NEW YORK -- The wife of a reputed West Side mobster and three members of his Irish gang were indicted Wednesday in the killing of a loanshark, and the Manhattan prosecutor said the gang was responsible for 28 murders.
District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said the gang was linked with the Gambino crime family, New York's strongest Mafia group, and served as 'hired guns' for the Gambinos, whose reputed leader, John Gotti, is standing trial in Brooklyn.
Morgethau said the gang began as gamblers and loansharks but have committed 28 murders, five of which have been solved.
In the latest indictment, Julia Coonan, 44, wife of imprisoned Westies leader James Coonan, was charged with scheming to murder the loanshark, he said. She was arrested Wednesday in her home in Hazlet, N.J.
Three other members of the Irish gang were charged with carrying out the killing of Vincent Leone, 47, the recording secretary of Local 1909 of the International Longshoremen's Association.
Julia Coonan pleaded innocent to conspiracy charges in state Supreme Court in Manhattan and Judge Peter McQuillan set $50,000 bail.
Outside the courtroom, Coonan's lawyer Lawrence Hochheiser said, 'She's a housewife ... her only crime is being his wife.'
Asked if she was a member of the Westies, he responded, 'She's hardly a member of anything at all.'
James Coonan is awaiting trial for an alleged revenge killing against a gang member.
Julia Coonan pleaded innocent to conspiracy charges in state Supreme Court in Manhattan and Judge Peter McQuillan set $50,000 bail.
Outside the courtroom, Coonan's lawyer Lawrence Hochheiser said, 'She's a housewife ... her only crime is being his wife.' Asked if she was a member of the Westies, he responded, 'She's hardly a member of anything at all.'
Authorities said Leone was a loanshark and a bookie who created no-show jobs and took kickbacks from dockworkers on the Hudson River piers that border the Irish gang's territory in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan's West Side.
Morgenthau said the gang thought Leone 'manipulated the reporting of sports bets and deprived the Westies and the Gambinos of their share in the proceeds.'
The three, James McElroy, 36, William Bokun, 29, and Kevin Kelly, 31, allegedly killed Leone in Guttenberg, N.J., on Feb. 11, 1984. Morgenthau said they were among the top hitmen in the gang.
Morgenthau said that in November 1983 Julia Coonan visited her husband, who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, in the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., and the two hatched the plot to kill the victim.
In late November, McElroy and Kelly also paid a visit to their leader, Morgenthau said.
Less than three months later, the three killers drove the victim to New Jersey 'where Kelly took out a pistol and shot Leone two times in the back of the head,' the district attorney said.
McElroy and Bokun are in jail charged with other killings. Kelly is a fugitive who has been indicted for the attempted murder of a carpenter's union official.
The Westies have been linked with the Gambino crime family for the last eight to 10 years, Morgenthau said.
'They shared in the proceeds of gambling and loansharking on the West Side and they also have been used as hired guns for the Gambino family,' he said.
The district attorney said they were 'very brutal. They not only kill people they dismember them,' he said. 'That's the way they get the message out.'
Morgenthau said in their heyday there were 30 Westies, but that number has been reduced to 10 or 15 as many of them have been jailed or killed.
Nine gang members, including two of the three indicted Wednesday, are awaiting trial or serving prison terms.
Coonan's former underling, Francis 'Mickey' Featherstone, has pleaded guilty to a federal racketeering charge and is cooperating with authorities, leading to the recent spate of arrests.
The Westies grew out of a Hell's Kitchen bootlegging mob formed by former Cotton Club owner Owen Madden, authorities said. They said that over the years it has been steeped in gambling and loansharking.
Contract murders are a relatively new enterprise, they said. The became hired killers in the 1970s, authorities said.
