interview from feb 2105 i found...


THE LAST GANG...

That was just the start of it. There had been an unbroken chain of Irish gangs in New York right up to the late 1980s.

The last great Irish gang in the city was the Westies, based in Hell’s Kitchen, notorious in their own time and made infamous by T.J. English’s book “The Westies.”

In Scorsese’s movie, based in part on another account of Irish gangs, Herbert Ashbury’s 1925 book “The Gangs of New York,” violent groups of Irish immigrants clash with other ethnic groups around the Five Points area of Lower Manhattan.

By the time of the Westies, Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan’s West Side was their turf.
As “The Gangs of New York” ends, Scorsese’s re-created lower Manhattan of 1863 suddenly morphs in a time-lapse reel through to an image of the island with the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center still intact, seemingly suggesting a parallel of violence between our day and the past.
But the chain of Irish gang violence ended abruptly in 1989 when the Westies were finally busted. It is a classic New York story.

The Westies were notorious for several reasons, not least that they carried out killings for hire, usually for the mafia. They were largely Irish Americans, as much part of the Irish history in America as the success stories, of immigrants climbing to the top of society, active in the body politic.
Disposing of bodies was the Westies’ specialty. On at least one occasion they kept a murder victim’s hands so that his fingerprints could be planted on a weapon to deceive the cops.
Ultimately, the cops, using old-school detective work, would not be deceived.

For one of the police officers that helped bring the Westies to an end, it all started in a bar.
“We were sitting in a Second Avenue bar,” remembered Frank McDarby. “Joe Coffey, Jack Cahill and myself.”
A man came up to the three police officers and recounted a story about an unsolved murder, far to the west of Second Avenue, in Hell’s Kitchen.
“He said, ‘Nothing has been done about it,’ ” McDarby said.
The officers got to talking about the Westies and decided to take a further look.
“We went to look at one homicide case,” said McDarby, “and we saw about a dozen with nothing being done about them. So we started.”

It would be a decade before the Westies finally went to jail — those who had not been murdered by infighting — and it was thanks to one of the most notorious gang members, Mickey Featherstone, turning against his old friends, family and neighborhood, a move that landed him in the witness protection program. By then, the FBI was on the case, and McDarby had retired.
McDarby said that he had heard rumors that Featherstone had been seen back in Hell’s Kitchen occasionally, with a changed appearance and new identity. He said that criminals often found it hard to stay away from their old turf, no matter how dangerous it would be.

T.J. English, who made the Westies famous with his account of the gang, disagreed.
“I have heard a lot of rumors like that, but it’s all speculation and legend,” English said.
What is not legend is the Westies’ violence.
At 736 Tenth Ave. is Druids Bar, an Irish watering hole near the Irish Arts Center on West 51st Street with artsy patrons and a reputation today for having an excellent kitchen. Fifteen years ago, its kitchen was where the Westies hacked the bodies of murder victims to pieces for disposal.
On one occasion, perhaps apocryphally, one of the Westies rolled a human head down the bar to give the drinkers at the bar a fright.

“You know how many people were killed in that bar?” McDarby said. “A lot.”
Back then it was called the Sunbrite Saloon.
“Eddie Cummiskey owned the Sunbrite Saloon and brought the whole dismemberment thing to the neighborhood,” remembered English.
“They would bleed bodies,” said McDarby. It was one of the aspects of breaking the case open.
“We were really puzzled,” McDarby said. “What’s with this bleeding of bodies? What’s the similarity with the West Side guys and [an Italian gang in Brooklyn]?”
The light dawned when McDarby and his colleagues realized that the Hell’s Kitchen guys had all worked in slaughterhouses and had also served time in prison with some Italian gang members.
“We never stopped,” he said. “I knew these guys were bad, but they were full of bullshit. I was never afraid of them.”

Featherstone was eventually arrested and was serving time in Riker’s Island. McDarby said that this was helpful, because it got Featherstone away from his cronies, like Jimmy Coonan. Once in Rikers, Featherstone was rearrested by McDarby, based on new evidence. “We had him by the balls,” recounted McDarby.
Featherstone cut a deal, and turned into a federal witness.
McDarby works as a private investigator today. He refuses to take credit for breaking the Westies.
“English’s book, I think, calls me ‘one of the catalysts'; that’s about right,” he said. “Police work is the same whether you’re in Beijing, New York or London: people rape, they rob, they steal, they murder.”
Today, Hell’s Kitchen, now called Clinton, is a neighborhood on the move. Rents are rising, colorful bodegas and bars line Ninth Avenue from 42nd Street through to Columbus Circle at 59th Street. Cheaper rents have drawn artists and gentrification is on everyone’s lips. Gays have moved in, escaping higher rents in Chelsea to the south. Long gone are the bloody tracks of the Westies.
“The Westies were a kind of strange historical throwback,” English said. “They only survived because of the unique features of that particular neighborhood. The rackets got passed on, generation to generation.”
In the final 1989 court case, English said, “most key members were hit by multiple sentences and will be in jail for the rest of their lives.”
And so, the Westies are gone.

Well, not quite. Mary Brendle is the historian for Community Board 4, Hell’s Kitchen.
“I know them and who they are,” she said. “There’s a couple of them still around.
“Most moved to New Jersey, after the trials, Long Branch sort of area. There’s one still around here who is on all sorts of church committees,” she added, laughing.
English said that two family names, Spillane and McManus, are still present in Hell’s Kitchen, both associated with Irish gangs in the past.

A relative of Jimmy Coonan, arguably the most vicious Westie of them all, Brendle said, “has just bought a condominium in the area.” She did not say which relative.
But today, the criminality and violence that went hand in hand with the name Hell’s Kitchen has gone. The Five Points also, where the first great Irish gangs fought over territory, has been obliterated by the great square of courthouses in lower Manhattan.
Mary Brendle said she thinks that Hell’s Kitchen has gotten a bad rap. She has lived in the area for more than 40 years.
“It has gotten such a bad reputation when [the Westies were] such a minor part of such a great community,” she said. “It’s family-oriented, working-class theater service people.”
She paused and thought for a long time.
“It’s . . . a step above earthy,” she said.

You can throw the article out right here. The Westies killed much more among themselves than they ever did for the Italians. And Featherstone never set foot in the neighborhood again. And Hell's Kitchen is still made up largely of "theater service people"? Really?

A 300 square foot studio apartment in that neighborhood will run you close to two grand a month today. That's a fact, look it up. So unless she means well-paid actors and actresses by "theater service people," she's just putting some spin on the story to keep the "Old New York" mystique alive.

Believe me, I wish the neighborhood still had that kind of character. You can't swing a dead cat on the West Side today without hitting a Panera Bread or a Starbucks. I'm sure the article was well intended, but it ended up a typical pre-Saint Paddy's day article straight out of the Irish Echo.

I'm an oldster, so whenever someone says 'Clinton' it takes me a few seconds to realize what neighborhood they mean.

Not too long ago I was at a party and a transplant was telling me that they were moving to a neighborhood in bklyn -'Stuyvesant Heights'. It took all my self control not to laugh in her face. Real estate agents are awesome at branding. I know that technically part of it was called that, but no one ever used that name. Just plain old Bed-Stuy (do or die )

Yeah, sure buddy.

Your pals in the Mafia pick on the weakest and most vulnerable in society to benefit themselves. The IRA took on the most powerful in their society on behalf of the weak, generally at great personal cost and never to their individual gain.

One fought the British army for 30 years, the other has rules that say coppers can't be killed because they are so scared of what will happen to them.

Read about the East Tyrone, South Derry or South Armagh Brigades if you still think there are similarities. On the one hand flying columns attacking barracks and checkpoints, destroying hundreds of police stations, firing mortars into 10 Downing Street, hunger striking to the death for their political status and human rights. On the other, extorting small businesses, trafficking drugs, guns for hire, dumping harmful waste, exploiting the poor and desperate through loans, etc, etc.

Just you stick to the old timey tales about when Spanish Harlem was Italian and who were the stone gangsters from you area, because you clearly don't know shit about the Ra if you think any of it was done lightly or happily, or without moral examinations of whether it not the actions were just.

Nonsense. A part of the IRA (and the UVF) were about gangsterism and criminal protection rackets. Don't white wash that part. It was real and it's been extensively documented and acknowledged.

Please. A murderer is a murderer is a murderer.

I'm the first one to dispel the myths about so-called honor among Mafiosi, so I don't know where your sarcasm is coming from where my "pals in the Mafia" are concerned. But I do know that as a practicing Catholic, the Pope has about as much use for the scumbag mutts in the IRA as he does for Italian gangsters. They're all sharing the same space in Hell.

Those scumbags kill in the name of God. They're no better than ISIS or any of the Muslim extremists. The only difference is, the Muslims don't need the booze to get their balls up.

Documented by who?

The fact you are even comparing the UVF and the IRA is mental.

While the UVF and UDA were walking around with pet lions and smuggling drugs into the country IRA volunteers were living on a fiver a week and smuggling guns in to fight a war.

How many drug dealers and criminals do you know that died a death like Kevin Brady, or Pol Kinsella, or fought and died like Francie Hughes, or have a story like Gerry Kelly's, or suffered like Marion and Dolores Price and Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan, or have the bravery of Jim Bryson?

Which volunteers enjoyed money and wealth and comfort in the same way that the hoods who celebrated on here do?

The IRA never once killed in the name of God and anyway, if you knew your history you would know that men like Bobby Sands had a rosary blessed for him by the Pope and that the Papal Nuncio in Ireland intervened in their favour repeatedly while IRA and INLA prisoners were seeking political status.

The IRA never needed booze for anything either, my friend. In fact many of their operators shunned drink and definitely shunned drugs in order to he constantly ready to take the fight to a bigger, stronger and better equipped enemy.

What's your take in the good old US Army? Is their murder ok because they have a uniform on?

The IRA emerged at a time when the Republican community were disenfranchised and met with violence every time they sought basic democratic rights. What would your solution be?

Short answer: Yes.

That aside, you've done nothing but look to argue with me here. Hence, my anger. You've been here for two years, you have all of two dozen posts, and you're jumping on me for saying that IRA supporters are in the same class as Mafia fanboys.

You criticize me for not knowing Irish history, yet you make mention of Harlem and other old Italian strongholds that you obviously know nothing about. And if you're going to bunch me up with the kids who worship wiseguys here, you're sadly mistaken. You play you pay. I say it here all the fucking time. I don't lose a minute's sleep when wiseguys get sent up for murder.

Nothing mental about comparing terrorist groups.

The IRA has it's heros and it's bad guys. Painting them all as saints is ridiculous. You do know that they were laundering money with the Mafia in italy I assume? The story was pretty well covered b the media. Or that some of the drug dealers they shot were shot for not paying the tax that they collected for allowing them to operate. Or that they sold fuel and cigarettes illegally to raise money. Or that substantial funding from NORAID came from drug deals. Or about the Scouse/IRA drug deals. Try and sell the bit about them all having halos to someone that's never picked up a book.


In the interest of full disclosure- I believe in the IRA's original cause, although not their tactics. But I believe in the truth as well, and I don't believe in rewriting in it. Save that Orwellian stuff for people who can't look past myths.

Then what about the little lucrative Dublin racket of taxing and extorting local gang lords the Real IRA currently seems to spend a great deal of their time at? I find it a bit hard to believe all that is for the greater good of their "cause". On the contrary, personal profit and gain seems to be the order of the day nowadays. All of the examples you quote seem to be a thing of the past, because at the moment several IRA brigades have more in common with any organized criminal group than with a bunch of paramilitary freedom fighters. Now I don't give a fuck. They can extort any crime lord they want to for all I care. It just has to be acknowledged that when it comes to the current state parts of the IRA are in, William "Braveheart" Wallace's, they're not.

I believe there should be a distinction between the "IRA" of now and the IRA of old.

Also, the IRA of old should be compared with other paramilitary groups, not criminal organizations. Different goals. Not morally equal.

There's a gay (Not that theres anything wrong with that) sports bar in Hells Kitchen called Mickey Spillane's on 9th Ave, I pass it every single day twice on my way into work and on my way home from work. If that doesn't tell you people the current state of complete gentrification of Hells Kitchen, then I dont know what else can.

Dont get me wrong, there's still a few great holdout Irish bars in the neighborhood that havent changed since the days of the Westies. They still in the year 2015 probably have the same stools in them that Mickey Featherstone sat while he drank his face off everynight and snorted lines of blow. Some of these taverns that havent changed at all that are still old Irish bars from the old neighborhood of Hells Kitchen are Blarney Stone Pub on 47th st (was just there fri night after work), McCoys on 9th, and the Port 41 Bikini Bar underneath the Port Authority bus terminal (owned by an old Irish guy from the neighborhood and it still attracts the old Hells Kitchen crowd, as well as a ton of construction workers, and Jersey bridge and tunnel pervs like me who want to sip on beers and down shots while looking at Spanish broads fresh off the boat in Bikinis before they board their buses)

Ya missed a few.

The real money makers were elsewhere, the ones you mention are the watering holes of the local farmers and neighbors.

Hi all, I dont post here much, but I saw the thread on the main page about the current state of Hells Kitchen, so that made me think of Featherstone and brought me here. So my question is... Has he really stayed 100% anonymous since his release? No one knows where is he, or who he is now? It amazes me that a lunatic like him would be able to stay straight for as long as he as.

Any info would be great!

Yes, according to educated posters on this thread he is one on the success of WITSEC and kept his nose clean..

how else is a paramilitary group supposed to fund their operations? Not disagreeing with your assertions, mind, but they do need money if they ever hope to reach their political goals. I have no doubt that a fair number of IRA members continue to strive for the political goals, but there are surely more than a few opportunists who are using the illegal activities of the IRA to enrich themselves without any fucks to give for "the cause".

I guess it all depends on what you're willing to reconcile morally for a goal that may never be reached. I suppose it also depends on what crimes are being committed. As soon as they started bombing public places and killing civilians I couldn't support them in any way other than acknowledging their complaints are legitimate; But, at the end of the day, their methodology is not and that's where I start to side with PB on the issue.

I can separate the action from the complaint to view it objectively, but pragmatically, too many innocent people were (are?) dying on all sides.