Who Was Jimmy Coonan? The Westies Boss Who Partnered With the Gambinos
Mobsters DailyJimmy Coonan was the boss of the Westies, the Irish-American gang from Hell's Kitchen whose signature was dismembering its victims — and who, in the late 1970s, cut a formal deal with Paul Castellano's Gambino family: contracts and protection in exchange for a cut of the rackets.
Hell's Kitchen's baby-faced killer
James Coonan (born 1946) grew up in Hell's Kitchen, the son of an accountant who was once kidnapped by the older Westie Mickey Spillane's crew — an insult the son reportedly never forgot. By the mid-1970s Coonan had muscled in on Spillane's territory of loansharking, gambling and hijacking around the Javits Center construction site. In 1977 Spillane was shot dead outside his apartment, and the neighborhood changed management. Coonan's inner circle, including the enforcer who later turned on him and is profiled in Mickey Featherstone, the Westies killer who turned, made the gang's reputation: bodies were cut up and scattered so completely that some victims were never found at all.
The Westies are the bridge between the old Irish street gangs and the modern Five Families era — which is why, with November here and the holidays coming, rewatch season belongs to the Tony Soprano Ugly Christmas Sweater: Tony in black-and-white stencil, nothing covering the design, built for holiday parties and long nights back in this world.
The Gambino handshake
Coonan's masterstroke was diplomacy. Rather than war with the Italians, he sat with Castellano and agreed the Westies would take murder contracts and Gambino direction while keeping their Hell's Kitchen rackets, kicking up a percentage. It was a franchise arrangement decades before the word was fashionable, and it made a small Irish gang briefly untouchable — the same Gambino machine whose hit squads are covered in how Roy DeMeo died. For Castellano, the Westies were deniable, disposable labor. For Coonan, they were a shield.
RICO ends the arrangement
The shield cracked when Featherstone, arrested and facing life, became a federal witness. In 1988 Coonan was convicted under RICO on racketeering charges including murders, and sentenced to 75 years. The Westies, never more than a couple of dozen men, effectively died with the verdict — proof that the partnership had always been one-way: the Gambinos survived their Irish subcontractors without noticing.
Frequently asked questions
Why were they called the Westies? For the West Side of Manhattan — Hell's Kitchen — the Irish working-class neighborhood whose waterfront and convention-center rackets they controlled.
What was Coonan's deal with the Gambinos? The Westies performed murder contracts and accepted Gambino oversight, kicking up a share of their rackets in return for protection and standing.
How long was Jimmy Coonan sentenced to? Seventy-five years, following his 1988 federal RICO conviction built largely on Mickey Featherstone's testimony.
Keep reading: Danny Greene, the Irishman Cleveland could not kill · the Commission trial that broke the Five Families · Whitey Bulger, Boston's informant king
From the shop: Shadows of the Underworld — the real-mafia history behind the names in this story.
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