James Coonan | |
---|---|
Born | James Michael Coonan December 21, 1946 New York City, New York, U.S. |
Other names | "Jimmy C" |
Occupation | Crime boss |
Known for | Leader of the Westies |
Successor | Boško Radonjić |
Criminal status | Incarcerated at FCI Schuylkill |
Spouse | Edna Coonan |
Allegiance | Westies |
Conviction(s) | Racketeering |
Criminal penalty | 75 years' imprisonment and a $1 million fine |
James Michael Coonan (born December 21, 1946) is an American mobster and racketeer from Manhattan, New York who served as the boss of the Westies gang, an Irish mob group based in Hell's Kitchen, from approximately 1977 to 1988. Coonan was incarcerated and began serving a 75-year prison term in 1988.
James Coonan was born on December 21, 1946, into a middle class Irish-American family in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan. He was 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 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. [1]
An amateur boxer and street fighter, he dropped out of school aged seventeen and embarked on a career in organized crime. [2] When Coonan was a young man, his father John was kidnapped, pistol-whipped and severely beaten by Mickey Spillane, a well-known mobster who frequently employed the kidnap-for-ransom racket of local merchants to their families. [3] Author T.J. English has credited this event in several books as Coonan's motivating factor in the takeover of the Westies. [3] [4]
Coonan was the bodyguard/apprentice of loan shark Charles (Ruby) Stein according to The New York Times article that alleged he was "known and feared on the West Side as a murderer and kidnapper". [5] 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. [5] 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. [6] [7]
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 (RICO) and sentenced to 75 years in prison with the judge's recommendation of denying parole. [8] [9]
Yugoslavian mobster Boško "The Yugo" Radonjić succeeded Coonan as leader of the Westies. [10]
He and his wife Edna (b.1942; Julia Edna Crotty) lived in Hazlet and Keansburg, New Jersey, before his incarceration. [11] [lower-alpha 1]
Coonan is imprisoned at Federal Correctional Institution, Schuylkill, Pennsylvania. He has a full term date of November 17, 2061 and a mandatory release date of June 1, 2030. [13] Coonan was first eligible for parole in 1998. [14] In a February 2023 parole hearing, Coonan asked to be considered for release, citing his mentorship to other inmates, advancing years, time served, exemplary disciplinary record and ill-health. According to court papers, he lost all his teeth in prison, and suffers from partial deafness, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and a form of skin cancer. [13]
In a motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on August 18, 2023, Joseph Corozzo and Thomas Mirigliano, defense attorneys for Coonan, requested that he be released to home confinement under the First Step Act. Corozzo and Mirigliano asked that he be released in order to provide care for his elderly wife, Edna, who was described as "in declining physical and neurological health", at their home in Hazelet, New Jersey. [15]
Constantino Paul Castellano was an American crime boss who succeeded Carlo Gambino as head of the Gambino crime family of New York City. Castellano ran the organization from 1976 until his assassination on December 16, 1985.
The Gambino crime family is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the American Mafia. The group, which went through five bosses between 1910 and 1957, is named after Carlo Gambino, boss of the family at the time of the McClellan hearings in 1963, when the structure of organized crime first gained public attention. The group's operations extend from New York and the eastern seaboard to California. Its illicit activities include labor and construction racketeering, gambling, loansharking, extortion, money laundering, prostitution, fraud, hijacking, and fencing.
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 neighborhood of Manhattan.
The Irish Mob is a usually crime family–based ethnic collective of organized crime syndicates composed of primarily ethnic Irish members which operate primarily in Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and have been in existence since the early 19th century. Originating in Irish-American street gangs – famously first depicted in Herbert Asbury's 1927 book, The Gangs of New York – the Irish Mob has appeared in most major U.S. and Canadian cities, especially in the Northeast and the urban industrial Midwest, including Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Chicago.
Howard Thomas Winter was an American mobster who was a boss of the Winter Hill Gang in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Michael J. Spillane was an Irish-American mobster who controlled Hell's Kitchen in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. Spillane, the so-called “Gentleman Gangster", was a marked contrast to the violent Westies mob members who succeeded him in Hell's Kitchen.
Events concerning organized crime from the year 1977.
T. J. English is an American author and journalist known primarily for his non-fiction books about organized crime — both contemporary and historical — criminal justice, jazz, and the American underworld.
Edward J. McGrath was an Irish-American crime boss from New York City, who controlled the Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob and the lucrative waterfront throughout the 1940s.
Edward "Eddie The Butcher" Cummiskey Jr. was a New York mobster who served as a mentor to Jimmy Coonan, leader of the Westies. 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 plant operated by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection at Randalls and Wards Islands, notably in the Hudson River. Cummiskey was murdered by hitman Joseph Sullivan on August 20, 1976, in a bar.
Boško Radonjić was a Serbian mobster, former leader of the Westies, a predominantly Irish-American gang based in New York's Hell's Kitchen.
Thomas Kapatos, nicknamed as "Tommy the Greek", was a Greek-American gangster who was associated with the Irish mob in New York City. A convicted armed robber, Kapatos was an enforcer for Hell's Kitchen crime boss Mickey Spillane during his war against Jimmy Coonan in the 1970s. He was murdered in 1977 as a result of a conflict between Spillane's gang and the Genovese crime family.
Tom Devaney 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 family as well as the gang war against James Coonan.
Hughie Mulligan 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 eventual successor Mickey Spillane.
The Mullen Gang was an Irish-American gang operating in Boston.
Martin McBreen or Patrick Breen was an American saloonkeeper and criminal associate of the Gopher Gang. A well-known and colorful Hell's Kitchen figure known as Paddy the Priest, he was the owner of a Tenth Avenue saloon frequented by the Gophers and other underworld figures. Traditional accounts claim that McBreen was shot and killed by close friend and Gopher member John "Happy Jack" Mulraney. Mulraney had a facial disfigurement, caused by a partial paralysis of his face, which resembled a permanent "crooked-like" half smile. When McBreen asked why he did not smile on the other side of his face, Mulraney killed him over the perceived insult and robbed the till. When apprehended by police, Mulraney reportedly remarked to officers "I ain't smiling on either side of my face !". His murder was one of the first major trials during the first decade of the 20th century and, quoting then Governor William Sulzer, was one of the most violent to have occurred in the city's history.
Francis T. "Mickey" Featherstone is an American former mobster and the second in command of the Westies, an organized crime syndicate from Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan in New York City, led by James Coonan. Featherstone committed several mob killings before he was convicted in 1986 of a murder he had not committed. Facing almost 25 years in jail, he became an informant and brought down Coonan's gang.
James "Jimmy Mac" McElroy 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.
Joseph Watts also known as "The German" is an associate of the Gambino crime family. He was a close confidant of former boss John Gotti and participated in the infamous 1985 assassination of Paul "Big Paul" Castellano. Watts was not a made man due to being only Italian on his maternal side, while being German, Welsh on his paternal side.