James Coonan

James Michael "Jimmy C" Coonan (born December 21, 1946) is an Irish-American mobster and racketeer from Manhattan, New York who, from approximately 1977 to 1988, served as the boss of the Westies organization, an Irish Mob group based in Hell's Kitchen. Coonan was incarcerated and began serving a 75-year prison term in 1988

James Coonan
Born (1946-12-21) December 21, 1946
Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S.
OccupationMobster
Criminal statusIncarcerated
Spouse(s)Edna
AllegianceWesties
Criminal chargeRacketeering
PenaltyImprisonment until 2030 in FCI Schuylkill (Pennsylvania)

Biography
Main article: Westies

James Coonan was born in 1946 in the Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan area of New York City. When Coonan was a young man, Mickey Spillane, a well-known mobster who frequently employed the kidnap-for-ransom racket of local merchants to their families, had kidnapped, pistol-whipped and severely beaten Coonan's father John, a local accountant that ran a tax office on West 50th Street.[1] Author T.J. English has credited this event in several books as Coonan's motivating factor in the takeover of the Westies.[1][2]

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".[3] 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.[3] 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.[4][5]

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.[6][7] Coonan was first eligible for parole in 1998.[8]

He and his wife Edna (b.1942; Julia Edna Crotty) lived in Hazlet and Keansburg, New Jersey, before his incarceration.[9][lower-alpha 1]

Notes
  1. "The last few years had been good to Jimmy Coonan. Since his marriage a year ago, in 1974, he'd moved out of the neighborhood to a modest, two-story house just across the river in Keansburg, New Jersey, a quiet, lily-white middle-class suburb. The house in Hazlet, New Jersey is the last small cottage at the end of a dead end street. Edna put out a family memorial, about their family being chained together in hell in the afterlife. Instead of a cross, she hid an inverted pentagram in a flower engraved into the stone."[10]

References
  1. English, T.J. (2005). Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster. Harper Collins. p. 331. ISBN 978-0-06-059003-1.
  2. English, T. J. (2011-11-15). The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob. Open Road Media. ISBN 978-1-4532-3426-6.
  3. Traub, James (1987-04-05). "The Lord's of Hell's Kitchen". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
  4. "Ex-Westies Member Says Gang Boss Cut Off Murder Victim's Head". AP NEWS. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
  5. "Westies Trial: Gruesome Testimony Not For The Squeamish". AP NEWS. Retrieved 2020-09-20.
  6. "United States of America, Appellee, v. James Coonan, Kevin Kelly, James Mcelroy, Kenneth Shannon,william Bokun, John Halo, Edna Coonan, Richardritter, Thomas Collins, Florencecollins, Defendants,kevin Kelly, Defendant-appellant, 938 F.2d 1553 (2d Cir. 1991)". Justia Law. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
  7. French, Howard W. (1988-05-12). "7 Westies Given Sentences Of Up to 75 Years in Prison". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-09-20.
  8. LLC, Sussex Publishers (1988). Spy. Sussex Publishers, LLC.
  9. Lubasch, Arnold H. "Prosecutor Says Gang Terrorized Hell's Kitchen", The New York Times, October 20, 1987. Accessed August 29, 2013. "The Coonans live in Hazlet, N.J."
  10. English. T. J. The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob, p. 111. Macmillan Publishers, 1991. ISBN 0312924291.
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