The OTHER Hershey Green. (One crazy true crime...)

Don't know how they did it, but a while back, researchers proved the theory that everyone is within 6 degrees of separation from every other soul in the world. Actually, they came up with 6.6 degrees of separation, which rounds up to 7, but 6 sounds better so...

Anyway, it means that we're all within 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. And we're all within 6 degrees of separation from someone who has committed a crime. I won't get into the details now, but I know I'm within a lot fewer degrees of separation from a couple of criminals. And, at the homeless shelter where I volunteer, I have a friend and colleague who has one hell of a good story to tell, degrees of separation-wise.

I don't know how the topic came up, but we were talking criming, and he told me that, back in the early 1930's, one of his great uncles was involved in a stunningly malevolent, and stunningly barmy, crime.

The uncle was one Herschel Green. AKA Heshy Green. And AKA in the press - and there's been a lot of it - Hershey Green. 

If you google Hershey Green, you come up with kelly-green wrapped Hershey's Kisses. But if you google Michael Malloy... Yowza!

Mike Malloy, AKA Mike the Durable, AKA Iron Mike, AKA the Rasputin of the Bronx, was an Irish immigrant who'd worked as a NYFD firefighter until he hit the bottle one too many times and ended up on skid row. While on the skids, he made acquaintance with five men who took a few policies out on Mike, while plotting to kill him for the payout.

The five members of the so-called "Murder Trust" were Tony Marino, Joseph "Red" Murphy, Francis Pasqua, Hershey Green, and Daniel Kriesberg. This ragtag mix took out multiple life insurance policies under a fake name for a total payout of $3,500 (about $85K today, so $17K a piece).

The crew thought they could easily get Iron Mike Malloy to drink himself to death. Marino owned a bar and was more than happy to let Malloy run up an endless tab. But the man from Donegal was apparently of pretty sturdy stock. So Marino added antifreeze to the mix. Again, Malloy could handle it.

A possible explanation for the antifreeze not killing him is the fact that ethanol blocks absorption of ethylene glycol in the liver (and is used as one possible antidote for antifreeze poisoning). Antifreeze was replaced with turpentine, followed by horse liniment, and finally rat poison was mixed in. After these mixtures failed to kill Malloy, Marino mixed shots of wood alcohol (pure methanol) in with his normal shots of liquor. This did not kill Malloy, presumably because the normal liquor helped negate the methanol poisoning. (Source: Wikipedia)

And maybe back in Donegal Mike Malloy had taken an occasional drop of the poitin craythur (creature) - poitin being Irish moonshine -  and his liver was impervious to any assault. (I've never taste poitin, but I have smelled it, and I thought that one whiff was going to set me into acute liver failure.)

Anyway, the ever-resourceful, ever imaginative, mostly hapless wannabe murderers kept trying. The Plan Bs were feeding Malloy "raw oysters soaked in wood alcohol," a recipe that Pasqua thought was a killer mix. Then there was the rotten sardine, poison, and carpet tack sandwich. 

Malloy lived on. (Seriously, I know it was the Depression and all, but how much in the bag would you have to be to take a bite of a rotten sardine sandwich - let alone not notice that there were carpet tacks in there?) 

Plan C: Freeze the bastard to death. 

On an extremely cold night, after Malloy drank until passing out, he was carried to a park, dumped in the snow, and had 5 US gallons (19 L; 4.2 imp gal) of water poured on his bare chest. However, shortly thereafter, Malloy was rescued by police who took him to a homeless charity where he was re-clothed.

The crimers thought this would sure-fire work, because Marino had earlier gotten away with insuring an alcoholic woman, getting her drunk, stripping her clothing off, dousing her body and bedding with ice cold water, and leaving her in front of an open window on a frigid night. Death by bronchial pneumonia. Marino collected $2K. But Malloy was made of sterner stuff than that poor soul.  

So next up - Plan D - was using Great Uncle Hershey Green's taxi to run Malloy over. That attempt resulted in some broken bones and three weeks in the hospital. 

Plan E ended up sealing the deal.

This attempt succeded after the team took a passed-out Malloy to Murphy's room:

...put a hose in his mouth that was connected to the coal gas jet, and turned it on. This finally killed Malloy, with his death occurring within an hour. He was pronounced dead of lobar pneumonia and quickly buried, with Dr. Frank Manzella [who was bribed to do so] signing the death certificate.

 Alas, for the Murder Trust, tongues started wagging:

Police heard rumors of "Mike the Durable" in speakeasies around the town, and upon learning that Michael Malloy had died that night, they had the body exhumed and forensically examined.

And that was it for the Murder Trust.

The not-so-good Doctor Manzella got off with a misdemeanor charge. But four of the fire were convicted and executed, at Sing Sing, in the electric chair. Hershey Green was smart enough to turn state's evidence - and he may have "just" been directly involved in the taxi rundown - and he was sentenced to 10 years in Sing Sing. (For the rundown attempt, the other four guys had bribed Hesh with $150.) Somehow, Hershey Green ended up doing some time in San Quentin, and my colleague's father, as a boy, was taken by his straight-arrow father on a cross country drive to visit Uncle Heshy there. 

My friend and colleague does remember meeting Uncle Hesh somewhere along the line, but can't recall when he died. 

But what a story. True crimes are often intriguing, more so when they're only a degree of separation or so away. But this one about the OTHER Hershey Green. Just plain crazy!