Mad Dog Coll
Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll (born Uinseann Ó Colla, July 20, 1908 – February 8, 1932) was an Irish-American mob hitman in the 1920s and early 1930s in New York City. Coll gained notoriety for the alleged accidental killing of a young child during a mob kidnap attempt.[1][2]
This article is about the Irish American mob hitman. For the films portraying him, see Mad Dog Coll (disambiguation).
Mad Dog Coll
February 8, 1932 (aged 23)
Irish, American
"Mad Dog", "Mad Mick"
Hitman for Dutch Schultz and Prohibition-era gang leader
Mob assassin and kidnapper[edit]
Coll's ruthlessness made him a valued enforcer to Schultz at first. As Schultz's criminal empire grew in power during the 1920s, he employed Coll as an assassin. At age 19 Coll was charged with the murder of Anthony Borello, the owner of a speakeasy, and Mary Smith, a dance hall hostess. Coll allegedly murdered Borello because he refused to sell Schultz's bootleg alcohol. The charges were eventually dismissed, and many suspect this to have been due to Schultz's influence.[5] Schultz was not happy about Coll's actions. In 1929, without Schultz's permission, Coll robbed a dairy in the Bronx of $17,000.[5] He and his gang posed as armed guards to gain access to the cashier's room. Schultz later confronted Coll about the robbery, but rather than being apologetic, Coll demanded to be an equal partner; Schultz declined.
By January 1930, Coll had formed his own gang and was engaged in a shooting war with Schultz. One of the earliest victims was Peter Coll, Vincent's older brother, who was shot dead on May 30, 1931, while driving down a Harlem street. Coll subsequently went into a rage of grief and vengeance. Over the next three weeks he gunned down four of Schultz's men. In all, around 20 men were killed in the bloodletting; the exact figure is hard to pin down; New York was also in the midst of the vicious Castellammarese War at the same time. It was mayhem on the streets of Manhattan, and the police often had difficulty in deciding which corpse belonged to which war.
On June 2, Coll and his gang broke into a garage owned by Schultz and destroyed 120 vending machines and 10 trucks. As the war continued, Vincent Coll and his gang killed approximately 20 of Schultz's men.[4] To finance his new gang, Coll kidnapped rival gangsters and held them for ransom. He knew that the victims would not report the kidnappings to police; they would have a hard time explaining to the Bureau of Internal Revenue why the ransom cash had not been reported as income. One of Coll's best-known victims was gambler George "Big Frenchy" DeMange, a close associate of Owney Madden, boss of the Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob. According to one account, Coll telephoned DeMange and asked to meet with him. When DeMange arrived at the meeting place, Coll kidnapped him at gunpoint. He released DeMange 18 hours later after receiving a ransom payment.[6]
Failed hit[edit]
In September 1931, between the killing of young Vengalli and his acquittal for that death, Coll was hired by Salvatore Maranzano, who had recently declared himself capo di tutti capi, to murder Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the new acting boss of the Mafia family of the same name.[14] Tommy Lucchese alerted Luciano that he was marked for death.[14] Months earlier, Luciano had ended the Castellammarese War by ordering the assassination of his own boss, Joseph Masseria, which left Maranzano as the most powerful boss in the Five Families. Maranzano soon decided, however, that Luciano was a threat.[14] On September 10, Maranzano summoned Luciano, Vito Genovese and Frank Costello to his office at the 230 Park Avenue in Manhattan. Certain that Maranzano planned to murder them, Luciano decided to act first.[15] He sent four Jewish hitmen whose faces were unknown to Maranzano and his enforcers. They had been secured with the aid of Luciano's close associates Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel.[16] Disguised as government agents, two of the gangsters disarmed Maranzano's bodyguards. The other two, aided by Lucchese, who went along to point Maranzano out, stabbed the Sicilian boss multiple times and then finished him off by shooting him.[17][18]
According to the 1963 testimony of government witness Joseph Valachi, Maranzano had paid Coll $25,000 for all three murders in advance, but when Coll arrived at Maranzano's office that same day intending to kill Luciano, Genovese, and Costello, he found Lucchese and the four Jewish hitmen fleeing the scene. After learning from them that Maranzano was dead, Coll left the building.[19]
Aftermath[edit]
Coll's killers were never identified. Dutch Schultz attorney Dixie Davis later claimed that gangster Bo Weinberg was the getaway driver of the limousine. Another suspect was one of Coll's own men, Edward Popke aka Fats McCarthy. The submachine gun that killed Coll was found a year later in the possession of a Hell's Kitchen gunman named "Tough" Tommy Protheroe, who used it during a 1933 saloon killing. On May 16, 1935, Protheroe and his girlfriend Elizabeth Connors were shot and killed by unknown triggermen in Queens.[22]
Dutch Schultz continued to operate his rackets for only a few more years. On October 23, 1935, Schultz was killed at the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey.[23] He was supposedly murdered on orders from Luciano and the new National Crime Syndicate.
Coll's widow, Lottie, was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and sentenced to six months. She refused to leave prison following her parole because she feared the people who had killed her husband would also murder her.[24]
In 1935 Owney Madden, still under police scrutiny for the Coll killing, moved to Arkansas, where he died in 1965.[25]