The Westies: Jimmy Coonan

If memory serves, between all the books, docs, etc, i have only seen 2 photos of Westies leader Jimmy Coonan. Not a single quote, statement or anything to go along with them.

Anyone got anything more on him than just the 2 photos they always use? He's still in a federal pen, I think Minnesota but can't remember offhand...

thanks

JAMES COONAN
Register Number: 13874-054
Age: 67
Race: White
Sex: Male
Located at: Schuylkill FCI
Release Date: 09/24/2030

joey kusaks picture is a young jimmy Coonan.

is his wife out?

Theres' a picture of Coonan in prison, theres another one of him and Featherstone pictured outside the Sunbrite Bar.

I'll be honest I don't know much about the Westies but judging by Featherstone's interview on the Crime Inc documentary they were scared stiff of Castellano/ The Gambino's, can't really blame them though, The Westies were a disorganised bunch of thugs who realised when they were actually sober that they were in over they're heads, funny how they tried to make out they weren't getting shaken down by Big Paul though...

Gotti liked them because they were like him, brutal thugs. He meet with Coonan shortly after he took over and continued the Irish Gambino alliance, Westies were good muscle.

Remember. The Westies are mostly Irish so they are violent, fiery, drunkards, stupid and *insert stereotype*.

When John Gotti is boss of a family and waking up at 1 pm every day because he was on a bender the night before, it's because he's the Dapper Don baby!

16 yrs to go wonder if he makes it. very good book on the westies by that guy English. great read.

I read the book the westies, Coonan seems paranoid, a stone killer, it talks in the book about the meeting with castellano,

I kept wondering why castellano would even bother with them, he had his own muscle, gottis crew, demeos killers, why bother with these morons, eventually Featherstone flipped. and castellano looked like a fool for dealing with the no- bodys.

Yes. Why did he bother?

He had the brains and nous of guys like Gotti, Gravano, Quack Quack Ruggiero, Roach Rampino, De Meo, Testa, Senter and Borelli to conspire against and implicate him in crimes.

Why bother with these nobodies when you have this ragtag collection of heroin addicts, Studio 54 jocks, serial killers, chronic gamblers, loudmouths, morons and egotistical narcissists.

That made me laugh pretty good. Damn, I haven't heard Tony Roach's name since I read the Gotti book by Capeci a few years ago. Keeping around a heroin addict ... great move by Gotti.



Gene Gotti directly behind, and "Roach" Rampino in the back

I mean there were level headed, sober minded, unflashy guys in and around the Gambino's - guys like De Cicco, Gene Gotti (maybe), Failla and Lo Cascio - but let's not act like The Westies were the sole source of Castellano's anxieties and problems.

They had their uses.

moe, i would imagine they had their uses, no doubt . however I don't think carlo Gambino would have bothered with them.

he was much keener than paul.

Carlo would have never dealt with the Westies because he would have whacked Demeo before it ever came to that.

Demeo wouldn't have even had the chance to bring them into Carlo's orbit.

I doubt he would have made Demeo either. Carlo was very fearful of being implicated in murder. This I deduce from the way he reportedly OKed hits, by bobbing his head up and down like he was senile. Why make a guy like Demeo knowing he was deposing of so many people? If he could be proven to be a mafia member, that automatically implicates the Boss. Not a smart move on Paul's part and Carlo was too smart for that.

Carlo would have let the wholesale killing remain outsourced the way killing was outsourced to Murder Inc back in 31.

By the way, in the "Mobsters" episode about the Westies they said Coonan had Featherstone take a hand grenade to the sit down with Castellano and gave the order to whack everybody in the restaurant if they didn't return in a certain amount of time. Is it true or just an attempt to hype the Westies for the viewers? It would have been interesting to see the consequences if they really whacked the Gambino administration right there: an Irish-Italian war, even though the Westies would have lost.

that was fucking priceless

Once the alliance was forged the Westies were only kicking up 10% of their profits to the Gambino administration. After Danny Grillo and Jimmy Coonan clipped Ruby Stein, Big Paul and Funzi Tieri had a mini sit down to discuss the volatile 'West Side Irish Mob'. This resulted with a meeting at Tommaso's. Castellano wanted to bring Jimmy C in because he couldn't risk him and his people whacking any more made guys.

Man I remember starting this thread. To this day I think I've seen 4 pics of him and still no quotes or anything.

I thought a big part of the Italians meeting with them was first to put a lid on their cowboy bullshit but mainly because stein (?) didn't want to cut the Italians in on the construction etc of the new Jacob habits center and Clooney offered a bunch of it up on a platter as part of his play?

Coonan still has family down in central NJ, around the Hazlet area I believe. I remember seeing a high school softball player named Edna Coonan on a school website. I gotta say she looked alot like Jimmy's wife. Also heard one of the Coonan's is a sheriffs officer.

Side note: my friend was a BOP guard in Schuykill and interacted with Coonan daily. He said he was a gentleman.

I wonder if this poor girl was any relation:

STEPHANIE ANN GERMAINE COONAN
AGE: 24 HAZLET
Stephanie Ann Germaine Coonan, 24, of Hazlet, died Sunday, June 21, 2009, at Riverview Medical Center, Red Bank. She was born in Red Bank and lived all of her life in Hazlet. Stephanie was a communicant of St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church, Keansburg. She was a graduate of Raritan High School class of 2003, she went on to graduate from The College of New Jersey class of 2008. She attained a bachelor's degree in International Studies, Political Science and the Italian language. Stephanie worked for the International Affairs Department and also taught conversational Italian classes at the college. She also studied in Florence, Italy at the Palazzo Rucellai in 2006. Stephanie was a member of the Theta Phi Alpha, Beta Chapter, "A sister never walks alone". Her passions include traveling the world, new experiances, trying to make things better for those less fortunate and most importantly friends and family. She had a unique sence of humor the world will be less funny without her. She is now at peace and was always meant to be an angel.
Surviving are her parents, Edward and Linda Patria Coonan of Hazlet; a sister, Edna Coonan of Keansburg; and a brother-in-law, Adam Morasse of Keansburg. She leaves behind countless family and friends with a special love for Aunt Eileen and Uncle Louie of Palisades Park; and cousins, Roseanne and John Cronk,and John Ferraioli .
Stephanie was predeceased by her maternal grandfather, Alfred Patria; and her paternal grandmother, Anna Coonan.
Visiting hours will be from 2 to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, June 24 and Thursday, June 25 at John F. Pfleger Funeral Home, 115 Tindall Road, Middletown. Funeral services are scheduled for 9:15 a.m. Friday, June 26 at the funeral home, followed by a 10:15 a.m. Funeral Liturgy at St. Ann's R.C. Church, Keansburg. Condolences may be emailed to condolences@pflegerfuneralhome

They gotta be kin.He had a brother Eddie,and there was a Edna.Damn these guys have been locked up a long time.Jimmy Mac died a few years back I had read.I read one of Featherstone's kids joined military.There is an youtube video of Eddie Cummiskey's son in a street fight in New York.He beat the hell out of some guy that was twice his size.I believe it was posted on here several years ago

The reason why Paul had to deal with them was because they were killing associates of the Gambinos ie Ruby Stein and Paul didn't want anymore unsanctioned hits since there was a lot of money at stake (and we all know how much Paul loved his dollars)

And seeing they were considered cowboys- it was probably felt nobody other than the boss himself could get thru to them/ control them and that's exactly what the Gambino's did. To show them force

Show them force? How do you show force to insane drug addicts (not coonan obviously) who don't care if they live or die? Even coonan who wanted to work together more than anyone was one inch from turning their meeting into a slaughterhouse.

Imho if you remove coonans wants the gambinos would have had to kill them all and maybe some innocent family members too. The gambinos were organized sociopaths. The westies were just complete maniacs. This may sound ridiculous but coonan probably saved a lot of lives. Jmho.

Wasn't big Paul secretly happy that they whacked stein? Since coonan was his new inroad to the javits center? Demeo told them to plead ignorance but Paul had to know the truth right?

I understand that the "what if" situations are endless...But still, if that quote from the "Mobsters" episode was true, that Coonan and Feathersone seriously expected to be killed at the meeting and gave their bodyguards outside the order to kill every mafioso in the restaurant if they won't return after a certain period of time...If it went that way, with the Gambino and Genovese families beheaded (minus Castellano, Dellacroce, Lombardozzi, Gaggi, Tieri, who else was at the meeting?), would the 5 families have stormed Hell's Kitchen with their "soldiers" (inevitably suffering heavy losses, since the Irish knew their territory and the Italians didn't, it would be like a partisan vs army war, far bloodier than the Colombo conflict in the 90s)?

Don't know though whether the situation was really like that, or did the "Mobsters" episode creators "embellish" the story a little, to increase suspense?

Jmho there would not have been any storming into Hell's Kitchen--that's pure Hollywood fantasy. If the westies would have grenaded that meeting the revenge killings would have been well orchestrated. A few casualties of war but these guys were professionals. They were not an Italian version of the westies they were actual pros.

Do u think the westies have "dirty lace curtains" on their windows too?

That girl Edna was mentioned in English' book as a lookout stashed inside the restaurant..so maybe there is a connection.

Lace Curtain Irish, isn't that the Irish equivalent of Dr. Melfi's family in The Sopranos?

I heard it in The Departed.

In this documentary at around 1:03:18, Billy Beattie says that there was the plan for them to kill Castellano etc if something went wrong. But the group that was supposed to have done the killing were all sitting around off their face on drugs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN_oO4gkIWU

That's true, thanks for pointing out (I had this documentary for some time but still hadn't watched)! Really, I have no words....Assholes, those Westie "soldiers"...And I really thought they were about to behead 2 strongest Mafia families in the USA and just missed the chance. As it seems, far from "beheading" the mob, they probably wouldn't be able to stick their heads right under the guillotine if they were to be beheaded themselves (well, maybe the allegory is a little clumsy, but this is the only think I could think about).

The "Mobsters" episode "conveniently" omitted this detail as I remember.

I thought Ruby Stein was aligned with Fat Tony and the Genovese?

By the way, thanks for the link, this video has a little better image quality than the one I had.

It's kinda like calling us or a certain level of Irish society white trash..it's hard 2 explain,google it,u may get a more comprehensive result.

The movie "State of Grace" w/ Sean Penn,Gary Oldman was based on this entire event..great movie by the way.

Why do u keep saying they could have killed TWO of the biggest fam?

It was only Castellano (with I believe billotti and gaggi) that met up with them?

I'm not surprised at all that they wanted there cut from the websites. "Hells kitchen " was only about 10 blocks but it had some money in it.

What surprised me is that the Gen didn't get involved seeing how that is there territory generally.

The book by T.J.English says Tieri from the Genovese was there too, but losing him alone wouldn't have beheaded the family, you are right...I checked now, I thought for some reason Fat Tony Salerno was there too, my mistake...But then, the book says

This doesn't make sense, shouldn't it be the other way around (Tieri was above Salerno)?

The book (and and partially, the "Mobsters" episode too) lists Dellacroce, Lombardozzi, Gallo and Gaggi for the Gambinos (Bilotti isn't mentioned), apart from Castellano.

But then I don't know for sure, "Mobsters" sometimes make things up and the author of the book, while considered more reliable I think, apart from the Salerno-Tieri confusion, he agrees that Tieri's underboss (Eli Zeccardi, spelled Zicardi in the book) was killed by Mickey Spillane's gang in a kidnapping, while many others say it's more likely Tieri had him killed and blamed Spillane.

So some sources get things wrong, it's not always clear right away which ones do.

"That was the plan"

Right. Thats how many times I hear that quote like it only serves to give them notoriety. Every mob book I've read somebody has said they "planned" to take over X family, and just whack the boss, they planned to escape from prison, etc. It's like me saying my plan is to take over the US and stage a coup against Donald Trump, getting arrested and telling people "Oh but I had it planned!"

"No plan survives contact with the enemy" - Erwin Rommel


I bet at one point Kuklinski "planned" to take over all 5 families by killing their bosses.

Well, since the "hit squad" was partying and smoking weed almost up to start having hallucinations, their "plan" does indeed go in the same category as Kuklinski's tales

Are they all free the ones who went to trial with jimmy c. One flipped after the trial and the judge didnt even reduce his sentence. Some were young and the judge went a little leniat on. Was a good book by the author english.