Mikey Cohen

Mickey Cohen was the most famous West Coast gangster in the 1950s, largely because of self-promotion. But after he was incarcerated his fame evaporated and he was reduced to being a nervous sidekick in mafia history.

Mickey’s father died when he was about two, throwing the family into poverty. It appears that he had very little schooling and an older, erratic, criminally inclined brother—a bad combination. Mickey became a boxer as a teenager, then, because he was handy with his fists and guns, fell in some big-time gangsters.

Eventually he ran their West Coast gambling operations. He claimed to have been sent west to monitor Bugsy Siegel, who was building up Las Vegas in the late 1940s. Siegel died, however, after a bullet sailed through his picture window and the newspaper he was reading.

In fact, a lot of people dropped dead around Mickey—his lawyer, other gang members, guys who were going to testify against him. And Mickey was usually “somewhere else” or “in the washroom”. But that last part turned out to be true; he had an obsessive-compulsive disorder and couldn’t stop washing his hands.

Mickey was living the fast life in Los Angeles in that brief moment when glamorous showgirls, B-grade movie actors and suave gangsters dined in the same restaurants. And, as long as he was in control he could maintain emotional balance. But after he went to prison for income tax evasion in the mid-1950s and again in 1961, his neurosis kicked in and he became increasingly more unstable. He whined, he compulsively sought attention and demanded, and sometimes got, special treatment.

Mickey spent nearly a year on Alcatraz in 1961-62. After transfer to the U.S. Penitentiary at Atlanta, he was attacked by a former Alcatraz convict and sustained neurological damage. He sued the government and got a small amount of money. He paroled in 1972, tried to insert himself in the 1975 Patty Hearst kidnapping, and died in 1976 at age 63, a forgotten man.

<-- Previous

Back

Next -->