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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

17. Freezing Wouldn’t Kill Malloy

A New York City park during the winter in the 1930s. New York Historical Society Library

Marino and his coconspirators figured that nothing he ate or drank could dent Malloy’s bizarre durability. So they decided to freeze him to death. One cold winter night when the temperature dipped to minus fourteen degrees Fahrenheit, they waited for him to pass out. When he did, they stripped Malloy of his clothes, then carried him to a park, dumped him in the snow, and poured five gallons of water on his chest to make sure he froze solid.

Malloy was found by police and taken to a homeless shelter. He woke up the next day none the worse for wear, and showed up at Marino’s for his daily booze on credit. Next, the plotters decided to vehicular homicide and leave behind a run over Malloy as the apparent victim of a random hit and run.

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.