2. The Murder of Iron Mike – No, Not That One
In June of 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Tony Marino, the proprietor of a rundown speakeasy in the Bronx, was in desperate need of money. So he and four acquaintances hatched a plan to murder somebody and collect the life insurance. Working with a corrupt insurance agent, they would take out life insurance policies on one of the habitual drunks frequenting Marino’s establishment. They would then get him to drink himself to death, and collect when he perished. They chose Michael Malloy (1873 – 1933), a homeless Irish immigrant who was an alcoholic and a longtime client of Marino’s, where he often drank on credit until he passed out.
Malloy paid Marino when he could, whenever he drifted into temporary employment, and let the tab run for months whenever he drifted out of employment and was broke. He seemed the perfect mark. After taking out life insurance policies on Malloy, Marino extended him unlimited credit at the speakeasy. The assumption was that Malloy would drink himself to death, but every day, the old Irishman drank all his waking hours without any noticeable decline in his health. So to speed things up, Marino and his partners in crime added antifreeze to their mark’s booze. Old Malloy simply drank it until he passed out, then asked for more when he came to. As seen below, Michael Malloy turned out to be extremely difficult to kill – a toughness that earned him the nicknames “Iron Mike” and “Mike the Durable”.
