Gather round, friends, and settle in for a true tale of intrigue, murder, incompetence, mayhem, fraud, and utter absurdity in prohibition-era New York.
Mike Malloy (1873-1933) was an Irish-born former firefighter, who found himself homeless, alcoholic, and an all-around ragamuffin in the Big Apple during the 1920s and ’30s. He was known to frequent a nameless speakeasy that was tucked away in a seedier part of town, owned by one Tony Marino. A place where you could, for a nickel, buy glasses of "smoke," which was basically just unrefined fuel alcohol. Somehow, Mike’s liver just kept chugging along day after day—an impressive feat, given that the consumption of poisonous liquor would kill some 10,000 revelers before prohibition finally ended.
One day, after some drinks and commiseration between the owner/ bartender (Marino) and four other patrons (Joseph "Red" Murphy, Hershey Green, Daniel Kriesberg, and Francis Pasqua—a corrupt undertaker), a nefarious plot was hatched. Each of them needed money, none of them had a wealth of moral sensibility, and no one seemed to give two shits about poor old Mike. With the help of a less-than-upstanding insurance agent, the five of them took out a life insurance policy on Malloy, which would pay $3,500 (that’s a bit over $70k now) if, and only if, Mike died an accidental death. Marino then offered bottomless free drinks to Mike with the plan that the deeply alcoholic man would just drink himself to death if given free rein to do so. Mike apparently accepted the offer with an astonishing but unsurprising lack of skepticism.
Figure 1: Tony Marino’s speakeasy
After some time, it became apparent that this wasn’t going to achieve anything except maybe making Marino’s bar go bankrupt, so the conspirators (later dubbed "The Murder Trust") decided to escalate their tactics and began adding antifreeze to his drinks. Mike barely batted an eye and just kept pounding back the free booze with all the gusto he’d had before and with no apparent ill effect. There’s been some debate as to how he managed to survive this, and though science likes to suggest that the ethanol in the booze blocks the absorption of ethylene glycol, which would otherwise be toxic, I prefer to believe that Mike was just made of stronger stuff.
After this failed to do the trick, the crew opted to try turpentine, which I’m sure, if you’re still reading, you can guess also didn’t work. After the turpentine, they tried horse liniment, which also did not stop the ironclad liver of Durable Mike. (I’m not sure which of them thought this would work and why or if they were just randomly grabbing things that looked vaguely toxic and making inventive new cocktails for Malloy to try at this point.) Eventually, they even tried rat poison, which somehow—again—Mike shrugged off as if it was nothing. The Murder Trust was getting rather annoyed at this point and decided to mix shots of pure wood alcohol (methanol) into his drinks. Again, no dice.
Figure 2: Delicious booze
By then, I can imagine the schemers were feeling more and more irate and probably malicious, because here was when they opted to offer Malloy a helping of oysters soaked in wood alcohol—hoping this mixture of bad seafood and denatured alcohol would prove poisonous. It did not. Sometime later, they offered him a spoiled sardine sandwich mixed with carpet tacks and broken glass (alternately said to contain poison and tacks, and some even report the sardine tin itself was chopped up and included). Mike reportedly enjoyed the meal so much, he asked for another.
After what must have been a significant amount of frustration, the ne’er do wells decided to try a different angle, and so on one bitterly cold, snowy evening, after Mike had passed out drunk at the bar, they hauled him bodily out into a park and dumped several gallons of water onto his chest, assuming that it would freeze and be the end of hardy Mike. Unbeknownst to them, conflicting stories say that either a policeman found Malloy and hauled him off to a homeless shelter for the night or that the cold jolted him awake, and he stumbled off to a warm bed on his own. Either way, he showed up the next day to the bar, claiming he had little memory of how he’d gotten out there, shrugged, picked up a glass, and resumed drinking. Next, the group tried killing Mike with Hershey Green’s taxi—who hit an inebriated, stumbling Malloy at about 45 mph. He appeared to be dead, so off they drove, apparently victorious. For some reason, though, they couldn’t seem to collect the policy they’d taken out, and a couple of weeks later, as they were trying to navigate the legalese of this matter, into the bar walks Mike. He’d suffered a number of broken bones but simply said: "I’m dying for a drink!"
Finally, in February of 1933, the infuriated would-be killers hauled a passed-out Malloy to Murphy’s room, jammed a coal gas jet hose into his mouth, and turned it on. This, finally-finally, did the trick. Durable Mike was dead.
Figure 3: The room Mike Malloy died in, showing the port to the coal gas line.
However, by this time, rumors were circulating all about town—whisperings of a nefarious plot, the incompetent executors of said plot, and the damn-near unkillable strength of Donegal-native, Mike Malloy. Since the word on the street was that this was no accident, Pasqua’s claim on the death certificate that Malloy had died of "lobar pneumonia" came under immediate suspicion. His body was quickly exhumed, and a forensic examination was done, revealing the extent to which the Murder Trust had gone to try and rid themselves of their target.
Figure 4: Death certificate of Mike Malloy
After a sensational trial, in which the killers tried every trick in the book to get themselves off, three of the four were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death by execution at Sing Sing Prison. Green was given 5-10 years for vehicular assault, after trying to mow someone else down who had a similar name as Malloy, with the idea it might be easier to kill them than Mike, while still collecting his insurance—a plan which also did not work. Additionally, a Dr. Frank Manzella was found guilty of the lesser crime of failing to report a suspicious death after accepting a bribe to sign a bunk death certificate.
All in all, the group spent an estimated $1,875 trying to cash in on the $3,500 policy, split five ways.
There are reports that at other times, they had additionally attempted to machine-gun him down, beat him on the head, or offer more toxic compounds, and though these claims carry varying degrees of veracity, the picture remains that Mike was indeed, as durable as they come. Maybe harder to kill than even Rasputin himself.
Who Mike really was, anything about his family and past has been lost to history, but today Mike rests in a cheap $10 coffin at Ferncliff Cemetery in New York, a testament to the strength of the Irish spirit to thrive and drink, in the face of all adversity.
Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle is an avid historian of all things seedy and criminal. Care for a drink? I don’t know why it tastes funny; I’m sure it’s fine, have another. She can be tracked down on Facebook as Esmeralda Marina and Instagram as @EsmeraldaSilentCitadel.