Joseph Vincent Moriarty

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Joseph Vincent Moriarty on September 29, 1960

Joseph Vincent Moriarty (c. 1910 – February 26, 1979) aka Newsboy Moriarty, was a local Irish American mobster in Hudson County, New Jersey who controlled the numbers game.

In 1930 he was living with his widowed mother Ellen (1887-?) and his three siblings: Margaret Moriarty; a second sister; and Albert Moriarty (1918-c1960). Both his parents were from Massachusetts. He always wore the same set of inexpensive clothes. By the 1950s he lived with his two sisters in a small brownstone in the Horseshoe section of Jersey City that housed the poor Irish immigrants. It is believed that he received protection from the authorities with the help of the autocratic mayor of Jersey City, Frank Hague.

1 Numbers
2 9-3-2
3 Arrest
4 Death
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Numbers

In the "policy racket" or numbers game a player picks any three-digit number and bets anywhere from a few pennies to a few dollars. The bet is placed at a neighborhood candy store, newsstand, or tavern. Each day, the winning number is determined, and there may be none, one, or multiple winners. The number was usually the last three digits of the dollar figures of U.S. Treasury receipts, published in the next day's newspapers, or the last three dollar numbers of the pari-mutuel receipts at a race track, but it could be any other easily verified, tamper-proof number. A player's chance of winning with any given bet is one in 1,000 for a three digit number. The prize for winning winnings may range from 600 times the bet to 800 times the bet -- the factor is different from number to number (more popular numbers have lower payout factors). The payoff is typically not pari-mutuel, that is, the prize is not reduced if there are multiple winners. [1]

[edit] 9-3-2

On September 16, 1958 a Jersey Central commuter train carrying 200 passengers derailed and plunged from a bridge into Newark Bay with 47 dead, and 48 injured. The Associated Press photo made the front pages of the newspapers with the numbers 9-3-2 visible on the side of the wrecked train car. That number received a large number of bets, and to the dismay of the bookies, 9-3-2 was the winner on the following drawing. Most bookies didn't have sufficient cash on hand to pay the winners, but not only did Moriarty pay in full, he was able to lend money to other bookies (most likely due to his habit of hanging onto cash). That brought him to the attention of Harlem based mafiosa Mike Coppola, which may have led to Moriarty's arrest.

[edit] Arrest

Joseph was arrested on a minor charge of possession of betting slips, and served a short term in New Jersey State Prison. While he was in prison on July 2, 1962, two day laborers, fixing an adjacent garage came across an abandoned 1947 Plymouth in the garage at 47 Oxford Avenue in Jersey City. In the trunk of the rundown car was $2.6 million in cash, and $13,000 in stocks and bonds, along with 3 guns. The car was registered to Moriarty's girlfriend and on July 3, 1962, FBI agents seized the assets. He originally denied ownership of the money, but he later filed a tax form listing them as income. The $2.6 million was eventually seized by the IRS.

Time magazine wrote on July 13, 1962:

Newsboy was so penurious that he would dun a debtor for a few pennies, but his attachment to cash frequently led to his losing it. The cops sometimes found money in the secondhand cars that Newsboy kept stashed around the city — and invariably Newsboy had to disclaim ownership of the money to avoid explaining where it came from. Once he turned up at a hospital bleeding from stab wounds, and the police discovered $3,000 in his car. Said Newsboy: "I never saw it before." Again, he was picked up on the street near an auto that yielded $11,000. Newsboy said it wasn't his. Federal tax agents found $49,000 in his home — and still he declined to claim ownership. Newsboy's current address is the State Prison at Trenton, where he is serving a two-to-three-year sentence on a gambling conviction (his third). Last week, despite the prison bars, Newsboy's money losing continued. This time a fortune was at stake. Walking into Newsboy's cell, the county prosecutor announced: "You've just lost $2½ million." Back in Jersey City, two carpenters working on an ancient garage had pried open the trunk of an abandoned 1947 Plymouth sedan. Inside they found a cache of several guns and a small mountain of large-denomination bills. The trail led straight to Newsboy: with the money were bonds made out to him and his deceased brother, as well as a dossier on one of Newsboy's arrests, which had been lifted from the county prosecutor's office some time ago. Naturally, Newsboy declined to admit that the money was his. So did a redheaded girlfriend who once owned the car in which the money was found.

[edit] Death

By the end of his career in crime, he had been arrested 47 times. Around 1975, while serving another prison term on betting charges, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. In 1976, in his mid-60s, his sentence was commuted by New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne. Moriarty died three years later, on February 26, 1979.