Coonan's father never told it straight. He told it the way a man tells a thing that still hurts: flat, fast, no color in it.

They came for him on a street he'd walked for twenty years and they worked him over with pistol butts until the bone under his eye came loose from its socket, and then they let him go because that was the message, not the beating. Mickey Spillane's crew did the collecting in Hell's Kitchen those years, and John Coonan owed somebody something. His son was fourteen. He watched his father's face set wrong for the rest of his life and he didn't forget it.

James Michael Coonan. Born December 1946, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. Quit school at 17, fists already paying his way. Wasn't big. Didn't need to be. Had the willingness to go all the way when another man stops at three-quarters.

By 19, first move against Spillane: climbs tenement roof, empties 30-round machine gun magazine at Spillane and crew. No one dies. Announcement, not ending. Marks start of Coonan-Spillane feud.

Spillane goes and finds John Coonan, slaps him across the face in the street, tells him to control his boy. Doesn't work. Coonan state takes off board for kidnapping/killing pled down to manslaughter. Out late 1971, older, colder, same ambition: Mickey Spillane's job.

Mid-70s picks up Vietnam vet Mickey Featherstone — choirboy face, no bottom once shooting starts. Becomes right hand.

Meanwhile, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center construction. Genovese family wants piece. Spillane says no. Genovese brings in Joseph "Mad Dog" Sullivan. Sullivan kills Spillane lieutenants: Eddie "the Butcher" Cummiskey Aug 20 1976 in Sunbrite bar, Tom Devaney, Tom "the Greek" Kapatos. Spillane's organization gutted.

1977: Loan shark Ruby Stein — Gambino-connected — murdered and beheaded. Testimony 1987 by ex-Westies member turned informant William Beattie: Coonan had Stein killed and beheaded to erase debt and prove Westies power through viciousness. Killing brings Coonan into contact with Gambino soldier Roy DeMeo, Brooklyn Flatlands crew.

Deal: Eliminate Spillane, Gambinos bless successor. Roy DeMeo, Gambino soldier, murders Spillane as favor to Coonan — never proved in court, no conviction. May 13, 1977, Spillane shot down 59th St Woodside Queens. Mickey Featherstone arrested, tried, acquitted. File stays open.

Spillane death puts West Side in Coonan's hand. Tightens alliance with Westies and Gambinos under Paul Castellano. Terms: 10% of illegal proceeds to family, Gambinos finance loansharking. Castellano chastises Westies for murdering two important Mafia loan sharks. Coonan trades Spillane's boot for Castellano's.

Jan 1978: Coonan with Featherstone and Anton Lucich shoots and dismembers loansharking associate Richard Tassiello for skimming.

1979: Tried for Harold Whitehead murder, acquitted, convicted weapons charges, 4 years federal prison. Does time, comes home, resumes power. Arrested for murder again 1986.

April 1985: Westie Michael Holly murdered, Billy Bokun involvement. Frame built pointing at Featherstone. March 1986 jury convicts Featherstone, 25 years. Featherstone realizes Coonan sold Hell's Kitchen to Italians, kept proceeds. Wife Sissy Featherstone wears wire, gets Bokun talking on tape about disguise.

With Sissy evidence, conviction overturned Sept 1986, Featherstone becomes informant.

With Featherstone info 1986, prosecutors obtain indictments against eight members of Westies including leader Jimmy Coonan. Sept 17, 1987, US Attorney and Manhattan DA hand up RICO indictment against Coonan and nine others including wife Edna Coonan: extortion, loansharking, gambling, narcotics, kidnapping,

Coonan remains federal institution, Pennsylvania, still filing appeals. Boy who climbed tenement roof got everything he wanted — just never got to keep it clean.

. Fireside Chat with Cage.

Stay curious, my friends.

Hell's Kitchen never smelled like roses. It smelled like river fog and diesel and the inside of a fist. And for 17 years, one man owned it.

Michael J. Spillane. Born July 13, 1933, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. Irish parents Michael Anthony Spillane and Margaret Curran. Sacred Heart School — skipped two grades, scholarship at 12 to Rice High School. Leaves after two years to support widowed mother.

#MickeySpillane #HellsKitchen #Westies #JimmyCoonan #RoyDeMeo #TrueCrime #Mafia #IrishMob #OrganizedCrime #NewYorkCity #GentlemanGangster #MobHistory #JavitsCenter #MickeyFeatherstone

June 9, 1959. RCAF Station Clinton, Ontario. Hot night. 14-year-old Steven Truscott gives 12-year-old Lynne Harper a bicycle ride to the highway. He says he leaves her at the intersection to Lawson's Bush. She never comes home.

June 11, body found in Lawson's Bush. Strangled.

Inspector Harold Graham, OPP Criminal Investigation Bureau — later OPP Commissioner — leads the case. By next evening, Steven is charged with murder. No other suspects investigated.

September 1959, Goderich. 15-day trial. 59 witnesses, 76 exhibits. Crown's case hangs on pathologist John Penistan: stomach contents in a jar held to light = death 7:15-7:45pm. The only window that fits the boy.

Sept 30, 1959: Guilty, with recommendation for mercy. Sentenced to hang. Youngest person in Canada condemned to the rope. Commuted to life. Paroled 1969 after 10 years. Lives as Steven Bowers in Guelph, Ontario for 30 years in silence.

1966: Isabel LeBourdais publishes The Trial of Steven Truscott. Supreme Court review. On eve of hearing, Penistan writes a private letter to Graham — his own "agonizing reappraisal" of trial testimony. Multiple undisclosed draft autopsy reports, some putting death the next morning. Letter stays in file for decades.

2001: Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (James Lockyer) files appeal. 3000 pages of undisclosed material surface. 700-page brief: children's statements supporting Truscott's bridge crossing buried, bicycle tracks near body a week old not fresh, elderly hitchhiking sighting and farmer Bob Lawson's strange car by the fence never disclosed.

2006: Lynne Harper's body exhumed for DNA. No usable DNA recovered. Forensic entomology — blow fly larvae collected in 1959 but never used at trial — shows death well after Crown's timeline.

2004: Justice Fred Kaufman review finds miscarriage of justice. Reference to Ontario Court of Appeal.

August 28, 2007: 5-judge panel, 2007 ONCA 575, unanimously quashes conviction as miscarriage of justice. Acquittal entered. Court says not in position to declare factual innocence — acquittal is the just remedy after 48 years.

Apology from Attorney General Michael Bryant: "truly sorry." Compensation $6.5M to Steven, $100k to wife Marlene. Lynne Harper's family: brother calls payout "a real travesty."

No one else ever charged.

Told in Philip Marlowe noir style, from a diner in Clinton. This episode uses only findings from the 2007 Court of Appeal decision.

Fireside Chat with Cage.

Stay curious, my friends.