James Michael Coonan (born December 21, 1946), nicknamed "Jimmy C", is an

Irish-American , image = Irish ancestry in the USA 2018; Where Irish eyes are Smiling.png , image_caption = Irish Americans, % of population by state , caption = Notable Irish Americans , population = 36,115,472 (10.9%) alone ...

mobster A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Most gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from '' mob'' and the suffix '' -ster''. Gangs provide a level of organization and ...

and racketeer from

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, New York who, from approximately 1977 to 1988, served as the

boss Boss may refer to: Occupations * Supervisor, often referred to as boss * Air boss, more formally, air officer, the person in charge of aircraft operations on an aircraft carrier * Crime boss, the head of a criminal organization * Fire boss, ...

of the Westies gang, an

Irish mob The Irish Mob (also known as the Irish mafia or Irish organized crime) is a collective of organized crime syndicates composed of ethnic Irish members which operate primarily in Ireland, the United States, Canada and Australia, and have been in ...

group based in

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 ...

. Coonan was incarcerated and began serving a 75-year prison term in 1988.

Biography

James Coonan was born on December 21, 1946 into a middle class

family in the

area of

, the second of four children of John Coonan, an accountant who ran a tax office on West 50th Street, and his wife Anna, who was of partial

German descent , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...

and who worked at John Coonan's office. He was raised in a five-room walk-up apartment on West 49th Street. By his teenage years, Coonan stood five feet, seven inches tall and had a stocky build, with broad shoulders and a thick neck. An amateur boxer and street fighter, he dropped out of school aged seventeen and embarked on a career in organized crime. When Coonan was a young man, his father John was kidnapped, pistol-whipped and severely beaten by

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 ...

, a well-known mobster who frequently employed the kidnap-for-ransom racket of local merchants to their families. Author T.J. English has credited this event in several books as Coonan's motivating factor in the takeover of the Westies. Coonan was the bodyguard/apprentice of

loan shark A loan shark is a person who offers loans at extremely high interest rates, has strict terms of collection upon failure, and generally operates outside the law. Description Because loan sharks operate mostly illegally, they cannot reasonably ...

Charles (Ruby) Stein according to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' article that alleged he was "known and feared on the West Side as a murderer and kidnapper". Coonan wanted more, and several West Side neighborhood thugs gathered around him, including Francis "Mickey" Featherstone. By 1976, Coonan and Featherstone were engaged in taking over Spillane's territory, culminating in the 1977 shooting of Spillane, for which Featherstone was arrested and acquitted, and the death of Stein. According to testimony given in 1987 by ex-Westies member turned informant William Beattie, Stein was killed and beheaded in 1977 in a move to erase Coonan's debt and prove the Westies power through viciousness. In 1979, Coonan was tried and acquitted for the murder of Harold Whitehead, but convicted on weapons charges and sentenced to four years in federal prison. After his release he resumed power, but in 1988 was convicted of racketeering under the

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. RICO was en ...

(RICO) and sentenced to 75 years in prison with the judge's recommendation of denying parole. Coonan was first eligible for parole in 1998. He and his wife Edna (b.1942; Julia Edna Crotty) lived in Hazlet and

Keansburg, New Jersey Keansburg (, Felzenberg, Alvin''Governor Tom Kean: From the New Jersey Statehouse to the 9-11 Commission'' p. 5. Rutgers University Press, 2006. . Accessed July 25, 2012. "In 1884, after congressman and future U.S. senator John Kean, Tom Kean' ...

, before his incarceration.Lubasch, Arnold H
"Prosecutor Says Gang Terrorized Hell's Kitchen"
''

'', October 20, 1987. Accessed August 29, 2013. "The Coonans live in Hazlet, N.J."

Notes

Bibliography

* * *

References

External links

Inmate Locator - James Coonan
Federal Bureau of Prisons website
James and Edna Coonan's 1989 appeal brief
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coonan, James 1946 births Living people 20th-century American criminals American male criminals American gangsters of Irish descent American gangsters of German descent American crime bosses American people convicted of murder People convicted of racketeering People from Hazlet, New Jersey People from Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan People from Keansburg, New Jersey People convicted of murder by the United States federal government Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government Criminals from Manhattan Gangsters from New York City Gambino crime family Westies (New York gang)