The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob (53 page)

As terrifying as the Westies had been, for those who’d lived their entire lives in the neighborhood, the alternative was far more unsettling—that the Hell’s Kitchen Irish Mob, born of another age, was the last vestige of a culture and a community that would never be seen again.

With Mickey and Sissy Featherstone tucked away in the Witness Protection Program, the other key players in the drama were resigned to their fates. As of 2006, their whereabouts were as follows:

Jimmy Coonan:
In May 1989 Coonan’s appeal of his RICO conviction was denied. He is serving his seventy-five-year sentence in the federal prison system.

Edna Coonan:
Edna’s appeal was also denied in May ’89. She served her time and was paroled in the mid-1990s. She and Jimmy Coonan are no longer married.

Jackie Coonan:
Contracted AIDS and died at the age of forty-four on April 24, 1988, just two weeks before his brother Jimmy and the other Westies were sentenced. Jackie, known to occasionally inject cocaine, is believed to have gotten the fatal disease from the use of contaminated needles.

Richie Ryan:
On September 20, 1983, while Coonan and Featherstone were both away in prison, Ryan was found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs in a tenement building at 443 West 48th Street, directly across from where Paddy Dugan killed Denis Curley eight years earlier. Ryan was known to have been consuming huge amounts of alcohol; the cause of death was listed as acute and chronic ethanolism. He was twenty-nine years old.

Ray Steen and Alberta Sachs:
In 1981, while still in the Witness Protection Program, Steen—once known as Little Al Capone—and Jimmy Coonan’s niece were married. By the start of the Westies trial in October ’87 they were divorced with a daughter. Sachs has remarried, and while neither she nor Steen is in the Witness Program any longer, they both live far from New York under new names and with new identities.

Billy Beattie:
In June ’88, one month after the Westies sentencing, Beattie was brought before Judge Morris E. Lasker in U.S. District Court. Beattie’s lawyer, Ken Caruso, argued that not only had his client cooperated fully with the investigation—wearing a wire at great risk to his life—but that Billy, though he’d played a role in the Paddy Dugan and Ruby Stein homicides, had never actually taken a life himself. It was a fine distinction, to say the least, but apparently the judge bought it. Beattie was given eighteen months, twelve of which he’s already served. In December ’88 he was released from prison and disappeared into the Witness Protection Program with his wife and children.

Tony Lucich:
In July ’88, before Judge Robert Sweet—the same judge who would later sentence Featherstone—the sixty-eight-year-old Lucich was given “time served” on his RICO conviction. Along with Featherstone, he was later called to appear at the marathon seventeen-month trial of Gambino family members Anthony Senter and Joey Testa, where he gave testimony on the relationship between the Westies and the Roy Demeo crew. Lucich has since disappeared into the Witness Protection Program.

Jimmy McElroy:
In early 1990, McElroy testified in New York State court against Gambino Family boss John Gotti. On the stand, McElroy claimed that he was present in 1986 when Gotti and Jimmy Coonan agreed that the Westies would assault Carpenters’ Union official John O’Connor. McElroy also admitted having committed two murders, two attempted murders, and having slit the throat of one man. His testimony was littered with inconsistencies, and Jimmy Mac himself came off as surly, unreliable and downright frightening. In the end, Gotti was acquitted of all charges, and McElroy’s sentence was not reduced, as he hoped it would be. He is serving his time in federal prison.

Kevin Kelly:
Following his November ’89 conviction on federal RICO charges, Kelly was given a sentence of fifty years. Later, citing his “consistently good to outstanding record” in prison, Judge Knapp reduced Kelly’s sentence from fifty to forty years and withdrew his recommendation of no parole. The earliest Kelly is eligible for parole is 2011.

Kenny Shannon:
After being given eighteen years to life for his role in the Michael Holly shooting, Shannon pleaded guilty to the federal RICO charge against him. In August ’89 he was sentenced before Judge Knapp on the RICO charge and given twenty years, to run concurrent with his state conviction. He is currently serving his time in Sing Sing prison and is eligible for parole in late 2006.

Billy Bokun:
In May ’89 Bokun was sentenced to fifteen years to life in State Court for his guilty plea in the Holly murder, the sentence to run concurrent with his RICO conviction. Two years later, Bokun’s sentence was reduced by Judge Knapp, who stated that his opinion of Bokun’s culpability had been altered by the Kevin Kelly trial. In particular, he noted, “Bokun’s involvement in the Westies activity seemed considerably less than that of Kevin Kelly, who received the same sentence.” In addition to reducing Bokun’s sentence, Knapp waived his recommendation of no parole. In 2003, after serving fifteen years in prison, Bokun was paroled. He currently resides in New Jersey.

Tommy Collins:
At the time of the Westies trial, Collins was already serving ten to life in state court on a narcotics conviction. In December 1994, after serving eight years at the Greenhaven correctional facility in upstate New York, Collins was paroled.

Flo Collins:
Tommy Collins’s wife served the least amount of time of all the Westies defendants—six months. She was paroled in early 1991.

Mugsy Ritter:
In May of ’89 Ritter’s appeal of his RICO conviction was denied. He is serving his forty-year sentence at a federal pen in Terre Haute, Indiana.

James McManus:
On October 27, 1988, McManus celebrated his twenty-five-year anniversary as leader of the Midtown Democratic Association. Among the 500 celebrants at Gallagher’s Restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen was then Mayor of New York Edward I. Koch. Five years later, McManus retired from the post of district leader, ending the century-long reign of “the McMani.”

Richie Egan:
Retired from the police department at the age of forty-one in October ’87. Upon his retirement Egan went to work for the U.S. Customs Department’s Regional Intelligence Division in Manhattan, where he remained for fifteen years. “I’ll never forget [the Westies] case,” he says. “The level of violence, the personalities, the overall scope—it has to be one of the most memorable cases in history.”

Tom McCabe:
After thirty-five years with the NYPD, Richie Egan’s supervisor retired in 1990. He passed away from natural causes on July 1, 2004, at the age of seventy-three, leaving behind five children, including NYPD Sergeant Phil McCabe, who has been with the department for twenty-five years.

Joe Coffey:
Retired from the police department in March of ’85 and went to work for the statewide Organized Crime Task Force. Known to the Westies as “Publicity Joe,” in 1992 Coffey published a book chronicling his years in law enforcement entitled
The Coffey Files.

Frank McDarby:
Joe Coffey’s partner retired from the police department in 1983 and opened his own carpet cleaning and extermination service based in Queens, with the advertising slogan “rugs and bugs.” In 1986 McDarby again changed careers and began his own private investigation firm, also based in Queens.

Greg Derkasch:
Retired from the counterfeit division of the U.S. Secret Service in 1990 after twenty-two years of service, eleven of those in the New York field office. Derkasch remembers the Westies case as “one of the most important, not only in my career but in all of New York law enforcement.”

Larry Hochheiser and Ken Aronson:
Throughout 1989 and into the 1990s, the firm of Hochheiser and Aronson continued to represent clients with alleged mob connections, until the two attorneys dissolved their partnership in 1995. Hochheiser went on to represent Bosco Radonjich—Jimmy Coonan’s one-time criminal associate—whom the U.S. Attorney’s office claimed had “taken over” the Westies and served as the gang’s leader following Coonan’s conviction and had continued in that capacity well into the 1990s. It was a dubious charge, at best, given that there were no Westies left for Bosco to lead and he had no known affiliation with anyone in Hell’s Kitchen. The government’s star witness against Radonjich was to be Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, right-hand man to John Gotti, who had famously turned against his former
mafiosi
in a series of explosive criminal trials in the late 1990s. Gravano was set to testify that Gotti met on numerous occasions with Radonjich, who presented himself as the new “boss” of the Westies. When Gravano—by now living under a new name and identity in Arizona—was himself arrested on narcotics trafficking charges in March 2000, the government’s case against Bosco Radonjich fell apart. In 2001, the charges against Bosco were dropped altogether.

Mary Lee Warren:
Following her successful prosecution of the Westies, Assistant U.S. Attorney Warren was named to head the prestigious Narcotics Bureau of the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, where she remains today.

Rudolph Giuliani:
On November 7, 1989, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District was defeated in his run for Mayor of New York by his Democratic opponent, David Dinkins. Four years later, Giuliani defeated Dinkins and went on to serve two eventful terms as Mayor. He is sometimes cited in the media as a likely contender for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States in the November 2008 election.

AFTERWORD

I
’m glad it worked out the way it did,” says Mickey Featherstone, talking by phone from somewhere in the world.

In the sixteen years since this book was first published in 1990 Featherstone and I had spoken occasionally, though I had no idea where he’d been relocated. Our conversations were set up by a third-party government official who had facilitated Mickey’s relocation and stayed in touch with him over the years.

What pleased Featherstone most about the resolution to the Westies story was that he and his wife, Sissy, had found a way to escape “the life” and were able to create a new existence for themselves and their four children. Says the kid from West 43rd Street in Hell’s Kitchen: “I’ve seen the other side of the world now, and I love it.”

The degree to which Featherstone has been able to adjust to life after the Westies would probably amaze those who knew him in his former life. Particularly in his early adulthood, Mickey was the toughest of the tough—an alcohol and drug abuser with a hair-trigger temper. The violence that he both encountered and inflicted on others was so prevalent that much of it is now a blur. “I don’t think about it much,” says Featherstone of the past. “But when I do, a lot of it disgusts me.”

To Mickey, a key turning point in his life came in 1986 when, in an attempt to overturn his onerous conviction for the murder of Michael Holly, his wife, Sissy, undertook the highly dangerous act of wearing a wire and circulating among the Westies, all in hopes of gathering evidence to establish Mickey’s innocence. To this day, says Featherstone, he is humbled by his wife’s bravery and devotion. It has become the basis of an emotional bond that has made it possible for the Featherstones to achieve the unthinkable: a law-abiding, productive, cohesive family life far from the once-mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen.

In the early years of their relocation, Mickey was “Mr. Mom” staying home with the kids while Sissy created a business career for herself. Regular counseling was an important aspect of his and Sissy’s adjustment, but Featherstone contends that the main factor was merely being physically and emotionally removed from the old neighborhood; they were now free to ponder a life the likes of which they never could have conceived of before. A big part of their new life involved creating opportunities for their children that had never existed for them. Their oldest son graduated from college, joined the Army, and was stationed in Kuwait in the years before September 11, 2001; he’s now married to a schoolteacher. Their oldest daughter is married and owns her own business. Another son recently enlisted in the Army and is currently stationed in Iraq, where he was given a commendation for bravery. Their youngest daughter is currently in college on an athletic scholarship.

For the old Mickey Featherstone, loyalty was a high value—loyalty to the gang, the neighborhood, and to Jimmy Coonan. The betrayal he felt at the hands of Coonan and other Westies may have obliterated whatever loyalty he felt towards the gang and turned him into a “rat,” but he seems to have found a way to maintain loyalty as a value through devotion to his family. “We’re a tight group,” says Featherstone of his family. He believes the family unit is what has kept him on the straight-and-narrow. “Any time I’ve had an instance where my temper rises, where the old Mickey Featherstone starts to surface, I think about my wife and kids. It’s the only thing that matters.”

As for his previous criminal impulses, Featherstone claims that is all part of the distant past. Since relocation there have been no crimes, no brushes with the law, nor, says Mickey, a desire on his part to drift back into the old ways. It seems incredible given his criminal history, but Featherstone’s claims check out: the facts of his relocation—clean criminal record, the details of his family and home life—were verified to me by current and former law enforcement officials familiar with his life since being relocated.

So how has Featherstone done it? How has he been able to achieve and maintain a new life for himself when Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, Henry Hill of
Goodfellas
fame and so many other high-profile criminals have reverted to their lives of crime? Much of it has to do with Featherstone’s original motivations as a criminal. Although Featherstone was clearly “a danger to society,” he was never a “gangster” in the way that Jimmy Coonan, Sammy the Bull or Henry Hill were gangsters. Featherstone’s more violent criminal impulses were usually acts of emotion driven by a perverted sense of loyalty, not by a profit motive. It is true that, later, after Featherstone returned to the neighborhood in the 1980s following a stint in federal prison, he became obsessed with making sure he got his fair share of the Westies criminal proceeds. But, he contends, that was due mostly to the resentment he felt that his wife and family had not been taken care of when he went away to prison, and also because people in the gang were using his name and reputation for their own personal gain.