Tony was the proprietor of the establishmenta derelict store wedged between a small awning shop and a brick wall.
Illustration byVirnard/Shutterstock.com
But not all of Tony Marinos customers paid.
Some emptied out their dirty pockets and put the rest on a tab, which was conveniently forgotten.
Malloy worked as a firefighter before the stock market crash.
Then he began doing odd jobs like sweeping alleys or collecting garbage.
At nights he staggered to the door of Marinos speakeasy and drank his brains out.
Marino had pulled off such a scheme once before.
The medical examiner ruled her death as an accident, and Marino collected the policy amount without incident.
Marino and his party of crooks believed they could do it one more time.
All they needed was someone expendable with no friends or family.
Mallory fitted the bill perfectly.
If Malloy signed the petition, Marino promised he would get unlimited credit.
The plan was simple.
With unlimited credit, Marino thought that Malloy would abuse it and drink himself to death.
But Malloy turned out to be a hardy fellow.
But that made no difference.
Antifreeze was replaced with turpentine, followed by horse liniment, and finally rat poison was mixed in.
Then came a sandwich of spoiled sardines mixed with poison and carpet tacks.
Malloy not only lived, he thrived, even putting on weight.
But that didnt work either.
By this time killing Malloy had become as much a matter of pride as payoff.
With monthly insurance payments looming large, Marino in desperation hired a cab driver to run over Malloy.
But that only left Malloy with a few broken bones.
After a short stint in the hospital, Malloy was back at the speakeasy.
Tony Marino and Frank Pasqua, after their arrest.
This time, the gang had enough.
This finally killed Malloy.
He barely lasted five minutes.
They bribed a doctor to pronounce him dead by lobar pneumonia and he was quickly buried.
But a story like this stays rarely buried.
Laboratory analysis easily found lethal levels of carbon monoxide in the remains of old Malloy.
The entire gang was arrested.
Hersey Green went to prison, while the other four members were executed in the electric chair.
