York. But wild as he was, Coonan also solidified, by cunning, deception, deceit and sheer effrontery, a renewed tie with the Mafia that had first been forged decades earlier by Owney Madden and Lucky Luciano. This new alliance held until the 1980s when it was shattered by the vicious nature of the Westies themselves, and Coonan in particular.
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With a tight hold on the Westies' stronghold of Hell's Kitchen, the west side of Manhattan along the Hudson River, Coonan climbed to the top as the meanest and most brutal Irish hood in recent decades, cementing his power while still in his 20s. A blue-eyed former choirboy, Jimmy could be among the most affable of gangsters, whose ranks he joined at age 17. Unfortunately no one could predict when his explosive temper would lead to an outbreak of violence.
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His vicious nature made him a brute among brutes, and with only a couple of dozen supporters he formed the Westies gang and destroyed other mobster groupings in the area. The Westies gained strangleholds on a number of rackets in their domain, including loansharking, drug distribution, numbers, counterfeiting, labor racketeering, extortion and murder for hire.
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Of course the most important murders involved guaranteeing the sanctity of their turf. It soon became a matter of Hell's Kitchen loreand fearhow the Westies dismembered their victims and disposed of the grisly remains. Coonan stressed his credo: "No corpus delicti, no crime, no police investigation." Rarely did even the tiniest part of any Westies victim ever turn up.
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Under Coonan's supervision the corpses were chopped up. In a seminar on dismemberment, Coonan taught his boys, pointing out for example that severing an elbow was just about the toughest task. The cut-up jobs were done in bathtubs or in old-fashioned kitchen sinks with built-in tubs for laundry. The parts were placed in strong plastic garbage bags and taken to places of disposal. One favorite destination was a sewage plant on Ward's Island in the East River where a confederate working there was tipped handsomely for depositing the grim contents into the sewage being treated that day.
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With a few exceptions the mafiosi left the Westies alone, feeling any effort to squash them would result in long bloody warfare since the Westies were incapable of foregoing vengeance for any bloodletting of their ranks.
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The Westies, however, did not return the favor. They thought nothing of murdering mob guys who tried to establish themselves in Westie territory. They reverted to an old Irish gangster custom of kidnapping Mafia gangsters for ransom. The victims were released after the money was paidunless Jimmy Coonan had a whim to kill them anyway.
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Actually Jimmy had a master plan. He wanted in to the Gambino family as a special adjunct, a goal achieved not through diplomacy but by demonstrating how much trouble the Westies could be.
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Coonan's most daring caper was to murder a bigmoney mob loan shark named Ruby Stein. Stein did millions of dollars of business lending out money and was totally trusted by the Gambinos who bankrolled him. Ambushing Ruby Stein in a tavern, the Westies appropriated his black book, which listed all outstanding debtors. The Gambinos knew little about who was in the book, expecting Stein to handle all the business and refer them only to defaulters who needed extra pressure to pay up. Without Stein's black book, the Gambinos didn't know who owed them money. Jimmy Coonan did, and he collected from many of them.
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The mob men suspected the Westies, but they lacked proof and were unwilling to risk gang warfare by pursuing the matter. Under Paul Castellano, who generally looked for a peaceful way to settle problems, it was decided that overtures should be made to the Westies, exactly what Coonan wanted. The mob would leave the Irish their rackets, taking only a 10 percent cut, and also give the Westies a piece of other Mafia rackets. Coonan looked like a great Irish patriot to his men. And Castellano was not displeased; he now had an extra troop of killers who strengthened his own position within his crime family and with other families as well.
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Coonan and his boys handled a number of mob hits, and Jimmy constantly asked for more assignments. "We could use the dough," he explained. In fact, he didn't need the money, having by now accumulated millions, but it provided a cover for the Stein affair. Besides that, Coonan and the Westies truly thrived on hired rubouts, not only for the fee involved, but for the bonus of added cuts in certain enterprises.
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The Westies passed from one Gambino handler to another, finally ending up under the supervision of a rising capo, John Gotti. When Coonan first met Gotti, he was much impressed and reported back to his followers: "I just met a greaseball tougher than we are." It was a high compliment indeed and solidified the relationship between the pair for the rest of Coonan's reign.
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Eventually, Coonan became more and more restrained in dealing with his own men, and disputes flourished. The Westies reverted to their old custom of pulling unauthorized jobs and killings. And even worse they returned to victimizing one another. Perhaps to accommodate those chaffing at his ruleand to cool off murder plots against himselfJimmy sought to placate things by purging certain elements. He apparently took part in a plot to frame his No. 2, Mickey Featherstone, for a murder he had no part in. Featherstone could not believe Jimmy had betrayed him, and he finally turned informer to save himself.
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