens
Woodside is a residential and commercial neighborhood in the western portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It is bordered on the south by Maspeth, on the north by Astoria, on the west by Sunnyside, and on the east by Elmhurst, J ...
, because of threats of violence against his children.
In 1966, a young upstart named
Jimmy Coonan
James Michael Coonan (born December 21, 1946), nicknamed "Jimmy C", is an Irish-American mobster and racketeer from Manhattan, New York who, from approximately 1977 to 1988, served as the boss of the Westies gang, an Irish mob group based in He ...
began slowly muscling in on Spillane's territory. Ultimately, Coonan was sent to prison for ten years in 1967 for homicide. When he was released from prison, Coonan sought to align himself with the
Gambino crime family
The Gambino crime family (pronounced ) is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the Ame ...
through an up-and-coming mobster from
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, named
Roy DeMeo. This would mark the beginning of the end for the Irish mob, as after Spillane's death, Coonan would eventually work for the Gambinos.
Death
On May 13, 1977, Spillane, aged 43, was killed outside his apartment in Queens. It has long been rumored that the
DeMeo crew
Roy Albert DeMeo (; September 7, 1940 – January 10, 1983) was an Italian-American mobster in the Gambino crime family of New York City. He headed a group referred to as the "DeMeo crew", which became notorious for the large number of murders ...
murdered Spillane as a favor to Coonan, who subsequently took over as the boss of the Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob.
Spillane is buried in
Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York.
Family
Spillane had three children. Michael (Mickey), Robert and Denise. Robert, an actor, fell six stories to his death on July 10, 2010, in Manhattan, New York, when he leaned against his apartment window screen.
The screen gave way while Robert was calling his brother.
Mickey Spillane owns the bar in Hell's Kitchen called "Mickey Spillane's Hells Kitchen" on 49th Street and 9th Avenue.
In popular culture
Mickey Spillane is portrayed by Mark Noonan in a season one episode of the
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
television series ''
The Deuce''.
See also
*
List of unsolved murders
These lists of unsolved murders include notable cases where victims were murdered in unknown circumstances.
* List of unsolved murders (before 1900)
* List of unsolved murders (1900–1979)
* List of unsolved murders (1980–1999)
* List of unsol ...
References
Books
*Clark, Neil G. ''Dock Boss: Eddie McGrath and the West Side Waterfront''. Barricade Books, 2017.
*English, T. J. ''The Westies''. St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1991.
*English, T. J. ''Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster''. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spillane, Mickey
1933 births
1977 deaths
1977 murders in the United States
20th-century American criminals
American gangsters
DeMeo Crew victims
Male murder victims
Murdered American gangsters of Irish descent
People from Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
People murdered by the Gambino crime family
People murdered in New York City
Deaths by firearm in Queens, New York
Unsolved murders in the United States
American twins
Westies (New York gang)
Criminals from Manhattan
Gangsters from New York City
Burials at Calvary Cemetery (Queens)