SerpApi.Org
Long before Hell's Kitchen was known for sleek apartment towers and trendy restaurants, the Manhattan neighborhood was a stronghold of the Westies, an Irish-American gang whose reign of violence made them one of New York's most notorious crime groups.
For the Westies, the construction of the Javits Center at the very West end of 34th Street in New York represented a multi-million-dollar opportunity. Those gangsters are now at the center of a new scripted crime series, "The Westies," which premiered on MGM+ on July 12.
“The Westies felt like they owned the neighborhood where the Javits Center was,” series co-creator Chris Brancato, who specializes in historically inspired crime dramas, told The New York Post. “Cops were on the pad [payroll], and the Westies felt a sense of freedom to do what they wanted, whether it was legal or not,” he added. Earlier this year, the notorious Irish crime boss Daniel Kinahan was arrested in the United Arab Emirates.
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“Everyone understood that the Javits Center was going to be an unprecedented bounty of criminal rackets,” T.J. English, author of the definitive book on the gang, “The Westies," told The Post.
No source of extortion was too small for the gang, T.J. English explained, adding that it included food carts for workers, laying concrete, painting, and even porta-potties.
“Everything from soup to nuts [and bolts] in the construction. There were different unions that were controlled by different players in the universe of organized crime," he added.
The Westies were established in the early 60s under Irish-American mobster Mickey Spillane. The construction of the Javits Center also captured the interest of the Italian mafia, especially the Gambino crime family, led by Paul Castellano.
Spillane was adamantly against working with the Italians, and this led to the conflict between the two gangs, which led to the Irish-Italian war of the 70s.
“In came a rivalry, which was actually a low-grade war,” explained T.J. English.
“The Gambino family hired a notorious Irish hitman named Joseph ‘Mad Dog’ Sullivan, and they started associating with underlings related to Spillane. They cut Mickey’s organization out from under him. They basically wanted his group inside [their own] so they could move in [on Javits]. This was all a business decision.”
Spillane was shot right outside the Queens apartment building that housed him and his family. However, it was unclear if "Mad Dog" killed Spillane.
Soon after, when the 80s emerged, the Westies partnered with the Italians, and the funds were directed to gangsters at the expense of legitimate workers.
“For the first time in history, the Gambinos formed an alliance with the West Side Irish,” T.J. said, “They wanted to bring the Westies under their domain so that they could have access to all of the West Side rackets.”
