Spillane Gang

Spillane Gang

Hell's Kitchen along Ninth Avenue in 2006; this contextual image does not depict gang members
Also Known As	Spillane crew
Origins
Founder	Mickey Spillane
Founding Location	Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City
Territory	Hell's Kitchen Manhattan's West Side waterfront
Lineage
Successor(s)	Westies
Profile
Structure	Irish-American organized-crime crew
Ethnicity	Irish American
Activities	Illegal gambling Loansharking Hijacking Labor racketeering Extortion
Politics
Leader	Mickey Spillane
Notable Members	Thomas Devaney Edward Cummiskey Thomas Kapatos
Rivals	Coonan crew
Activity
Status	Defunct
Years Active	Circa 1960–1977
Founded Date	Circa 1960
Dissolved Date	1977
Dissolution Cause	Killing of Spillane and senior associates Takeover by James Coonan's crew

The Spillane Gang was an Irish-American organized-crime group led by Michael “Mickey” Spillane in Hell's Kitchen and along Manhattan's West Side waterfront. Spillane controlled neighborhood rackets for much of the 1960s and 1970s, before his organization lost a prolonged struggle with James Coonan and the crew later known as the Westies.

History

Spillane emerged as Hell's Kitchen's principal Irish-American racketeer around 1960. His crew drew income from gambling, loansharking, hijacking, extortion and influence over waterfront and construction-related labor. The New Yorker later described Spillane as the neighborhood's “Gentleman Gangster” and reported that he ran rackets there for nearly two decades.

The Second Circuit's account in United States v. Coonan states that Coonan and his associates formed their organization in the mid-1960s specifically to wrest control of Hell's Kitchen from Spillane, then the predominant gang leader. The rivalry continued despite Coonan's imprisonment, and Coonan ultimately displaced Spillane's organization.

During the 1970s, violence also surrounded control of West Side piers, unions and prospective construction business connected with the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Three prominent Spillane associates—Thomas Devaney, Edward Cummiskey and Thomas Kapatos—were killed during the conflict. Contemporary and later accounts connected their deaths to pressure from Italian-American organized-crime interests seeking access to West Side rackets.

Collapse

Spillane moved from Hell's Kitchen to Queens as the conflict intensified. On May 13, 1977, he was shot and killed outside his home in Woodside. No claim about the identity of his killer is treated as conclusive here; later organized-crime histories have offered differing accounts of responsibility. After Spillane's death, Coonan's organization became the dominant Irish-American crime group in Hell's Kitchen and developed an alliance with the Gambino crime family.

Although both organizations have been described collectively as the “Westside Irish Mob,” the appellate record treats Spillane's gang and Coonan's Westies as successive rival groups rather than a single uninterrupted organization.