John M. Dunn
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

John M. "Cockeye" Dunn (August 24, 1910 – July 7, 1949 Ossining, New York) was a New York mobster who was involved in the numbers racket and labor racketeering as a top enforcer for his brother-in-law, Eddie McGrath. He was convicted, together with Andrew "Squint" Sheridan, of the 1947 murder of
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
hiring stevedore Anthony "Andy" Hintz, and executed by
electric chair An electric chair is a device used to execute an individual by electrocution. When used, the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, ...
on July 7, 1949, aged 38.


Early life

John M. Dunn was the first child born to Irish emigrant parents, Tom and Kitty Dunn, who left Ireland in the early 1900s and settled in Queens, New York City, New York. He was in and out of Catholic reform schools after the death of his father, a sailor in the Merchant Marine who was lost at sea when Dunn was four.


Criminal career

With arrests for robbery and assault during his teenage years, Dunn was finally convicted of robbing a card game and sentenced to two years imprisonment at
Sing Sing Prison Sing Sing Correctional Facility, formerly Ossining Correctional Facility, is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York. It is about north of ...
. Following his release, Dunn was hired as an enforcer for McGrath who was then a part owner of Varick Enterprises, a front company which made collections for the waterfront dock bosses of Manhattan's West Side. In 1937, he and McGrath were arrested in connection with the death of a trucker but the charges were eventually dismissed for lack of evidence. Later he formed a labor union (Local 21510, Motor and Bus Terminal Checkers, Platform and Office Workers) associated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and eventually oversaw waterfront racketeering on Manhattan's Lower West Side by the early 1940s. He established underworld connections including Joseph P. Ryan, who had sponsored him for union membership, and
Meyer Lansky Meyer Lansky (born Maier Suchowljansky; July 4, 1902 – January 15, 1983), known as the "Mob's Accountant", was an American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the ...
who had been in discussions regarding the use of the longshoremen's union to assist in the importation of heroin and cocaine into the United States.


The Hintz case

At 7:40 a.m. on January 8, 1947, Andrew "Andy" Hintz, hiring boss on Pier Fifty-One, was shot six times on the stairs just outside his apartment when leaving for work. He survived the attack and was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, where he drifted in and out of consciousness for three weeks before his death on January 29. Before having been taken to the hospital he had told his wife that he had been shot by John Dunn. Dunn was arrested immediately and held as a
material witness In American criminal law, a material witness is a person with information alleged to be material concerning a criminal proceeding. The authority to detain material witnesses dates to the First Judiciary Act of 1789, but the Bail Reform Act of ...
. On January 11, Hintz identified Dunn, Andy Sheridan and another man as his assailants in a
dying declaration In the law of evidence, a dying declaration is testimony that would normally be barred as hearsay but may in common law nonetheless be admitted as evidence in criminal law trials because it constituted the last words of a dying person. The ratio ...
. Two days later, he made another dying declaration because in the first one he did not express clearly enough his belief that he was going to die. On January 24, the police arrested Andrew "Squint" Sheridan at his home in Hollywood, Florida. He was transferred to New York by the
FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
on a federal charge and later turned over to the
New York County District Attorney The New York County District Attorney, also known as the Manhattan District Attorney, is the elected district attorney for New York County (Manhattan), New York. The office is responsible for the prosecution of violations of New York state laws ...
office. Former prize fighter Danny Gentile turned himself in at the end of March, appearing with his lawyer in Assistant D.A. William J. Keating's office. All three accused men were held in custody without bail. Due to both the extensive press coverage of the event and Dunn's underworld connections, there was concern that the state's star witness, the deceased's widow Maisie Hintz, might be in danger and she was forced to go into hiding until the start of the trial. The trial, before Judge George L. Donnellan, began on December 4 with the selection of the jury, and on December 31, 1947, all three – Dunn, Sheridan and Gentile – were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death in the electric chair.


Execution

Dunn and Gentile then offered information against waterfront racketeers in exchange for life imprisonment. Since all of his information – incriminating dead people or talking about cases in a way the authorities knew was false – was useless, the deal with Dunn fell through. He and Sheridan were executed at
Sing Sing Sing Sing Correctional Facility, formerly Ossining Correctional Facility, is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York. It is about north of ...
on July 7, 1949. On the day before his scheduled execution, Gentile's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, supported by a favorable letter from D.A.
Frank Hogan Frank Smithwick Hogan (January 17, 1902 – April 2, 1974) was an American lawyer and politician from New York. He served as New York County District Attorney for more than 30 years, during which he achieved a reputation for professionalism and ...
, in which he claimed that "Gentile has done everything within his power to assist this office in its investigation of waterfront criminal activity."


Bibliography

*


Further reading

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dunn, John M. 1910 births 1949 deaths 1947 murders in the United States American gangsters of Irish descent American gangsters Executed gangsters American people executed for murder 20th-century executions by New York (state) 20th-century executions of American people People convicted of murder by New York (state) People executed by New York (state) by electric chair Criminals from Queens, New York Executed people from New York (state) Gangsters from New York City