The Westies: The Crew That Cut Up Bodies for Gambino Crime Family

Hell’s Kitchen, 1978. A drunk runs his mouth in a bar. By morning, his head is in one bag, his hands in another, and his torso is floating in the Hudson. This is how the Westies did business. And the Gambino crime family loved them for it. Everybody knows the Five Families. But how many people outside New York have ever heard of the Westies? In the 1970s, a small crew of ruthless Irish gangsters from Manhattan’s West Side built a murder-for-hire empire so brutal that Paul Castellano himself put them on retainer as Gambino contract killers. They controlled the docks, the Javits Center labor racket, and every loan shark from 30th Street to 59th Street. In this documentary you will learn: • How Jimmy Coonan avenged his father and overthrew Mickey Spillane to take Hell’s Kitchen • Why Vietnam vet Mickey Featherstone became the deadliest killer the neighborhood ever produced • How Eddie “The Butcher” Cummiskey taught the crew to dismember bodies so cases could never be prosecuted • The exact 5-step mechanics of the longshoremen no-show racket that earned them millions • Why Paul Castellano allied with an Irish crew over his own associates • How Ruby Stein’s torso washed up in Brooklyn and triggered the FBI investigation • The frame job on Mickey Featherstone that finally destroyed the Westies from within Key figures: Jimmy Coonan, Mickey Featherstone, Billy “The Indian” Bokun, Eddie “The Butcher” Cummiskey, Mickey Spillane, Paul Castellano, Roy DeMeo. Timeline: 1966 kidnapping of John Coonan through 1988 federal RICO conviction. This story matters because it rewrites what most people think they know about organized crime in America. The Italians did not run New York alone. They subcontracted their worst work to a group of broken Irish kids who had nothing left to lose, and for 15 years that arrangement made Hell’s Kitchen the most dangerous square mile in the country. The 1990 Sean Penn film State of Grace is loosely based on these events. Sources include: T.J. English’s definitive book “The Westies: Inside New York’s Irish Mob” (1990), federal court records from United States v. Coonan et al. (S.D.N.Y. 1987-88), and FBI organized crime task force investigative files referenced in subsequent journalism. Subscribe for a new mob documentary every week. Drop a comment with which forgotten crew we should cover next. #TheWesties #HellsKitchen #IrishMob #MafiaHistory #OrganizedCrime #TrueCrime #JimmyCoonan #MickeyFeatherstone #GambinoFamily #PaulCastellano #NYCHistory #MobDocumentary #StateOfGrace #UnsolvedMysteries #ColdCase