James Coonan is an elderly man who has spent the last 39 years of his life in prison, long decades away from the days he and a small group of Irish mobsters brought murder and mayhem to a corner of New York.
His earlier story and what is often described as the last Irish gang of New York is dramatised in a new series, The Westies. It is probable he will not be able, or want, to tune in to the television series from his federal prison cell in rural Pennsylvania.
The new drama, showing on MGM+, follows the story of a Hells Kitchen-based gang as its violent members earn their share of the rackets, including extortion from the construction of the Javits Center in the centre of their territory.
But they also have to deal in various ways with the Italian Mafia, including operating as hired hitmen. The likely character based on Coonan is Jimmy Roarke.
James Coonan behind bars in 2015
Coonan, currently incarcerated in FCI Schuylkill, is serving a 75 year sentence under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act for leading a criminal gang involved in loansharking, extortion, gambling, counterfeiting, and drug dealing.
This was protected by violence, including murder. Thirty killings were blamed on the gang.
The judge at his 1987 trial described him as “a man without any redeeming features” and the perpetrator of “unspeakable cruelty”, while a prosecutor labelled him the “personification of horror”.
Three years ago, Coonan wrote: ”All I want to do is to spend my last remaining days in the company of those people I love and miss – especially my wife.
“She is elderly herself and is in a deteriorating state, and I want nothing more than to take care of her.”
In the letter buried in United States court filings, he appealed for compassionate release. It was denied, though this was due to being convicted before the law on compassionate release was introduced. He is due to be released in 2029.
Coonan was with his wife and two children in their apartment in New Jersey on his last day of freedom on November 21, 1986. He was arrested by state authorities for the murder of 28-year-old Patrick Dugan 11 years earlier.
He was accused of luring Dugan to a Westies-controlled apartment in Manhattan, shooting him, then chopping up his body and dumping the parts in the East River. Chopping up bodies was his thing.
Later, it emerged Coonan was arrested on the word of his long time side kick, Mickey Featherstone, a deeply unstable and murderous former Green Beret. The Dugan murder would eventually be wrapped in to the RICO prosecution, where Featherstone was the star witness.
Featherstone admitted to involvement in four murders, five murder conspiracies, along with acts of loan-sharking, drug dealing and other crimes. He received probation.
In an article published in the New York Times weeks after Coonan’s arrest for murder, Michael Cherkasky, of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, said: “This was violence for its own sake, violence without any remorse.”
Mickey Spillane
Cherkasky added: “These are people who would cut off a guy’s head and take it to a bar to show his friends how bad they were.” It was reported the head was placed on the bar ready to be served a beer.
The level of violence within the gang created problems tracking the murders, where “A would kill B, then C would kill A”, according to one prosecutor.
The motive for the Dugan killing was revenge for the killing of another gang member after a bar-room dispute over a woman, the authorities said.
The Westies stemmed from gangs dating back to the 1920s in the Hell’s Kitchen district on the West Side of Manhattan. By the 1970s, they were led by Mickey Spillane.
Coonan is being held in FCI Scuylkill in Pennsylvania
Coonan rose to the head of the gang in the early 1980s following the murder of Spillane, shot dead after he attempted to defy the Italians moving in on the rackets around the construction of the Javits Center.
After his removal, Coonan and his crew began working with the Gambino family, including carrying out contract hits for them.
In an interview with the New York Post, The Westies executive producer Chris Brancato, also behind Narcos, said: “The Italians were organised crime and the Westies were disorganised crime.
“The Westies were heavy drinkers, had a willingness to take on contract-killing jobs ordinary criminals might not be willing to do, and they had a penchant for making bodies disappear.
“By that, I mean they would kill someone and literally grind the body into dust. No body, no arrest. That was the theory.”
Nearly 40 years later, Coonan wrote: “In addition to being (then) 76 years old and having served more than 30 years of my sentence, I have had one minor technical infraction during my time in prison.”
It happened in October, 2001, when he made a routine call to his daughter, Julie. His infant granddaughter picked up the phone then quickly hung up. Concerned, he phoned his wife and asked her to check to see if they were OK. It was an improper three-way call.
“I apologise for breaking the rules, but I was very concerned for my family,” Coonan wrote.
He added: “If I am released, I will not return to committing crime. I‘m not the man I once was.”
