The son of notorious Manhattan gangster Mickey Spillane appeared in court Monday on charges of punching a dog walker in Hell’s Kitchen. Hell’s Kitchen is the same area that Mafia’s father ruled in the 1970s.
According to a criminal complaint, Michael J. Spillane Jr., 60, woke up Irishman outside the Mediterranean wine bar Kashkaval Gardens on February 21 at about 7:37 p.m. He allegedly punched an unknown man in the face.
Mr. Spillane, who runs Mickey Spillane’s, a bar named after his father about six blocks south of Ninth Avenue, has pleaded not guilty in Manhattan Criminal Court to misdemeanor charges of assault and harassment. He was released after his arraignment.
His ties to the neighborhood date back to the days when his father ruled Hell’s Kitchen as the head of the Irish-American mob in the ’60s and ’70s.
Known as the last of the Gentleman Gangers, Mickey was a fast-rising figure in the loan shark industry, opposed to the drug trade and adamant that he would not have anything to do with the Italian Mafia.
Mickey was murdered outside his home in Woodside, Queens in 1977 after being chased out of Hell’s Kitchen by a more violent rival Irish gang, the Westies. He was shot five times in the head in what police said was a gang assassination.
He was married to Maureen McManus. Maureen McManus was the daughter of a prominent local political dynasty that ran the city’s Tammany Hall Democratic Party for decades, led by Michael Jr. as district leader. According to W42ndSt.com.
“My father was a serious man. When he was in business, he worked with a lot of unions and they controlled most of the wharves,” Spillane said in a 2016 article on his website. said in an interview. “Then the Italian branch of the mob tried to control everything. And if it weren’t for men like my father, there would be no Irish trade unions.”
The fight between the Irish-American mob scion and the dog walker is said to have begun when the man encountered Spillane and a group of others who were standing outside a restaurant, creating a bottleneck.
According to a source at the victim’s camp, the man asked the group to make a path for him and his two dogs, and most of the dogs did so, except for Spillane. He allegedly tried to trip a dog walker. .
Spillane was aggressive and looked at the dog walker in a “menacing manner,” officials said.
Sources said the man went to grab Spillane and then used his clenched fist to force the haymaker into Spillane’s face.
A dog walker was also arrested and charged with the same charges. The complaint against Spillane says he suffered swelling, bruising and lacerations to his neck from the punch.
Mr. Spillane does not have a rap sheet, but shortly after his arraignment he was seen flipping through a stack of $100 bills while standing next to his attorney, Eugene Byrne. He is scheduled to appear in court again on April 29th.
Spillane is the eldest of three siblings.
The actor’s younger brother, Bobby Spillane, who appeared on the shows “Rescue Me” and “Law & Order,” tragically died in 2010 after leaning against a window screen and falling from his sixth-floor apartment on Eighth Avenue.
