'The more bodies you had the more monstrous you looked'
By WILLIAM M. REILLY
Oct. 21, 1987
NEW YORK -- A member of an Irish gang linked to 16 killings testified at the murder-conspiracy trial of eight reputed members that he took part in one of the killings but refused to help dismember the body.
'The more bodies you have the more monstrous you looked,' was the explanation for another of the gang's murder, William 'Billy' Beattie testified.
Beattie, 40, who is serving time for racketeering and murder in the case, testified how he helped rub out Charles 'Ruby' Stein, a loan shark who was owed $50,000 by James 'Jimmy' Coonan, the alleged head of the 'Westies' gang, headquartered on Manhattan's West Side.
The defense denies there was such a gang.
Beattie said Stein was lured to McCoy's Bar, the '596,' in May 1977.
'Danny (Edward 'Danny the shooter' Grillo) came out of the kitchen and pumped some shots into his (Stein's) chest, killing him,' said Beattie.
'He shot him,' added Beattie, who said he was standing at a telephone in a corner between two windows. 'Shot him dead. I closed the blinds and locked the door.'
'Then what?' asked assistant U.S. Attorney David Brodsky.
'Jimmy and Danny hugged each other, embraced,' Beattie replied. 'Then they told me to put a slug in him. I shot him.'
He said he used his own .22 caliber weapon.
The victim's shoes and socks were 'ripped off' and about $1,000 in cash fell out, which was put on the bar and split between Coonan, Grillo, gang member 'Richie Ryan' who had been sitting at a dining room table, and Beattie.
The body was placed on plastic garbage bags and dragged to the rear of the bar, outside the women's rest room where Coonan 'whacked the guy's head off, cut his head off,' said Beattie. 'I turned away.'
Beattie recalled someone said to him, 'You don't have the stomach for that,' as Coonan demonstrated to Ryan how to dismember the body with a 12-inch serrated knife.
Some jurors grimaced and spectators squirmed on the hard benches during the gruesome testimony.
'That's not my bag,' Beattie said he replied. 'I'll kill anybody but I'm not cutting them up.'
Beattie later said the body parts were put into 'six or seven' plastic garbage bags that were loaded into a powder blue Chevrolet. He did not know where it was disposed.
Two days later he said he was told by Coonan that the torso washed up in Rockaway Bay.
'He was furious they found a torso,' said Beattie, explaining that without it 'there never would be an investigation. But he wasn't too worried since the last one seen with him (Stein) was this guy 'Vinny' who died of a heart attack.
'I remember his (Coonan's) exact words: No corups delecti, no investigation,' said Beattie.
In the slaying of Richard 'Ricky' Tassiello in January 1978 in Beattie's 'flophouse' of an apartment, he testified Francis 'Mickey' Featherstone, Coonan's alleged underboss, held onto the victim's wrist as Coonan fired at his head.
'He ran in circles trying to dodge the bullets,' Beattie said of Tassiello, whose body was placed into the bathtub and where Featherstone 'plunged a knife into his chest, into his heart (then) carved him up.'
Beattie said he asked Coonan why he killed Tassiello when he only owed the leader $10,000.
'It was more than money,' Beattie said Coonan explained. 'He was going to meet some people and the more bodies he had the better he looked. The more bodies you had the more monstrous you looked. That's what the people he was meeting with understood.'
The Westies allegedly had connections with the Gambino crime family.
In yet another slaying, Beattie testifed that after Patrick 'Paddy' Dugan was killed in November 1975, his body was dismembered and its 'private parts' put in a milk carton and placed in a refrigerator. Members of the gang later laughingly passed the carton around a bar.
The trial was to resume at 10 a.m. Monday.
