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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

20. The “Murder Trust”

Malloy - Left to right, Dan Kreisberg, Joseph 'Red' Murphy, and Anthony 'Tony' Marino — Left to right, Dan Kreisberg, Joseph ‘Red’ Murphy, and Anthony ‘Tony’ Marino

Marino had previously profited from a scam involving a homeless woman named Mabelle Carson. He convinced her to take out a $2,000 life insurance policy, naming him as beneficiary, then got her passed-out drunk and exposed her to freezing temperatures until she died. So Marino decided to return to the homicidal insurance fraud well. Emboldened by his earlier success with Carson, Marino devised a similar scheme, and conspired with four acquaintances to make some quick cash.

He enlisted Joseph “Red” Murphy, his bartender; Daniel Kriesberg, a grocer; Frank Pasqua, an undertaker; and Harry Green, a taxi driver. Helped by a corrupt insurance agent, they would take out multiple life insurance policies on Malloy, get him to drink himself to death, and collect when he perished. Together, the conspirators became known as the “Murder Trust”.

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.