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Bonkers Crimes and Criminals In History

Khalid Elhassan February 7, 2020 32 min

Thomas Blood - Royal Academy of Arts — Colonel Blood Stealing the Crown Jewels. Royal Academy of Arts

7. Iron Mike’s Killers’ Hard Work Did Not Pay As They Had Hoped

Tony Marino, bottom left, and his accomplices. Smithsonian Magazine

An exasperated Tony Marino and his accomplices decided to take a more straightforward approach and simply ran Michael Malloy over with a taxi owned by one of the plotters. All that did was put the old Irishman in a hospital for three weeks with some broken bones. He reappeared at the speakeasy soon as he was discharged. So on February 22^nd, 1933, they stuck a gas hose in Malloy’s mouth after he passed out and turned on the jets. That finally did the trick.

The plotters collected on the insurance, but rumors of “Mike the Durable” began making the rounds. When the insurers heard the tales, they contacted police. Malloy’s body was exhumed and reexamined, and the truth came out. The plotters were tried and convicted in 1934. One got a prison sentence, while the rest, including Tony Marino, got the electric chair.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.