Edward "Eddie The Butcher" Cummiskey Jr. (

1934 Events January–February * January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established. * January 15 – The 8.0 Nepal–Bihar earthquake strikes Nepal and Bihar with a maxi ...

Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan 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 ...

to August 20, 1976

Chelsea, Manhattan Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The area's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, the Hudson River and West Street to the west, and Sixth Avenue to the east, with its northe ...

) was a New York mobster who served as a mentor to

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 ...

, leader of

the 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 nei ...

. Cummiskey is reputed to have shown Coonan how to dismember and dispose of murder victims by scattering their remains into the waters around the

sewage treatment Sewage treatment (or domestic wastewater treatment, municipal wastewater treatment) is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable for discharge to the surrounding e ...

plant operated by the

New York City Department of Environmental Protection The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is the department of the government of New York City that manages the city's water supply and works to reduce air, noise, and hazardous materials pollution. Under a 1.3 billion do ...

Randalls and Wards Islands Randalls Island (sometimes called Randall's Island) and Wards Island are conjoined islands, collectively called Randalls and Wards Islands, in New York County, New York City,

, notably in the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

. Cummiskey was murdered by hitman Joseph Sullivan on August 20, 1976, in a bar.

Early life

Edward was born in 1934. The '' New York Daily News'' August 23, 1976 death notice for Cummiskey reports "Edward was the son of Edward Cummiskey Sr. and Mary Cummiskey nee Hyndes. He was the brother of Margaret Kagabines, Elaine McCue, Joan Ferrick, Patricia Baeza, Bernard, Robert, Lawrence and Paul. Growing up in Hell's Kitchen he played hockey with many future Westies-aligned criminals at Hell's Kitchen Park and boxed at

Boys & Girls Clubs of America Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) is a national organization of local chapters which provide voluntary after-school programs for young people. The organization, which holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code, h ...

and eventually started burglarizing commercial buildings in

Lower East Side, Manhattan The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

and cargo from warehouses in West Side, Manhattan. He was a high school drop out, like many of the Westies. At the time of his death he was married to Shirley Forstmann and father of three- Tammy Ann, Clifford and Terrence." T.J. English described Cummiskey as, "curly black hair, piercing blue eyes, and the cockiness of a bantam rooster, Cummiskey looked and sounded like a gangster from the 1920s". At thirty-nine years old, he had already been convicted of assault and robbery and had been sent to

Attica Correctional Facility Attica Correctional Facility is a maximum security campus New York State prison in the Town of Attica, New York, operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. It was constructed in the 1930s in response ...

Attica, New York Attica is a town in Wyoming County, New York, United States. The population was 7,702 as of 2010. The Town of Attica is on the northern boundary of the county and contains part of a village also named Attica (the northern part of the village i ...

and at 37 was witness to the

Attica Prison riot The Attica Prison Riot, also known as the Attica Prison Rebellion, the Attica Uprising, or the Attica Prison Massacre, took place at the state prison in Attica, New York; it started on September 9, 1971, and ended on September 13 with the high ...

September 9, 1971 during his incarceration. He had also spent almost a year on the FBI most wanted fugitive list after being a stowaway on an

International Longshoremen's Association The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) is a North American labor union representing longshore workers along the East Coast of the United States and Canada, the Gulf Coast, the Great Lakes, Puerto Rico, and inland waterways. The ILA h ...

freighter to Itaguaí,

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

to avoid a murder charge. He would usually tell neighborhood youths about his criminal escapades from his violent past interjected with humor that left his audience laughing. He allegedly murdered Mike " The Yugo" Yelovich claiming he had to because Yelovich had accidentally shot Cummiskey in the

shin bone The tibia (; ), also known as the shinbone or shankbone, is the larger, stronger, and anterior (frontal) of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates (the other being the fibula, behind and to the outside of the tibia); it connects ...

with a rifle. He was a habituate of the Sunbrite Bar on 10th Avenue and 50th in

and The Market Diner in

. His son Clifford was charged and later found not guilty of being involved in a drunken bar brawl on September 21, 2009, in Hell's Kitchen. A longtime gangster of the Manhattan's Westside ghetto known as Hell's Kitchen, Cummiskey served under

Mickey Spillane Frank Morrison Spillane (; March 9, 1918July 17, 2006), better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American crime novelist, whose stories often feature his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have ...

following his release from prison. He was allegedly involved in the kidnapping of

Genovese crime family The Genovese crime family, () also sometimes referred to as the Westside, is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City and New Jersey as part of the American M ...

bookmaker Paul (Eli) Ziccardi as well as later participating in the gang war between Spillane and Coonan during the mid-1960s. While serving time in an upstate New York prison, Cummiskey learned the trade of butchery and became a butcher with the

Amalgamated Meat Cutters The Amalgamated Meat Cutters (AMC), officially the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, 1897–1979, was a labor union that represented retail and packinghouse workers. In 1979, the AMCBW merged with the Retail Clerks I ...

, allowing him to take advantage of his sentence to perfect a new and gruesome murder method. During the early 1970s, Cummiskey took on a young protégé by the name of James "Jimmy C" Coonan, a violent younger generation Irish hoodlum who wanted to take out the old-timer Mickey Spillane. Coonan had a following amongst the younger Irish in the neighborhood (including Billy Beattie, Billy Bokun, Kevin Kelly, Jackie Coonan, Eddie Coonan,

Mickey Featherstone Francis T. "Mickey" Featherstone (born September 2, 1948) is a former Irish American mobster and member of the Westies, an organized crime syndicate from Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan in New York City, led by James Coonan. Featherstone committed sev ...

James McElroy James "Jimmy Mac" McElroy (1945 - 2011) was an Irish American mobster and racketeer from Manhattan, New York who was an enforcer for The Westies, a criminal organization that operated out of Hell's Kitchen. Biography Jimmy McElroy was born ...

, Joey Schultz, Richie Ryan and Tommy Hess) as well as earning the respect of some old timers such as Tommy Collins, who shifted their allegiance to Coonan from Spillane. It was not long before the feared Cummiskey favored working for Coonan over Spillane.

Curley murder

Two of Coonan's hoods were Dennis "Rhinestone Cowboy" Curley and Patrick (Padd)y Dugan, both lifelong best friends. On August 25, 1975, Curley jokingly pulled a gun on Dugan while the two were drinking in a local pub. Dugan took the jest as a personal insult and stormed out on his friend. Later that evening, Paddy Dugan came across Dennis Curley walking around the streets of Hell's Kitchen and shot Curley twice in the head, killing him instantly. This murder between friends rocked the entire neighborhood, violent as it was known for being. Eddie Cummiskey was among those unhappy about this killing. Curley was like a younger brother to Cummiskey, as both had started out as small-time Irish hoods in Hell's Kitchen. However, Cummiskey was part of the Spillane crew and Dugan was part of the Coonan crew, and Spillane forbade violence against the Coonan gang unless they struck against his men first.

Cummiskey and the Westies

Coonan, looking for a more feared and respected gangster like Cummiskey on his side, decided to use Dugan to lure in Cummiskey. Coonan and Cummiskey soon became known associates, as Cummiskey taught Coonan the "tricks of the trade". This new friendship was not to Spillane's liking; however, he did not act on his anger as he did not yet want to risk severing ties with Cummiskey, one of his heaviest hitters. Almost three months after the Curley murder on November 17, 1975, Coonan and Cummiskey called Paddy Dugan in under the pretense of a hit against the Spillane crew, claiming they needed Dugan to be the wheelman in the murder. However, the two soon proceeded with their real plan by brutally murdering and butchering Dugan. Cummiskey, the so-called "Butcher of Hell's Kitchen" taught young Coonan the "art" of body dismemberment, using Paddy Dugan as the textbook. Coonan's niece Alberta Sachs was party to the murder, providing the knives and helping with the cleanup. The following day, Coonan and Cummiskey went out for a drink with Billie Beattie at the Sunbrite Bar. Allegedly, they brought the head of Dugan with them, set it down on the bar stool, ordered his favorite whiskey, lit one of his cigarettes and put it in his mouth. They are reputed to have said that "Although he fucked up, he was still a good Irishman". Beattie was then instructed to go over to Dugan's apartment and bring down the carton of milk from the refrigerator. Upon his return, Coonan and Cummiskey instructed him to leave the bar and get rid of the contents of the carton. According to lore, the carton contained Dugan's penis, which was later rumored to have been placed in a pickle jar and kept in a refrigerator.

Death

Cummiskey would further himself from the Spillane-led faction of the Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob known as The Spillane Gang and become more and more a member and follower of the young Jimmy Coonan. Then, it was finally time to begin building the Jacob Javits Center in Hell's Kitchen, which would turn into a tremendous money maker. Because the construction site was in Hell's Kitchen that made it Mickey Spillane's territory, but, the Genovese family front boss Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno did not like that, so, he sent a freelance Irish hit man from Queens by name of Joseph "Mad Dog" Sullivan to get rid of some of Spillane's main men. Although reportedly on good relations with both Spillane and Coonan (despite rumors of Cummiskey defecting to the Westies), he was shot at point blank range and killed by Joseph "Mad Dog" Sullivan while drinking at the Sunbrite bar on August 20, 1976. His death would be one of many ordered by Salerno seeking to eliminate high ranking and veteran members of Spillane's organization. His wake was held at the former Buckley Funeral Home at 445 West 43rd Street (now Crestwood Funeral Home and Cremation Services) in

and the funeral was held at Holy Cross Church (Manhattan) and he was buried in

Saint Raymond's Cemetery (Bronx) Saint Raymond's Cemetery is a Roman Catholic cemetery at 2600 Lafayette Avenue in the Throggs Neck and Schuylerville, Bronx, Schuylerville sections of the Bronx, New York City, United States. The cemetery is composed of two separate locations: the ...

References

*English, T.J. ''Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster''. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cummiskey, Eddie Year of birth missing 1976 deaths Westies (New York gang) Deaths by firearm in Manhattan People murdered in New York City Male murder victims People murdered by the Genovese crime family American gangsters Murdered American gangsters of Irish descent Criminals from Manhattan Gangsters from New York City

Early life

Curley murder

Cummiskey and the Westies

Death

Further reading

References