Welcome to Serial Sisters, a podcast where my sister and I tell each other true crime stories. I'm Tavana. And I'm Kristen. And this week, Kristen has a story for me.
All right, so this is the murder of Mike Malloy. Have you heard of him? I don't think so. He doesn't sound familiar.
Okay, also, he's also known as Mike the Durable or Iron Mike or the Restless Colon of the Bronx. Okay. Okay. No, not familiar?
Mm-mm. Okay. So for Christmas, DJ and Dakota got me this book called The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum. Dude, it was awesome.
It's all about how in like 1920s New York, the start of like toxicology and all that shit and finding it in people and figuring out how people have been murdered. It was so good. Yeah. So that's where I first heard of that book.
Okay. I'll lend it to you next time I see you. I'll give it to you. Okay, cool.
It was really good. So that's where I first heard this story. And then I got all the information from that book, from allthatsintresting.com and from an article on the Smithsonian online. Okay.
Cool. All right. So in July of 1932 in the Bronx, and the Great Depression is happening and Prohibition hasn't been repealed yet. So everyone's super broke.
And they're all like hanging out in speakeasies, you know, kind of speakeasy. You get it. So Tony Marino owned a speakeasy, which kept him out of the breadlines by like just barely. His patrons would sometimes pay for their drinks, but a lot of them would just put it on a tab and try to pay for it later and not really get around to it.
Okay. Classic. So one night. Yeah, exactly.
So one night, Marino was playing cards in the speakeasy with some of his friends who were fruit vendor Daniel Creesburg, funeral home director Francis Pasqua, and Marino's bartender, Joseph Red Murphy. And the group was talking about how broke they were and how hard it all was and how it would be nice if one of them had like a dissident relative that would kick the bucket and leave them some money. Okay. Yeah, that's a thing people talk about.
Yeah. Uh-huh. So none of them had a relative that would leave them any money, but they figured it wouldn't be that hard to invent one. Someone no one would miss.
And since there were plenty of people like that in Depression era in New York City, it wasn't that far-fetched. Okay. So as they were talking, Mike Malloy happened to be passed out drunk at the bar. So I couldn't find much about Malloy's life prior to all of this started.
Wikipedia says that he used to be a firefighter and The Poisoner's Handbook says that he drifted in and out of unemployment and that he had worked as a street cleaner and a coffin polisher. Oh. He had immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland and he had no friends or family.
He wasn't sure of his date of birth and people guessed that he was about 60. That's about. Just like a career alcoholic. You know, the type of dude that worked just long enough to get drunk.
Yeah, but it's like nuts to me when people like don't know their date of birth. I mean back then. I know, but it's just like maybe we're about this old. Like, I just can't imagine, like, not knowing.
If you're poor, then you don't really do birthday parties, so you don't just keep track. And I'm sure, like, this is when, like, people didn't always go to the hospital to have babies and whatever. But, like, just nuts. You just drop a baby out in the field and call it good.
You were born in springtime because you were harvesting or planting. Oh, God. Oh, fuck. Yeah.
I think I'm 29. I'm sorry. Over the next couple of months, Pasqua took an unnamed accomplice with him to various insurance agencies, tried to take out life insurance policies. The accomplice was going by Nicholas Mallory to take out the policies.
And I don't know why he was using that name instead of using Mike Malloy, but whatever. So he's using that name and he said that he worked as a florist. They managed to get three life insurance policies, one with Metropolitan Life and two with Prudential. All three of them had a double indemnity clause, which would pay double in the case of an accidental death.
Yes, always. I know. I don't know why that is a clause. I mean, it makes sense for a real accidental death.
Like if Mike died in a car accident, great. That double indemnity clause would help. But it just seems like they shouldn't. Again, like they shouldn't tell you that.
I don't know. Like, I don't know. It's just way too open to abuse for murderers. It totally is.
I know. I know. So by 1933, they were all set to go. So before all of this started, Marino had cut back the amount that he would let Malloy charge to his tab because Malloy wasn't paying it back and Marino couldn't afford to just pay for him to drink all the time anymore.
Well, yeah. Yeah. So he told Malloy that he had changed his mind and he gave Malloy unlimited credit on his tab. So Malloy was like, oh, great.
You and my friends are getting talking. And he signed all of the insurance policies without asking any questions. Oh, God. So he signed the policies.
He agreed to let Pasqua pay the premium and he named Red Murphy as his brother and beneficiary. Nice. So he was kind of a mess, like alcoholics tend to be. And he was mostly homeless, except when Pasqua would let him sleep in the funeral home.
The murder trust, as the papers at the time kept calling them, figured that he would die on his own after less than a week of unlimited booze. So they just started letting him drink. Go for it. Drink as much as you want.
Oh, shit. That's fucked. Right. However, instead of dying, drinking every night actually seemed to be helping him instead.
And he looked like he had actually gained a little bit of weight. Oh, my God. OK. Just the police looked like it went to some limits.
He's like, sweet. I'm in such good health. I'm a drunk Irishman. So he started looking better.
Turns the corner. That's ridiculous. My skin's better than ever. Sorry.
Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly. I look 20 years younger. Oh, OK.
All right. So the group was getting impatient. So Marino decided that Malloy was too used to large quantities of liquor and that they should try something else. So Marino tried spiking his drinks with antifreeze, then with turpentine and then horse liniment with rat poison.
None of it worked. And Malloy didn't seem to notice. He just kept drinking night after night. What the fuck, dude?
OK, so next they decide they're going to try wood alcohol. So, yeah, for those who don't know, during Prohibition, many bootleggers had tried to take methyl alcohol, which is wood alcohol, and was intended for industrial purposes, and distill it down into something drinkable. Drinks containing just 4% wood alcohol can cause blindness. And more than 50,000 people had died by 1929 from drinking impure alcohol.
Oh, shit. So the group figured that giving Malloy just straight wood alcohol would finish him off quickly so that they could get their money. Oh, my God. Uh-huh.
I know. Dicks. So Murphy bought a few cans of wood alcohol at a nearby paint shop. When Malloy showed up for his drinks, Murphy gave him a few shots of whiskey to get him feeling good.
And then he made the switch. Malloy took shot after shot as the game watched, but all that happened was the normal drunkenness. This continued for a couple of nights until one night after a couple of drinks, he stood up and then he fell to the floor without any warning. So the group was all standing there watching him as he laid on the floor and his breathing is kind of like getting slower and more labored.
He took one long jagged breath and then he started to snore. He woke up a few hours later, read his eyes and asked for another drink. Oh, my God. Uh-huh.
He's just a tank. Yeah. That's crazy. Mike the durable.
Yeah. Uh-huh. That's a great name for him. Uh-huh.
Well, for the most part. So since this plan clearly wasn't working either, they decided to switch tactics again. They knew that Malloy loved seafood, so they decided to try to poison him with it. Okay.
So they soaked some oysters in more wood alcohol for a few days and then they gave them to Malloy after he had been drinking because you're not supposed to combine oysters and alcohol, apparently. Okay. It's a thing. I don't know.
I didn't know that. I didn't either. So the funeral home director, Pasqua, had said that drinking while eating oysters could cause serious gastric distress because the oysters needed, the oysters tend to stay preserved. Huh.
Okay. Yeah. I don't know. I've never heard of it before this either.
Anyways. And whatever it was supposed to do, it didn't work anyways because Malloy just ate all the oysters, licked his fingers and burped. Oh my gosh. So next plan.
Murphy left out a can of sardines to rot for a few days. Ew. I know. Gross.
So then he made Malloy a sandwich with the rotten sardines. And then just to be sure, Murphy and Kreisberg carried Malloy up to the room that they had rented. They put him in the bed, attached a rubber hose to the gas valve, and put the other end into Malloy's mouth, and then they put a towel over his face to close off his nostrils. And then they turned on the gas.
So despite his ability to survive all the other attempts, Malloy died within 10 minutes. Yeah, I guess carbon monoxide will do that. Yeah, straight into the lungs like that. Yeah, that's brutal.
Yeah, fucked up. So the murder trust found a doctor to sign a death certificate for a cut of the money, and the death certificate said that he had died of either methyl alcohol poisoning, according to the Poisoner's Handbook, or lobar pneumonia, according to the Smithsonian. OK. So I don't know which one.
Oh, man. So Pasqua, who was the funeral home director, he barely waited for the ink to dry on the death certificate before he got the body in the ground. He let Malloy be buried in a pauper's grave since he had no actual friends or family to pay for the funeral. Oh.
Metropolitan Life played out their policy on Malloy, and Pasqua actually demanded an extra bit of the money for burial expenses, even though there weren't any expenses if you let the city bury him. He's just being a dickhole. So when they tried to collect on the two other policies from Prudential, the agent asked when he could see the body. When he was told that Malloy had already been buried, he got suspicious and refused to pay out the benefits until they investigated.
Mm-hmm. I know. Good for him. So in May, Malloy's body was exhumed, and badass Alexander Getler, who's the dude that started all the Talks Ecology shit, one of the guys in the book, so he proved that he had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
So then... That's crazy. I know. Stories were starting to circulate around the various speakeasies in New York about the man who wouldn't die.
Green also wasn't very quiet about his part, the cab driver, because he had only been given $20 out of the $150 given to him. Which, I mean, granted, he didn't get the job done, so you get full payment, but whatever. Right, yeah. Mm-hmm.
So on May 12th, the murder trust and Green were brought before a grand jury, which returned first-degree murder indictments against all of them. Mm-hmm. Good for that. Yep.
So the doctor who signed the death certificate was indicted as an accessory, and he pled guilty and agreed to testify against everyone else. So Green, who hadn't had any part in the actual murder of Molloy, accepted an assault charge and agreed to testify in exchange for a 10-year sentence. The murder trust went to trial in the first week of October, and they were found guilty on October 19th, 1933. Oh, damn.
And they were all sentenced to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing. Oh, shit, okay. Yeah, it's the 30s. Yeah.
So on June 3rd, 1934, Tony Marino, Frank Pasqua, and Daniel Kreisberg were executed. Red Murphy had won a two-week stay while the courts evaluated his mental state, but then just over a month later, he lost the appeal, and he was executed as well. Mm-hmm. So that's it.
That's the tale of Mike the Durable Malloy. That is nuts. I have never heard of that, but that is. I know, I have neither, but this is crazy.
Like the fucking sandwich thing, dude. I know. That's nuts. I know.
So much. He just kept right on going. Yeah, I'm like super curious how like he could like prove that early on, like that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning. I mean, early in life.
It's in the book. Yeah. That's nuts. It just goes into how they can prove it.
It was so good. That's so crazy. It's number one, the bright cherry red color of the lungs after you inhale carbon monoxide. And then they explained the test that they did as well to show that the carbon monoxide was in there, which I don't remember because it was technical, so I don't remember off the top of my head.
Yeah, like, it's just crazy. That's crazy. Mm-hmm. And then he was just like, fuck you, you're gonna murder me?
I'm gonna keep on living. You didn't even know that we didn't realize anything was going on. She's like, that friend gave me all the booze I want. I'm so happy.
This is like such the best. They're my best friends. Uh-huh. Oh my gosh.
Uh-huh. That's nuts. Yeah, he thought he was just living it up that last little bit right before he died. He thought everyone was so nice to him.
Like, I can't believe they lived after they like doused him in ice water. What the fuck is that? And left him out in the middle of winter in New York City. Gosh, yeah, like, I'd be dead for sure.
Yeah. Cold as hell. Holy crap. Well, no, I've just got a bit of a chill.
Just give me a shot of whiskey, I'm good. Mm-hmm. Well, you can email us at serialsisters at outlook.com, and we're on Twitter and Instagram at serialsisters. Thanks for listening.
Bye.