Disharmony within an Organization is the best weapon Law enforcement can obtain....Rudolph Giuliani

The Westies is an Irish American gang operating from Hell's Kitchen on Manhattan's West Side.^[1] According to crime author T. J. English, "Although never comprised of [sic] more than twelve to twenty members—depending on who was in or out of jail at any given time—the Westies became synonymous with the last generation of Irish in the birthplace of the Irish Mob...."^[2] According to the NYPDOrganized Crime Squad and the FBI, the Westies were responsible for 60–100 murders between 1968 and 1986.

Contents

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• 1 History
  • 1.1 Spillane years
  • 1.2 Spillane-Coonan wars
  • 1.3 Trouble with the Genovese Family
  • 1.4 Coonan and Featherstone
  • 1.5 Kevin Kelly and Kenny Shannon
  • 1.6 The Yugo era
  • 1.7 The alleged return of the Westies
• 2 See also
• 3 References
• 4 Further reading

History[edit source | editbeta]

As reported in the New York Times in 2012, "Gerald L. Shargel, the defense lawyer who represented Mr. Coonan, the Westies’ leader, at trial 25 years ago, contested the idea that the Westies were ever an organized gang. 'The Westies historically were just a bunch of tough guys on the West Side of Manhattan, and it was convenient for the police to label them as Westies. There were no made members, no ranks, no structure.'”^[3]

Spillane years[edit source | editbeta]

In the early 1960s Mickey Spillane stepped into a power vacuum that had existed in Hell's Kitchen since gang leaders fled the area in the early 1950s to avoid prosecution. A mobster from Queens named Hughie Mulligan had been running Hell's Kitchen; Spillane, a native, was his apprentice until inheriting the throne.

Spillane sent flowers to neighbors in the hospital and provided turkeys to needy families during Thanksgiving, in addition to running gambling enterprises such as bookmaking andpolicy, accompanied inevitably by loansharking. Loansharking led to assault, and Spillane had burglary arrests as well. However, among all his criminal activities, the most audacious was his "snatch" racket (kidnapping and holding local businessmen and members of other crime organizations for ransom).

He was able to add to his neighborhood prominence by marrying Maureen McManus, a daughter of the prestigious McManus family which had run the Midtown Democratic Club since 1905. The union of political power with criminal activity enhanced the gang's ability to control union jobs and labor racketeering, moving away from the declining waterfront and more strongly into construction jobs and service work at the New York Coliseum, Madison Square Garden, and later the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.