John M. Dunn

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John M. "Cockeye" Dunn (d. July 7, 1949) was a New York mobster involved in the numbers racket and labor racketeering as a top enforcer for brother-in-law Eddie McGrath. He was later convicted with Andrew Sheridan of the 1946 murder of Greenwich Village stevedore Andy Hintz (also referred to as Anthony "Willie" Heintz in government reports). He was executed by the elecrtic chair on July 7, 1949.

Born in Queens, New York, he would be in and out of Catholic reform schools after the death of his father, a merchant marine who was lost at sea when he was four. With arrests for robbery and assault during his teenage years, he would finally be convicted of robbing a card game and sentenced to two years imprisonment at Sing Sing Prison.

Following his release, Dunn was hired as an enforcer for McGrath who was then a part owner of Varick Enterprises, a front company which made collections for the waterfront dock bosses of Manhattan's Westside. In 1937, he and McGrath were arrested in connection with the death of a trucker but were eventually dismissed for lack of evidence.

He later formed a labor union associated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and eventually oversaw waterfront racketeering on Manhattan's Lower West Side by the early 1940s. He would eventually establish underworld connections including Joe Ryan, who had sponsored him for union membership, and Meyer Lansky who had been in discussions regarding the use of the longshoremen's union to assist in the importation of heroin and cocaine into the United States.

In the early morning hours of January 8, 1947, hiring stevedore Andy Hintz was shot six times by three unidentified men shortly after leaving his apartment for work. Surviving the attack however, he was taken to a local hospital were he would drift in and out of consousness for three weeks indentifing Dunn as one of the assailants before his death on January 29.

Police soon arrested Dunn as well as Andrew Sheridan and former prize fighter Danny Gentile and held in custody without bail. Although there was concern, due to both the extensive press coverage of the event as well as Dunn's underworld connections, that the state's star witness Mae Hintz might be in danger and was forced to go into hiding until the start of the trial. At the beginning of the trial, Gentile turned states evidence and both Dunn and Sheridan were convicted of murder and sentenced to death by the electric chair. Although Dunn had been in negotiations with the Manhattan's District Attorney's office to become a government informant against waterfront racketeers in exchange for life imprisonment, talks eventually fell though with the D.A.'s office announcing they would not be making a deal with Dunn due to much of his claims being unable to be corroberated. Although pressured by authorities to implicate underworld associates on the day of his execution, he refused and was officially executed at Sing Sing on July 7, 1949.

[edit] Further reading

• English, T.J. Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0-06-059002-5
• United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. New Jersey-New York Waterfront Commission Compact. 1953. [1]
• United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Waterfront Investigation: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. 1953. [2]