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The Man Who Wouldn’t Die – The Bizarre Depression Era Crime That Shaped How Our Insurance Works

Khalid Elhassan June 2, 2025 17 min

A young Michael Malloy, left, and his killers. I09

10. The Most Important Reform

Malloy - Contemporary media coverage of the Malloy case — Contemporary media coverage of the Malloy case. Pinterest

Most importantly, the Malloy case contributed to the eventual development of centralized policy tracking systems. They allow insurers to flag suspicious patterns, such as multiple policies taken out on the same individual across different companies. Together, the reforms significantly strengthened insurers’ ability to detect and prevent fraud.

Malloy’s case, while grim, was ultimately a turning point that forced insurers to prioritize ethical standards and safeguard against manipulation. Nowadays, we take identity verification procedures for granted, but there was a time when they simply did not exist. We owe much of the verification measures we have today to lessons learned from Malloy’s murder.

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.