Irish mob

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Irish mob is not a single organization. It is a loose collection of crime groups, made up largely of ethnic Irish members, that have operated mainly in the United States since the early 19th century. Its earliest recognizable face was a New York street gang called the Dead Rabbits. One of its leaders, John Morrissey, later became a Congressman.

  Herbert Asbury's 1927 book, The Gangs of New York, gave the public its famous first portrait of these street gangs. From those beginnings the Irish mob spread to most major American and Canadian cities, especially in the Northeast and the industrial Midwest. Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago all had their own versions.

  How did gangs that began on city streets keep reinventing themselves for two centuries? What happened when Irish crews collided with Italian and Jewish rivals? Why did some of them end up in casinos, prisons and federal courtrooms? And how did waterfront thugs and bootleggers become a favorite subject of storytellers?

  5

• 2. Manhattan's Long War

  ›

  The Whyos belonged to a long line of Irish street gangs that dominated New York's underworld for well over a century. Their grip began to loosen in the 1880s and 1890s, when gangs of recently arrived Italians and Jews started competing for the same ground. In the early 1900s the Five Points Gang, led by Paul Kelly, rose to prominence. It faced strong rivalry from the Hudson Dusters, the Gopher Gang and others.

  The Morello crime family began encroaching on the New York waterfront in the early 1900s. Various Irish gangs answered by uniting as the White Hand Gang. For a while they kept their Black Hand Italian rivals at bay. Unstable leadership and infighting wore them down. The murders of Dinny Meehan, Bill Lovett and Richard Lonergan finished the job, and the gang had disappeared by 1925. The Italian mobsters Vincent Mangano, Albert Anastasia and Joe Adonis then took over the docks. The Irish mob re-emerged in the country's coal country and stayed strong there.

  Big Bill Dwyer stood out as a leading bootlegger in New York during the early years of Prohibition. His arrest and trial for violating the Volstead Act, across 1925 and 1926, split his former partners into two camps. Owney "The Killer" Madden, the English-born former leader of the Gopher Gang, lined up with Frank Costello. Against them stood Jack "Legs" Diamond, "Little" Augie Pisano, Charles "Vannie" Higgins and the renegade mobster Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll.

  Hell's Kitchen, on the West Side of Manhattan, produced the Irish mob's next famous crew, the Westies. Eddie McGrath, James Coonan, Mickey Featherstone, James McElroy and Edward Cummiskey were among its most prominent members.

  In the Irish/Italian Mob War of the 1970s, the Genovese crime family set its sights on the soon-to-be-built Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The site lay in the Hell's Kitchen turf of Mickey Spillane, who refused to let the Italians in. At the same time, Spillane faced a power struggle with James Coonan, a younger upstart from the neighborhood. The Italians greatly outnumbered the Irish, yet Spillane held on to the convention center and to Hell's Kitchen.

  Frustrated and embarrassed, the Italians hired a rogue Irish-American hitman named Joseph "Mad Dog" Sullivan. His targets were three of Spillane's top lieutenants: Tom Devaney, Eddie "the Butcher" Cummiskey and Tom "the Greek" Kapatos.

  In 1977 assassins from the Genovese crime family murdered Spillane in a hail of bullets. Coonan responded by forming an alliance with Roy DeMeo of the Gambino crime family. The Genoveses concluded that the Westies were too violent and too well led to fight. A truce was mediated through the Gambinos.

  Mickey Featherstone became an informant after his arrest in the early 1980s. In 1986 James Coonan was imprisoned under the RICO act. That same federal law would later thin the ranks of another Irish crew, in Boston.

  5

• 3. Winter Hill

  ›

  Frank Wallace of the Gustin Gang dominated Boston's underworld until his death in 1931, when Italian gangsters ambushed him in the North End. The earliest Irish gangsters of the city arose during Prohibition in heavily Irish-American districts. These included Somerville, Charlestown, South Boston, known as Southie, Dorchester and Roxbury. Numerous wars between rival Irish gangs in the early and mid 20th century would hasten their decline.

  The Winter Hill Gang took its name from the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. Its first boss was James "Buddy" McLean. A loose confederation of local crime figures, it controlled the Boston underworld from the early 1960s until the mid-1990s. Its members were best known for fixing horse races across the northeastern United States.

  The Irish Mob War of the 1960s pitted the Charlestown Mob against Winter Hill. The Charlestown side was led by the brothers Bernard and Edward "Punchy" McLaughlin. Winter Hill was headed by McLean and his associates Howie Winter and Joe McDonald. Many people believe the war began when George McLaughlin tried to pick up the girlfriend of Alex "Bobo" Petricone, a Winter Hill associate who was also known as the actor Alex Rocco. Two other Winter Hill members beat McLaughlin badly enough to hospitalize him.

  Bernie McLaughlin went to Buddy McLean for an explanation. When McLean refused to give up his associates, Bernie swore revenge. He was soon killed by McLean in Charlestown City Square.

  The war wiped out the Charlestown Mob. Bernie and Edward McLaughlin and Stevie and Connie Hughes were all killed. George McLaughlin, who had started the trouble, survived only because he was sent to prison. McLean himself was killed by the Hughes brothers. His right-hand man, Howie Winter, and his mentor, Joe McDonald, took over, and the remnants of the Charlestown Mob joined them. Winter Hill became the dominant non-Mafia gang in New England.

  In the early 1970s a second war broke out in South Boston. The Killeen Gang controlled bookmaking and loansharking, while the Mullen Gang was made up of thieves. Killeen enforcer Billy O'Sullivan was shot dead outside his house in 1971. Donald Killeen was murdered the next year, and both organizations were absorbed into Winter Hill.

  Whitey Bulger had been one of Killeen's key associates. In 1973 Howie Winter appointed him to run the South Boston rackets. For the rest of the decade Bulger used that influence to have rivals murdered, among them Spike O'Toole, Paul McGonagle, Eddie Connors and Tommy King.

  Federal prosecutors indicted twenty-one members and associates in 1979, including Howie Winter, Joe McDonald, Johnny Martorano and Sal Sperlinga. James J. Bulger and the hitman Stephen Flemmi then took over the gang and headquartered it in South Boston. During the 1980s Bulger's criminal associates included Kevin Weeks, Patrick Nee and Billy Shea.

  John J. Connolly, a corrupt federal agent, largely infiltrated the FBI's Boston office in the 1970s and 1980s. Through him Bulger could exploit his status as a government informant against his rivals. The full extent of this was not revealed until the mid to late 1990s. The scandal became the basis of the non-fiction book Black Mass and its 2015 film adaptation. It also partly inspired the film The Departed.

  RICO law then hit the gang's ranks. Federal indictments quickly thinned them, with key players such as George Hogan and Scott "Smiley" McDermott among the targets. Many cases failed to stick for lack of evidence and cooperating witnesses, yet the gang still disbanded in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

  5

• 4. The Cleveland Syndicate

  ›

  Irishtown Bend, also called the Angle, produced some of Cleveland's prominent gangs before Prohibition, along with Ohio City, Detroit Shoreway and Whiskey Island. Among them were the McCart Street Gang and the Cheyenne Gang. The Blinky Morgan Gang became notorious after a robbery led to the murder of Detective William Hulligan. Newspapers covered the crime extensively, and a reward of $16,000 was offered. Undercover police infiltrated the gang, and most of its members were caught in Michigan.

  Publisher Daniel R. Hanna Sr. hired the Chicago gangsters James Ragen and Arthur B. McBride as heavies. The job was to fight the Cleveland circulation wars, with the Cleveland Leader and Cleveland News on one side and The Plain Dealer on the other.

  Thomas Joseph McGinty, known as Blackjack, was a former professional featherweight boxer. He became one of the city's largest bootleggers and ran gambling establishments on West 25th Street. He also operated the Mounds Club in Lake County. Law enforcement raided the club repeatedly, Safety Director Eliot Ness among them, and it was finally shut down in 1950.

  McGinty belonged to the Cleveland Syndicate, which also counted the Jewish gangsters Moe Dalitz, Louis Rothkopf, Maurice Kleinman and Sam Tucker. Charles Polizzi was another member. He was the adopted brother of Alfred Polizzi, head of the Italian Mayfield Road Mob. John and Martin O'Boyle formed part of the Irish faction. The Syndicate ran casinos in Youngstown, Northern Kentucky and Florida.

  Newport and Northern Kentucky alone held eighteen casinos or gambling halls. The Beverly Hills Club booked high-profile acts such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Nat King Cole. These houses were forerunners of the casinos built in Las Vegas. The Syndicate's reign there ended after a botched attempt to discredit George Ratterman, a reform-minded candidate for sheriff, and a federal crackdown during the Kennedy Administration.

  McGinty and other Syndicate members were founders of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. He was also involved in Meyer Lansky's Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana. His holdings included stakes in numerous race tracks, among them Maple Heights, Fair Grounds Race Course, Thistledown Racecourse, Fairmount Park Racetrack, Aurora Downs and the Agua Caliente Racetrack.

  In the 1930s James "Shimmy" Patton and Daniel T. Gallagher ran a movable casino called the Harvard Club at several locations on Harvard Avenue. It could hold 500 to 1,000 people, making it one of the largest casinos between New York and Chicago. It defied numerous raids until Frank Lausche shut it down in 1941.

  "Handsome" Larry Davidson, a former prohibition agent, ran a rum-running ring from Cleveland with Dan F. Coughlin. They shipped Canadian liquor across Lake Erie to Cedar Point and Toledo, then distributed it to the Chicago area. The gang also had an overland route from Florida. A member of the ring, Ollie Zess, bribed Coast Guardsmen to make it all work.

  In the late 1930s Arthur B. McBride launched a wire service that supplied bookmakers with horse race results. He also invested in the Continental Press and Empire News, both based in Cleveland and run by the mobsters Morris "Mushy" Wexler and Sam "Gameboy" Miller. His friend and wire-business associate James Ragen was murdered in 1946 in a Chicago gangland feud. A federal grand jury indicted 18 people in 1940, McBride and Wexler among them. Prosecutors had treated race results as lottery lists, because federal law forbade sending lottery results across state lines. McBride was never arrested or tried, and he went on to found the Cleveland Browns.

  89151719

• 5. Bomb City

  ›

  Martin and Owen Kilbane ran prostitution, gambling and loan sharking rackets on Cleveland's east side in the 1960s and 70s. They were convicted of murder for hire in the killing of Marlene Steele, arranged by her husband, Euclid Municipal Judge Robert Steele. They were also convicted of killing Andrew Prunella, a rival pimp and gangster. A more violent Irish figure was already rising in the city.

  Danny Greene had been president of Longshoreman Local 1317 until he was ousted for corruption. He then worked as an enforcer for the mobster Alex "Shondor" Birns. The Mayfield Road Mob underboss Frank "Little Frank" Brancato also hired him as muscle for the city's garbage rackets. Greene fell into a dispute with a garbage hauler, "Big Mike" Frato, and had Frato's car blown up. Frato then attacked Greene in a park and fired three shots that missed. Greene shot and killed him.

  Greene formed a crew called the Celtic Club and moved into the vending machine racket, which Thomas "The Chinaman" Sinto controlled. His relationship with Birns soured over a loan, and each man put a contract on the other. Birns died in a car bomb planted by a Hell's Angel who had been hired by a Greene associate.

  John Scalish, head of the Mayfield Road Mob, died and left a power vacuum. James Licavoli and John Nardi both tried to take control, and open warfare broke out between their factions. Greene backed Nardi. The Licavoli side struggled to kill Greene and hired Ray Ferritto, a Buffalo gangster, to do it.

  The war was costly. Mayfield Road Mob Consigliere Leo "Lips" Moceri was murdered. A car bomb killed John Nardi as he left the Teamsters Joint Council 41 office. Another killed Danny Greene as he came out of his dentist's office. The fighting used 37 car bombs, and Cleveland earned the nickname "Bomb City, USA." Throughout his criminal career, Greene was a top-echelon informant for the FBI.

  Ray Ferritto was arrested for the killing and flipped on the Mayfield Road Mob and other gangsters, which led to numerous arrests. During the investigation, Jimmy Fratianno, the boss of the Los Angeles crime family, became a government informant. It was the first time a mafia boss became a cooperative government witness. Greene's story became the subject of the film Kill the Irishman.

  Kevin McTaggart, Keith Ritson, Frederick "Fritz" Graewe and Hartmut "Hans the Surgeon" Graewe had all belonged to Greene's crew. They went on to work in a drug ring with Thomas Sinito, a major distributor of marijuana and cocaine. The ring was responsible for 19 murders. Ritson was murdered while in the ring, McTaggart received a life sentence, and the Graewe brothers got lengthy prison terms. As of 2024, McTaggart remains in prison despite a push from attorneys and support from public figures in Cleveland.

  2223249

• 6. Prohibition Towns

  ›

  Michael Cassius McDonald's criminal empire of the previous century passed to Irish-American organizations in Chicago. They were at their peak during Prohibition, specializing in bootlegging and highjacking. Italian mobsters, particularly Al Capone and the Chicago Outfit, soon rivaled them.

  The North Side Gang included Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran, Hymie Weiss and Louis Alterie. Other Chicago outfits were the Southside O'Donnell Brothers, who had ties to the McKenna crime family, and the Westside O'Donnells, led by Myles O'Donnell. Ragen's Colts, the Valley Gang, Roger Touhy, Frank McErlane, James Patrick O'Leary and Terry Druggan rounded out the field. Most of them competed with Capone for the bootlegging market.

  Tommy Banks ran the Minneapolis Syndicate, which engaged in bootlegging. Kid Cann and his two brothers led a Jewish-American mob called the Minneapolis Combination, also known as The AZ Syndicate. Banks and Cann divided Minneapolis into territories with a handshake and worked side by side, both during and after Prohibition. Another powerful Irish-American gangster there was Edward G. Morgan, known as "Big Ed." Paul Maccabee described him as "a slot machine king and muckraking journalist for the Twin City Reporter scandal sheet." Morgan worked in close alliance with the St. Paul-based Irish mob boss Danny Hogan.

  John Patrick Looney controlled gambling, prostitution, illegal liquor, extortion and protection rackets in Rock Island. He studied law and was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1889. A Democrat, he also ran a newspaper that he used to blackmail opponents. He controlled approximately 150 gambling dens. His gang went to war with William Gabel's gang, and both Gabel and Looney's son Connor were murdered. Looney was convicted of Gabel's murder and sentenced to 14 years, of which he served 8½. He died in 1942 at a tuberculosis sanitarium in El Paso, Texas. Looney was the model for John Looney in Max Allan Collins' graphic novel Road to Perdition. The character was renamed John Rooney and played by Paul Newman in Sam Mendes' 2002 film adaptation.

  In Southern Illinois the Shelton Brothers Gang controlled bootlegging early in Prohibition. Together with their rival Charles Birger's gang, they fought a war against the Ku Klux Klan that ended in a shoot-out at Herrin. The attack broke the back of the Klan's leadership, and widespread bootlegging continued. The Sheltons and Birger then fought each other, and in 1925 the Sheltons were convicted of murdering a mail carrier. In 1928 Birger was convicted of ordering the killing of Joe Adams, the mayor of West City, Illinois, and a Shelton backer. Birger was hanged.

  Thomas Egan and Thomas Kinney formed Egan's Rats, a large organized gang in St. Louis. A rival Hogan Gang, led by Edward "Jelly Roll" Hogan, also operated in the city. Their Egan-Hogan War of 1921-23 broke up Egan's Rats.

  Jack Kennedy controlled bootlegging and operated nightclubs in Toledo. His turf war with Thomas Licavoli's gang ended when Joseph "Wop" English, a Licavoli enforcer and Kennedy's childhood friend, killed him. Licavoli was arrested for conspiracy to commit murder in the slayings of Kennedy and three other club owners. He was convicted in 1934 and sentenced to life at the Ohio Penitentiary. Cleveland mobster Alfred Polizzi tried to secure his parole without success.

  Gerald James Hayes, known as "Gentleman Jimmy," moved from Cleveland to Toledo as a child and became a taxi driver. He sold his interest in the limo business and operated the Villa, Ramona Casino, Hollywood Club, Point's Casino and Club Manito. In 1934 he was found murdered in Detroit, where he had gone to watch a World Series game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers. His wife, Eleanor, kept running his casinos for several years. Some speculate that Licavoli's gang killed him because he might have testified at the Kennedy murder trial. Others think the gang wanted his gaming operations.

  Joseph "Legs" Laman's gang in Detroit specialized in the "snatch racket," which meant kidnapping wealthy bootleggers and gamblers. Many kidnappings blamed on the Purple Gang were actually committed by Laman's men. Trouble came when the gang began kidnapping legitimate business people. At a ransom pickup for the wealthy real estate dealer David Cass, police arrived and shot Laman. His associates executed Cass. Laman turned state's witness and was sentenced to 30 to 40 years.

  The Terminal Gang of New Orleans drew many members from the Irish Channel neighborhood, including Frankie Mullen, Harold "The Parole King" Normandale and Fred Kelly. It took its name from Terminal Station, where many members worked as livery drivers. The gang robbed fares and ran gambling, alcohol and narcotics rings. It was closely aligned with Democratic Mayor Martin Behrem, and it was decimated after his defeat. In 1930 William Bailey, who ran a bootleg and hijack gang with Manuel Acosta, was murdered on the orders of Silvestro Carollo, acting boss of the New Orleans crime family. Police believed the killing was revenge for a liquor hijacking.

  Owney Madden moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1935, after controlling the Hell's Kitchen rackets and owning several nightclubs, the Cotton Club among them. In his new home he operated the Hotel Arkansas casino and a wire service. During his time the town became a gambling hot spot with ten large casinos, numerous smaller gambling dens and off-track betting parlors.

  2526282930

• 7. Outposts and Survivors

  ›

  Jimmy Haggerty headed the Schuylkill Rangers, the prominent Irish street gang in Philadelphia before the twentieth century. His boyhood home stood on Arch Street, between Eighteenth and Nineteenth Street, in an area called "McAran's Garden." Haggerty and fellow Ranger Hugh Murphy were convicted of robbing a Ninth Street store and sentenced to ten years on the 12th of December 1865.

  Governor Andrew G. Curtin pardoned Haggerty eight months later, partly because of his political connections and his promise to leave the country. He lived briefly in Canada, then returned to resume his criminal career. In January 1869 he was arrested on several counts of assault with intent to kill and shot the arresting officer. After a failed escape from prison he was released on bail and fled, staying briefly in New York. He came back in April to surrender once the wounded officer had received "hush money."

  Haggerty won both court cases against him. At the second trial, however, the District Attorney ordered him back to Eastern State Penitentiary for violating the terms of his release. While his lawyers argued the ruling, he vanished from the courthouse during a recess. Authorities suspected a planned escape.

  Daniel "Danny" O'Leary fought with Maxie Hoff over Philadelphia's bootlegging throughout Prohibition. After World War II the K&A Gang became the dominant Irish gang in the city's underworld. It was a multi-generational group of mostly Irish and Irish-American gangsters. It grew from a youth street gang based around the intersections of Kensington and Allegheny. Local hoods and blue-collar Irish Americans seeking extra income swelled its ranks. In time it grew more organized and built lucrative markets in gambling, loan sharking and burglary.

  The K&A Gang moved into the methamphetamine trade in the late 1980s and expanded into Fishtown and Port Richmond. John Berkery, a member of the burglary crew, became leader and helped expand the drug trade. In 1987 Raymond Martorano, a soldier in the Scarfo crime family, was indicted along with Berkery and dozens of others over a large methamphetamine ring.

  In Montreal, the West End Gang has been active since the early 1900s and is still active today. Its rise to notoriety began in the 1960s, when it was known simply as the "Irish gang." It focused on the west side of Montreal but was not restricted to it. Its early income came from truck hijackings, home invasions, kidnapping, protection rackets, drug trafficking, extortion and armed robbery.

  The gang is dominated by members of Irish descent but not limited to them. In the 1970s it began importing hashish and cocaine. It developed important contacts in the United States, South America and Europe, and some members worked out of Florida. Since then it has formed ties to the Montreal Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, the Hells Angels and Colombian cartels.

  An Irish prison gang in Oklahoma established itself as an alternative to the Aryan Brotherhood. It grew from dealing drugs inside prison to drug trafficking in Oklahoma, Kansas and California. A deadly prison riot in 2015 killed four people, including two members of the Irish Mob, and all charges against everyone involved were dismissed. In 2018 three members were arrested for intimidating witnesses in a deadly gang shootout between Aryan Brotherhood and Irish Mob members near a motel in Oklahoma.

  In 2022 the FBI claimed it had effectively dismantled the Oklahoma Irish Mob after a five-year investigation that produced 125 arrests. One of those arrested was David Postelle, brother of the recently executed inmate Gilbert Postelle. Both brothers had earlier been imprisoned for a quadruple murder they committed in 2005.

  1344034

• 8. On Screen

  ›

  Early gangster films of the 1930s and the film noir of the 1940s often cast Irish mobsters as characters. Audiences associated these roles with James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Frank McHugh, Ralph Bellamy, Spencer Tracy, Lynne Overman and Frank Morgan. Bellamy, Morgan and Overman were not of Irish descent. Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson also played such roles.

  In The Public Enemy (1931), James Cagney plays Tom Powers, a bootlegger whose older brother Michael, played by Donald Cook, tries to reform him. Scarface (1932) shows Tony Camonte fighting several Irish gangs in Chicago. In Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Cagney returns as Rocky Sullivan, a former mob boss back in Hell's Kitchen. His childhood friend Father Jerry Connolly, played by Pat O'Brien, tries to save him from himself.

  On the Waterfront (1954) asks Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy to choose sides after witnessing the murder of a fellow longshoreman. On one side stand his brother Charlie, played by Rod Steiger, and the mobbed-up Irish-American union boss Johnny Friendly, played by Lee J. Cobb. On the other are the crusading Father Barry, played by Karl Malden, and Edie Doyle, played by Eva Marie Saint.

  The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) follows Robert Mitchum as Eddie Coyle, a gunrunner for the Boston Irish Mob who becomes an informant. When the mob finds out, they send his friend Dillon, played by Peter Boyle, to kill him. The Sting (1973) casts Robert Shaw as the Irish mob boss Doyle Lonnegan, whom the grifters played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford set out to swindle.

  Miller's Crossing (1990) features Gabriel Byrne as the Irish gangster Tom Reagan, who tries to prevent a gang war between Albert Finney's Leo O'Bannion and Jon Polito's Johnny Casper. State of Grace (1990) sends Sean Penn's undercover officer Terry Noonan back to Hell's Kitchen to infiltrate the Westies. Gary Oldman and Ed Harris play Jackie and Frankie Flannery, the childhood friend and the neighborhood boss.

  Boston's Irish gangs fed a run of films. In Monument Ave. (1998), Denis Leary plays a charismatic enforcer who must decide whether to keep the neighborhood code of silence once his boss, played by Colm Meaney, begins murdering members of his family. Southie (1998) stars Donnie Wahlberg as Danny Quinn, caught between friends and family backed by rival Irish gangs. In The Town (2010), a gang of Irish American bank robbers works out of Charlestown.

  Dublin has its own crime stories. The General (1998) tells the true story of Martin Cahill, played by Brendan Gleeson, who rose from petty criminal to lead one of Dublin's most powerful crime gangs before he was murdered in 1994. Veronica Guerin (2003) follows a reporter who challenges the mob in Dublin. The Irishman (2019) stars Robert De Niro as Frank Sheeran, an Irish American mobster torn between Jimmy Hoffa and the Italian-American Mafia boss Russell Bufalino.

  The documentary Paddy Whacked: The Irish Mob (2006) traces the rise and fall of the Irish mob. Kings of Coke (2022) chronicles the history of Montreal's West End Gang.

  Oz (1997) places the Irish American Bridge Street Gang, led by Ryan O'Reily, inside the Oswald State Correctional Facility. Boardwalk Empire (2010) features an Irish American mobster protagonist, Nucky Thompson. He is loosely based on the real politician Enoch L. Johnson, who had no Irish ancestry. In the first season of Daredevil, the Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob kills Matt Murdock's father Jack, a professional boxer, on the orders of Roscoe Sweeney, because he failed to take a dive in a fixed fight. The second season's Kitchen Irish are loosely based on the Westies.

  Shameless, which ran from 2011 to 2021, follows the dysfunctional Irish-descent Gallagher family in Chicago. Peaky Blinders added Jack Nelson to its sixth series in 2022. He is a Boston-based Irish American gangster loosely inspired by Joseph P. Kennedy.

  Video games took up the theme as well. Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) features the McReary Crime Family, an Irish syndicate reduced to working as hired guns for the Mafia in the fictional Liberty City. In Watch Dogs (2014), the Chicago South Club is an Irish American syndicate led by the elderly Dermot "Lucky" Quinn. It descends from Irish mobsters who survived the 1929 Valentine's Day Massacre. Mafia II (2010) offers the O'Neill Gang, founded by the Irish immigrant Jimmy O'Neill in the 1800s. Mafia III (2016) gives players an Irish Mob in the fictional New Bordeaux, run by Thomas Burke and his daughter Nicki, who can be recruited to supply cars, explosives and help against police pursuits.

  1344034