Tony Marino was preparing a deadly sandwich of rotted fish, broken glass, carpet tacks and metal shards.

This should finish him off, Marino thought grimly as he pressed down the bread on the toxic slathered mix.

The door swung open. An elderly man stumbled into the bar with a tipsy grin on his ruddy face. His name was Michael Malloy. He was barely sober, having just woken up from his drunken bout last night. He was an alcoholic — jobless and homeless to boot. By all rights, he should be feeling miserable. But on this early morning, he had every reason to be happy.

Last week, Marino, the owner of the bar, had granted him an open-ended tab. He could drink whatever he wanted in the bar — for free. Malloy had been drinking himself into oblivion every night at the saloon ever since.

Malloy plopped himself unsteadily into a seat by the bar, waiting with muddled anticipation for his first drink of the day. Marino pushed the plate of sandwich towards Malloy. A complimentary dish, he said. On the house.

The rotten stench of the sandwich was so strong that it could be smelt across the room. But Malloy was so sodden from last night’s drinking that he didn’t notice. He was delighted instead. More free food. The last time, it was oysters. Now a meat sandwich.

At the other side of the bar, a group of men at a table were gazing at Malloy over their pinochle cards. They watched Malloy pick up the sandwich and bite into it enthusiastically.

They watched him chew the sandwich and swallow it down his throat.

Their fingers tensed on their cards as they waited for the inevitable to happen.

Anytime now, Malloy will keel over and die in excruciating pain. The lethal metal and glass shards in the sandwich will travel down his throat and pierce open his stomach and innards.

They eyed Malloy with bated breath.

This was their third murder attempt on Malloy. They can’t wait any longer.

Malloy must die this time.

Michael Malloy

It was the Great Depression in New York City in 1932.

Michael Malloy was one of the homeless, unemployed men wandering the streets at the height of the Prohibition. He was originally from Ireland and had been a firefighter in his younger days. But at 60 years old, he was well past his prime in these hard times. Aside from the occasional odd job, he spent most of his time at the local speakeasies in the Bronx, drinking hard liquor until he passed out.

Malloy was part of the “flotsam and jetsam in the swift current of underworld speakeasy life,” The Daily Mirror wrote. “Those no-longer-responsible derelicts who stumble through the last days of their lives in a continual haze of ‘Bowery Smoke.’ ”

Malloy showed up frequently at Tony Marino’s bar. At 27 years old, Marino was a young speakeasy owner, competing with other bars in town. Business wasn’t good. He let Malloy drink on credit at first. But after a while, Malloy stopped paying for his tabs.

It was at Marino’s bar where the plot to kill Malloy for money was hatched.

The Plot To Kill Michael Malloy

It was afternoon in July 1932.

Francis Pasqua, 24, an undertaker, sat nursing his glass of whiskey in Marino’s speakeasy. He was mulling over what Marino had told him — a con that Marino had pulled off last year.

Marino had befriended a homeless woman called Mabelle Carson. He had convinced her to sign a $2,000 (around $33,700 today) life insurance policy that named him as the beneficiary. One freezing night, he piled her with alcohol and stripped off her clothes at his place. He doused the mattress she was lying in with ice water and pushed the bed underneath an open window in his apartment. She passed away that night. The coroner listed her cause of death as bronchial pneumonia. Marino collected her insurance money with no one knowing the wiser.

Pasqua gazed across the bar. An elderly, inebriated man tossing down a drink caught his eye.

The man was Michael Malloy. Malloy was a regular at the bar, but no one knew much about him. He seemed to have no friends, no family and no occupation aside from the occasional odd job sweeping floors or collecting trash. Every morning, he would appear at the bar and drink until he passed out.

Pasqua smiled thinly. Malloy was the perfect target. No one would notice if he were to disappear suddenly. Malloy looked like he was barely hanging on. How hard would it be to get Malloy to drink himself to death anyway?

“Why don’t you take out insurance on Malloy?” Pasqua asked Marino, according to a newspaper report. “I can take care of the rest.”

Marino pondered over the suggestion. He had done it once. He could do it again. Malloy would be easy pickings. His background was unknown and he was forever drunk. It would be easy to forge his identity. It did not take long for Marino to agree to the scheme.

They glanced at their friend, Daniel Kriesberg, sitting next to them. Kriesberg, 29, was a fruit vendor and a father of three. He nodded. He would later say that he did it for money for his family. The three men raised their glasses, sealing their commitment to the macabre plan.

They would form what the newspapers would later dubbed as “The Murder Trust” gang.

The First Part Of The Plot

Pasqua did the insurance legwork. It took Pasqua five months to secure three insurance policies on the life of a fictitious “Nicholas Mellory” — two from Prudential Life Insurance Company and one from Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, each of them offering double indemnity.

Pasqua roped in Joseph Murphy, a bartender at Marino’s bar to act as “Nicholas Mellory” ’s next of kin and beneficiary. If everything went according to plan, the Murder Trust cohort would get a windfall of $3,576 (around $60,000 today) to split among themselves.

By now, the Murder Trust gang had grown to include petty criminals John McNally, James Salone, “Tough Tony” Bastone and Joseph Maglione.

Getting Malloy to sign the insurance policies was easy. Marino offered Malloy free drinks and a delighted Malloy signed what he thought was a petition to elect Marino for the local office.

The first part of the plot was complete.

All they have to do now is to kill Malloy.

Poisoned Alcohol

The plan was to let Malloy drink himself to death. Marino gave Malloy unlimited credit, saying regretfully that he had to bow down to competition from other bars. Malloy was near delirious with delight at the news. And Marino was as good as his word. Every time Malloy slammed down his empty shot glass on the bar counter, Marino was always there at his elbow, refilling his glass from a bottle.

“Malloy had been a hard drinker all his life,” a witness testified later, “and he drank on and on.”

The Murder Trust gang waited for Malloy to gasp his last breath and collapse to the floor from all the relentless drinking, but by the fourth day, it was clear that Malloy was still well and alive.

Marino and his accomplices were disconcerted. Tough Tony wanted to shoot Malloy in the head, but Murphy suggested something more subtle. He proposed substituting Malloy’s whiskey with wood alcohol instead.

Wood alcohol, also known as methyl alcohol, is crude methanol distilled from wood. Wood alcohol is known to be toxic. Drinks containing just four percent of wood alcohol will cause blindness. In 1928, thirty-three people in Manhattan died in three days, mostly from drinking wood alcohol.

The gang thought it was a brilliant plan. Murphy bought ten-cent cans of wood alcohol at a paint shop and sequestered them under the bar counter. The bartender waited until Malloy was “feeling good” on shots of cheap whiskey before he switched to shots of pure wood alcohol.

The New York Evening Post reported that Malloy “didn’t know that what he was drinking was wood alcohol and what he didn’t know apparently didn’t hurt him. He drank all the wood alcohol he was given and came back for more.”

The gang watched stunned as Malloy downed shot after shot of the toxic alcohol without adverse effects. Marino decided it was time to up the ante. He substituted Malloy’s drinks with antifreeze. When that didn’t work, antifreeze was replaced with turpentine, followed by horse liniment and finally, rat poison.

At last, Marino and his conspirators were finally rewarded with some signs of success. One night, Malloy crumpled to the floor unconscious after hours of hard drinking. The gang checked his pulse. Malloy’s chest rose and fell. He was still breathing shallowly. Malloy groaned and drew a long, ragged gasp. Was it Malloy’s death rattle?

The gang held their breath and waited.

But Malloy began to snore instead.

Hours later, he woke up and asked for more.

Toxic Oysters

Marino knitted his eyebrows. The scheme to kill Malloy was becoming an expensive venture.

There was the open bar tab — the whiskey was flowing out like an open river into Malloy’s stomach. And there was the monthly insurance premiums and the unending cans of wood alcohol. Marino fretted about going bankrupt. Tough Tony suggested shooting Malloy again. The gang decided to poison Malloy’s food instead. The idea came from Pasqua. He had buried a man who had apparently died from eating oysters with whiskey.

“Alcohol taken during a meal of oysters will almost invariably cause acute indigestion,” he was quoted as saying.

They decided to pickle raw oysters in wood alcohol and feed them to Malloy. The plan went smoothly. Malloy obligingly scarfed down the poisoned oysters one after another as he washed them down with shots of wood alcohol.

The Murder Trust gang waited for Malloy to keel over.

To their disgust, Malloy merely belched and continued drinking.

A Deadly Sandwich

Marino decided that the time for subtlety was over. It was time for more drastic measures. He opened a tin of sardines and let it rot for a few days. He prepared a sandwich and slathered it with a mixture of rotted fish, broken glass and carpet tacks. As a finishing touch, he grounded up the sardine tin and added the lethal metal shards to the sandwich.

Marino delivered the sandwich to Malloy. The speakeasy gang watched him eat the sandwich with barely concealed anticipation. Any second now, Malloy would fall to the floor, clutching his stomach in pain as the metal shards and broken glass slashed his innards.

Instead, what happened was that Malloy finished his sandwich with relish and asked for another.

Let’s Freeze Him To Death

As winter drew on, Marino and his conspirators grew increasingly bewildered and frustrated by Malloy’s persistent refusal to die. They didn’t know what to make of Malloy’s indestructibility. They called an emergency meeting. They concluded that anything Malloy could ingest was not likely to kill him.

Marino remembered his previous success in finishing off the homeless Mabelle Carlson. He decided to fall back on his tried and tested tactic of freezing his victim to death instead.

That night, they dragged an unconscious Malloy into Pasqua’s car, drove for half a mile to Crotona Park and tossed him onto a snowy bench in the cold. They ripped off Malloy’s shirt and dumped five gallons of water onto his bare torso. Their dirty deed done, they left him to freeze in the -14 °F (-26 °C) night temperature.

The next morning, Marino arrived at his speakeasy in a good mood. Malloy should have frozen to death by now. However, he was floored to find a shivering Malloy huddling in the bar basement. Malloy had woken up in the park, walked back the half-mile and asked Murphy to let him in.

Malloy sneezed and wheezed his apologies. He had caught a “wee chill”, it seemed.

Run Him Over!

It was January 1933. The insurance payments were due again. It had been six months since the plan to kill Malloy was conceived and the gang was no closer to their goal.

Someone proposed running Malloy over with a car. The gang offered John McNally and James Salone $200 and then $400 to do the job, but both of them refused. John Maglione recommended a cab driver called Harry Green. They offered Green a $150 cut (around $2,800 today) from the insurance money. He quickly agreed.

The gang piled into Green’s car with a drunken Malloy. They drove a few blocks away to a street between Baychester Avenue and Gunhill Road. Bastone and Murphy dragged Malloy out of the car and down the road. They held him up by his limp arms a distance away in front of the cab. Green revved his engine and barrelled towards Malloy. Amazingly, Malloy managed to leap out of the harm’s way in his inebriated state — not once, but twice.

On Green’s third attempt, he raced the car towards Malloy at 45 miles per hour (72 km/h). This time, he struck Malloy. Malloy’s body smashed against the hood before dropping to the ground. Green backed up over him, just for good measure. The gang was sure Malloy was dead, but a passing car spooked them and sent them scattering before they could make sure.

Jospeh Murphy, as “Nicholas Mellory” ’s brother, was tasked to call hospitals and morgues to ask if his “sibling” had passed away. But there was no sign of Mallory. They frantically scoured the newspapers for any news of a fatal cab accident. But still, they found nothing.

Three weeks later, the door to Marino’s bar swung open. Murphy and Marino’s jaws dropped as a heavily bandaged Malloy limped in.

Malloy had been warded at Fordham hospital with a broken shoulder, a concussion and a fractured skull. “They fed me milk and cocoa!” he complained. All he wanted to do was to get back to his friends and alcohol at the speakeasy.

Michael Malloy had survived yet again.

The Death Of Malloy

The Murder Trust gang finally killed Michael Malloy on 21 Feb, 1933.

They waited until Malloy passed out one night. They carried him to a tenement room less than a mile from Marino’s bar. Inside the room, they ran a rubber tube from a gas light into his mouth. They wrapped a towel tightly around his head and turned on the gas.

Michael Malloy died within twenty minutes. The gang gave him a hasty burial. They stuffed Mike Malloy into a $10 coffin and a $12 grave. They didn’t bother to embalm him, a mistake that would cost them dearly later.

Pasqua got his friend, Dr. Frank Manzella, to forge a death certificate for “Nicholas Mellory” that cited lobar pneumonia as the cause of death. To convince the insurance agents, Pasqua wrote out a $400 cheque to impress upon them the lavish funeral he was preparing for his beloved friend.

The gang received a payout of $800 (about $15,000 today) from Metropolitan Life Insurance. Marino and Murphy spent their share of money on new suits for themselves. Everything looked like it was proceeding according to plan.

But it all fell apart when they tried to claim the money from Prudential Life Insurance.

The Murder Trust Exposed

“When can I see the body?” the agent asked.

Pasqua was caught off guard by the question at the Prudential office. He had been fully confident that he could collect the money from the two remaining insurance polices on Malloy’s life. Taken aback, Pasqua replied that the body was already buried.

The Prudential agents opened an investigation. Malloy’s body was exhumed in May 1933. The death certificate stated that Malloy had died from lobar pneumonia, but the autopsy showed otherwise. The coroner’s verdict was “asphyxiation by carbon monoxide”.

The Murder Trust gang had neglected to embalm Malloy. If they had done so, the embalming liquid would have removed all traces of the gas in the body.

Police Investigation

The police got involved. They discovered that Marino had collected on the life insurance of a homeless woman who had died suspiciously in his apartment. Green, who wasn’t happy with his cut of the deal, began talking first. The rest of the Murder Trust gang were soon implicated and arrested.

The police did not get an opportunity to bring in “Tough Tony” Bastone though. He was found dead from a gunshot wound. Joseph Maglione was charged with his murder.

John McNally and James Salone, who had refused to run Malloy over, were taken into custody as material witnesses. Joseph Maglione pleaded his murder charge down to manslaughter, escaping the death penalty, in exchange for testifying against the Murder Trust gang.

The Trial

Tony Marino, Daniel Kriesberg, Frank Pasqua, Joseph Murphy and Harry Green were put on trial.

They tried to plead insanity. When that failed, they accused each other of the murder. Finally, they put the blame on the deceased Tony Bastone whom they said had forced them to murder Malloy “at gunpoint”.

The jury did not believe them.

Dr. Frank Manzella was convicted of failing to report a suspicious death for forging the death certificate of Malloy. Harry Green sentenced to prison for five to ten years for his role in running down Malloy with a car. Marino, Kriesberg, Pasqua and Murphy were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death by electrocution.

The New York Times reported that when the verdicts were read out, “Marino glared angrily, Kriesberg swayed for a moment it seemed as if he would fall, but he managed to remain erect. Pasqua winced momentarily, but Murphy remained inscrutable, as he had been throughout the trial.”

Executions

Marino, Kriesberg, Pasqua and Murphy were driven to the Sing Sing prison in New York to be executed. They sang songs together in the prison van, belting out Jelly Roll Morton hits like My Gal Sal.

Upon arrival at Sing Sing, Kreisberg told reporters, “It’s a fine day for some people.”

On 7 June 1934, Tony Marino, Daniel Kreisberg and Frank Pasqua were executed in the electric chair “Old Sparky”.

Marino was 28, married with one child.

Kreisberg was 29 with a wife and three kids.

Pasqua was the youngest in the gang. He was only 24 years old. In a twist of irony, his wedding a few years ago had been conducted by James Barrett, the judge of his murder trial.

Joseph Murphy was granted a reprieve at the last moment. New evidence emerged that he could be “mentally unbalanced”. After many reprieves for psychological testing, Murphy was denied a retrial and executed on 5 July 1934.

Murphy was 28 years old, estranged from his family and unmarried.

Aftermath

The trial of the Murder Trust was national news.

Michael Malloy became immortal. His story spread throughout the rough streets and speakeasies of Bronx in 1933. He became “Mike the Durable”, “Mike the Indestructible” and “Iron Mike”. His outrageous story inspired plays, novels and music and became entrenched in New York’s cultural history.

Michael Malloy, the legend, was reburied in Ferncliff Cemetery at Hartsdale, New York. Today, he lies quietly in an unmarked grave with no headstone and no name.