Mike the Durable and the Murder Trust
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The door to the bar opened and an Irishman stumbled in, escaping the cold New York City night for the trashy digs of the speakeasy. The four friends lounging around the small establishment recognized the man immediately, but they couldn't believe what they were seeing. They stared, jaws open, as the man made his way to the plywood bar. It was early 1933 and the Irishman was known as Michael Malloy.

But with the passing of time and through the whispers of his story, Mike would come to have known another nickname, several in fact, the most well-known, Mike the Durable. There was also Iron Mike, Rasputin of the Bronx, and Durable Molloy. The group of four men who had never expected to see Michael Molloy alive again would also come to have their own nickname, the Murder Trust. But when they witnessed Molloy come into the speakeasy that night,

They couldn't have known what lay ahead for them, but they probably should have. The story of Mike Molloy is a prime example of truth being stranger than fiction. It's a tale of woe, desperation, and stupidity. Some may even find it darkly comedic in its own unique way. It's a startling look at what desperation will do to men and the lengths they will go to make a fistful of cash.

And as far as true crime stories go, this one has earned a fateful place among the strangest. It's the story of Mike the Durable and the Murder Trust. Part One: A Stroke of Genius The Great Depression was making life hard for many Americans and immigrants in 1933. And the tumultuous stone and steel jungle that was New York City was anything but immune.

With an impressive unemployment rate around 50% in the city, there were a lot of desperate people around. But different people dealt with their desperation in different ways. Some people, like those who would come to be known as the Murder Trust, turned their minds to crime. At first, when the desperation led to thoughts of murder, the Trust comprised only four men.

Anthony Marino, who owned a speakeasy in the Bronx. The speakeasy's barkeep, Joe Red Murphy, who was the one to sling the prohibited drinks to down and out customers. Frank Francis Pasqua, who was an undertaker and essential to the plan that the four men concocted. Rounding out the group was Daniel Kreisberg, a fruit vendor. All four men had one thing in common, they needed money.

And they were in a unique position to take advantage of the speakeasies clientele. People whom, they thought, would drink themselves to death sooner or later anyway. If they could speed the process along and, with the help of a corrupt insurance agent or two, make some money in the process, what was the harm? It seemed like a stroke of genius.

In fact, Marino had already pocketed a nice chunk of change when he took out a life insurance policy on a homeless woman, naming himself as the beneficiary. He plied her with alcohol until she was pass out drunk. Then he doused a mattress in cold water and let her sleep on it in the frigid winter. The woman was dead 24 hours later. Cause of death, pneumonia.

Marino pocketed a cool $2,000, which would equate to about $45,000 today. It was likely the easiest money he ever made, if you don't consider the moral implications, which, clearly, Marino didn't have any. So if he'd done it once already, how hard could it be to do it again? The four men agreed that it would be a good way to make a buck, and they started looking for likely victims in the speakeasy.

While Marino, Murphy, and the other two men were desperate enough to murder, others, like Michael Molloy, drowned their troubles in alcohol. Molloy's age in 1933 is still disputed. Some say he was born in 1873 in County Donegal, Ireland, which would have put him in the 59 to 60 range. He was somewhere between 50 and 60 years old, but he looked older.

He'd been living a hard life, and the constant heavy drinking seemed to be taking its toll. In short, he looked like an ideal candidate. He frequented the speakeasy regularly, often racking up a tab that he would try to pay off whenever he came into some money. But when the four men decided that he was their mark, he suddenly found himself with four new friends and all the booze he could drink.

One day, they proffered a petition that was ostensibly to get Anthony Marino to run for local office. In a drunken haze, Malloy signed the paper. It was really an insurance policy for metropolitan life. He also unknowingly signed two other policies from Prudential. And with the insurance policies in place, they provided Malloy with a back room in the speakeasy to sleep off his drunks.

Judging by his appearance, the murder trust thought it was only a matter of time before Malloy keeled over from drinking. And since prohibition still had the better part of a year before it would be repealed, bad alcohol was a common poison in speakeasies all over the city. Whether in the form of bad batches by bootleggers or booze poisoned on purpose by the government to dissuade drinking, the stuff was around.

"Get Mike Molloy to drink enough of the stuff," they thought. He'd surely die sooner rather than later. They had no way of knowing at the time that Molloy wouldn't go down without a fight, even if he had no idea what his new buddies were planning. Part Two: Attempted Murder, Numbers One through Six. The first murder attempt may not have convinced the jury of the four men's guilt, had it been successful.

They provided Mike Molloy with free alcohol, thinking that nature would take its course. They figured Molloy would either drink his organs into failure or pass out in a park or on a sidewalk and freeze to death. It was, after all, still winter in New York, and Molloy was homeless. But weeks passed, and Anthony Marino, the speakeasy owner, was starting to balk at his bottom line.

The bartender, Murphy, had been giving Molloy as much booze as he could take, but the Irishman was still up and about. In fact, all the free alcohol seemed to be having a revitalizing effect on the man. He seemed to be gaining weight, and his skin took on a healthier hue. Marino noticed that Molloy was eating into his eventual profits. If he kept giving the man free alcohol, it could end up costing him money by the time the Irishman died. If he died.

So with attempt number one of failure, the group put their heads together and came up with a solution. One night, the bartender presented Malloy with something new. Malloy drank the glass of booze down. He told Murphy that it was smooth. Shortly after, he collapsed to the ground, out of

Thinking that their plan was working, they brought the unconscious Malloy to the back room they'd set aside for him. They were already formulating the next steps, which would involve a small bribe in the hands of the right doctor to pronounce the man dead of pneumonia, just like the homeless woman Marino had murdered. But about an hour later, Malloy stumbled out of the back room and slid up to the bar, asking for more of the new stuff Murphy had given him. Surprised and disbelieving,

Murphy poured more of the stuff into a glass and gave it over. Once again, Malloy downed the poison, unaware that it was alcohol mixed with antifreeze. Attempt number two, antifreeze, didn't work. Even after the first night, they continued to give him the poisoned booze, but he kept coming back. Little did they know, alcohol is often used to counteract the effects of antifreeze poisoning, preventing organ damage.

so they were feeding him both the poison and the antidote all at the same time. But Iron Mike's countenance was a big part of his survival, especially as the group changed tactics and increasingly brazen efforts to kill the man. Attempt number three involved adding turpentine to the man's drinks. Still, nothing happened. Malloy kept coming back, often in good spirits, to take part in his newfound bounty of free alcohol.

Attempt number four involved rat poison in his booze. Somehow, it had no visible effect on the Irishman, but the four would-be murderers had come too far to stop now. They could almost taste the money that would be theirs when Molloy finally kicked the bucket, so they decided to change tactics yet again. Their fifth attempt at killing Mike Molloy involved food. Frank Pasqua, the undertaker, came up with an idea

He'd seen a man die after eating oysters soaked in whiskey, so he figured something similar would work on Malloy. So they soaked oysters in wood alcohol and then gave them to Malloy. The story goes that the Irishman downed two dozen of the things before complimenting Marino on the delicious food, saying he should open a restaurant. The one thing he didn't do after eating the oysters was die.

Their sixth attempt also involved food. They fed him a sandwich of rotten sardines and metal shavings. He downed the sandwich without a problem and asked for another, apparently realizing that neither food nor drink could kill the man. They decided to change to more aggressive tactics, which was when things started going off the rails for the men. They were sowing their own demise as they involved more people in their little plot.

stubbornly continuing to try and murder the seemingly unkillable Michael Malloy. Part three, Malloy's death. The four plotters decided that they'd let Mother Nature finally do away with the Irishman. Of course, they'd help her along as best they could. Perhaps taking inspiration from the homeless woman Marino succeeded in killing, they waited for Malloy to pass out on one freezing winter night. Once he was unconscious, they dragged him out into the cold.

After taking his coat off, they tossed him into a mound of snow. Then they opened his shirt and poured five gallons of water onto his chest. They left him there to die, sure that the below freezing temperatures would finally do what they could not. Then they just had to wait for news of his death. So the next night, when the door to the bar opened and the Irishman stumbled in, the four men were caught speechless. They stared at him, jaws open,

as though they were looking at a ghost or more accurately, a man back from the dead. But it wasn't just seeing him alive that brought the shocked expressions to their faces. Molloy was also wearing new clothes. As the men tried to recover from the shock of seeing Molloy, the Irishman explained to them that he must have really tied one on the previous night. He couldn't remember a thing.

But apparently, a couple of police officers came across him sleeping in a snowdrift in the park. They brought him to a charity organization, who allowed him to sleep it off, and then provided him with some new clothes. Once again, Malloy had escaped the Reaper. Other men in other times may have written the plot off then, but not Marino, Murphy, Pasqua, and Kreisberg.

Their desperation only increased. They were determined to kill the amiable drunk and reap the benefits. So they tried yet again. Thinking they had to be more proactive, they decided to hire a taxi driver by the name of Harry Green to hit Malloy with his cab. They paid Green $150 for the job, then took a blackout drunk Malloy to Pelham Parkway. Green backed his cab up two blocks to ensure he could get enough speed to kill the man.

Then he zoomed down the road toward the pre-arranged spot. Murphy, who was propping Malloy up as the cabs bent toward them, got out of the way. But so did Malloy. He stumbled out of the street and to safety. But the five men wouldn't be dissuaded. They took Malloy to another location. This time, Green hit him going about 45 miles an hour. The five men left him there in the street and went on their merry way.

Sure, the man was dead. They once again waited for news of his death, checking the newspapers and calling mortuaries for several days without any news. They didn't know what happened and things didn't become clear until Malloy came into the speakeasy several weeks later, looking to get drunk. The police had found him yet again and had taken him to a hospital. He'd suffered a fractured skull, broken collarbone and a concussion, but he was on the mend.

They couldn't believe their luck. The man seemed unkillable. Reportedly, the men turned their attention elsewhere. They consulted with a professional hitman who told them it would cost $500 to kill Molloy. It was too much for them. Instead of trying to kill Molloy, they found another drunk who was a dead ringer for the Irishman.

The man's name was Murray, and they put Malloy's ID in his pocket, then hit him with the cab. But like Malloy, Murray didn't die. He recovered from his injuries after two months in a hospital. The incompetent criminals decided they were done dancing around the subject. They would kill Malloy once and for all, giving up all pretense of making it look like an accident.

So in late February 1933, they got the Irishman wasted on wood alcohol and dragged him to a nearby apartment. There was a gas line in the place, which was to be the murder weapon. They connected the line to a hose and shoved the other end into Molloy's mouth. It did the trick. Molloy, also known as Mike the Durable, finally died after nearly two months and numerous attempts on his life.

He died from chemical suffocation caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. The murder trust bribed a doctor to put the cause of death as pneumonia, with alcohol as a contributing factor. Within a few hours of his death, Malloy was in the ground, compliments of Frank Pasqua, the undertaker. The five men involved in the plan thought they were home free. Malloy was finally dead and they had money coming their way, but things wouldn't go well for them. In fact,

They would soon be swooped up by the long arm of the law, and they would experience the full weight of the 1930s criminal justice system. Part 4: The Murder Trust Gets Theirs How exactly the police got involved is debated. Some say that Metropolitan Life paid Murphy, who was pretending to be Malloy's brother, the $800 payout.

But when Prudential came around to give him the money from the other two policies, they found out that he'd been arrested on unrelated charges. According to some, this made the insurance company employees suspicious, and so they contacted the police. Others say that the police started to hear stories about Mike the Durable around the New York City speakeasies. However they caught wind of it, the police started an investigation within months of Malloy's death.

They exhumed Mike the Durable's body and had it examined. It soon became clear that he hadn't died of pneumonia, as the death certificate claimed. He'd been murdered, as evidenced by the high levels of carbon monoxide still in Malloy's body. Unsurprisingly, the criminals were having a hard time agreeing on the split. Green, the cab driver, thought he hadn't been paid his fair share. So when the police came calling, he was happy to cut a deal.

Likewise, the doctor who'd been paid $50 to forge the death certificate was also quick to cooperate with police. It didn't take authorities long to lock all the co-conspirators up to await trial. The media quickly dubbed the group the Murder Trust. The four men grasped at straws during the trial. They claimed insanity and blamed one another.

They also invoked the name of a well-known and recently deceased gangster, insisting that the man forced them to kill Malloy. The jury wasn't buying it. The prosecutor sought the death penalty, and the jury agreed. In a strange twist of fate, the judge that had married Frank Pasqua a few years earlier was the same one to oversee his sentencing in the case.

The four main perpetrators, Anthony Marino, Joe Murphy, Frank Pasqua, and Dan Kreisberg were sentenced to death by electric chair. Unlike Mike Molloy, each man died on the first attempt as electricity surged through their bodies. Green, the cab driver, was sentenced to life in prison. The corrupt doctor was also sentenced to a lengthy prison stay. One could conclude that Mike Molloy got justice from the grave

His story was too good to be kept secret for long. The tough Irishman may have been killed by the murder trust, but the fact that he survived so many attempts caught the imagination of the people and continues to do so today. Molloy's story is a great example of the resilience of the human body and the human spirit. He survived so much and kept coming back for more, but even the most resilient among us have their breaking point.

Luckily, the story of Mike the Durable is alive and well, allowing us to toast his memory. Just be sure you trust whoever poured your drink before you toss it down the hatch in memory of old Mike Malloy.