Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll (born Uinseann Ó Colla, July 20, 1908 — February 8, 1932) was an Irish mob hitman in early 20th-century New York City. Coll gained notoriety for the accidental killing of a young child during a mob kidnap attempt.
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Early Years
Coll was born in Gweedore, an Irish-speaking region of County Donegal, Ireland; his family emigrated to the U.S. a year later. Coll was a distant relative of Northern Ireland MP Brid Rodgers. Coll grew up in the The Bronx, where he joined a street gang and befriended mobster Dutch Schultz.
Mob Assassin and Kidnapper
As Schultz's criminal empire grew in power during the 1920s, he employed Coll as an assassin. Coll would also kidnap powerful gangsters at gunpoint and hold them for ransom. He knew that the victims would not report the kidnappings; they would have a hard time explaining to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the taxation agency in the U.S., why the ransom cash hadn't been reported. Needless to say, Coll was not very popular in the New York underworld. Before too long, Coll and Schultz had a serious falling out. After Coll had been arrested, Schultz personally paid Coll's bail bond to free him from jail. However, Coll never showed up in court and Schultz lost the bond money. Naturally, Schultz wanted Coll to compensate him for the loss. However, an initial attempt to collect this debt devolved into a full-scale shooting war between the Schultz and Coll gangs.
Child Killer
On July 28, 1931, Coll unsuccessfully attempted to kidnap Joey Rao, a Schultz underling. The resulting shootout left a five year old child, Michael Vengali, dead and several children wounded. After this atrocity, New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker dubbed Coll "Mad Dog" and the whole city started looking for him.
Failed Hit
In the aftermath of the Vengali killing, Salvatore Maranzano, the mafia boss of all bosses in New York City, planned to hire Coll to murder his gang rival, Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Luciano had previously helped Maranzano win the infamous Castellammarrese War in New York and gain control of organized crime. However, Maranzano suspected Luciano of wanting to control the crime families. Coll agreed to murder Luciano for a $25,000 payment in advance and a $25,000 payment on completion of the job. On September 10, 1931, Maranzano invited Luciano to visit his office. The plan was that Coll would turn up and kill Luciano. However, Luciano had received a tip-off about this plan (although probably not the identity of the hitman), so he instead sent over a squad of his own hitmen who stabbed and shot Maranzano to death. Coll finally arrived to kill Luciano, only to find Maranzano dead and Luciano's hitmen fleeing the scene. Coll let the hitmen depart unmolested; he was probably happy that Maranzano wouldn't be asking for his $25,000 back.
Exoneration
Surprisingly, Coll went to court to fight charges on the Vengali killing. He retained famed defense lawyer Samuel Leibowitz to defend him. (possibly paying him with the $25,000 from Maranzano.) Leibowitz destroyed the credibility of the prosecution's main witness, George Brecht, a man who made a covert living as a witness at trials. In December 1931, Coll was acquitted.
Gangland Death
Despite his acquittal, Vincent Coll had only ten weeks to live. Owney Madden, boss of the Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob put a large bounty on Coll's head. Coll's killers were later discovered to be freelance hitmen Leonard Scarnici and Anthony Fabrizzo. Both men had been attracted by the Coll bounty. On February 1, 1932, a week before the shooting, both men had invaded a Bronx apartment which Coll was rumored to frequent. The hitmen burst in on with pistols and submachine guns blazing; killing three people outright and wounding three others. However, Coll was not there. On the next attempt, Schultz sent Abraham "Bo" Weinberg with Scarnici and Fabrizzo to identify Coll and drive the getaway car. On February 8, 1932, at 12:30 a.m, Coll was in telephone booth inside a drug store on West 23rd Street in Manhattan. Allegedly Coll was talking on the phone with Madden, who was trying to occupy Coll until the gunmen arrived. Finally, a limousine containing Scarnici, Fabrizzo, and Weinberg stopped outside the drugstore. While Weinberg remained at the wheel, the two gunmen got out; one stood guard on the sidewalk, while a third went inside with a Thompson submachine gun and did the work. The gunman fired one long burst up the left glass window of the booth and another down the right side. The killers were chased unsuccessfully up Eighth Avenue by a detective squad who pulled up just after Coll was shot. Coll had been machine-gunned to death; a total of fifteen bullets were dug out of his body at the morgue, but many more shots may have passed clean through him.
Aftermath
On November 20, 1932, Fabrizzo was murdered after a botched attempt on the life of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. On June 27, 1935, Scarnici was electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison for the murder of a detective. Dutch Schultz sent a wreath to Coll's funeral bearing a banner with the message, "From the boys." Schultz would continue to operate his rackets for several more years. However, on October 23, 1935, Schultz was killed at the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey on orders from the new National Crime Syndicate. In 1935, Owney Madden, still under police scrutiny for the Coll killing, moved to Arkansas.
In popular culture
Vincent Coll has been portrayed in the following films and TV shows:
- Mad Dog Coll film 1961 by John Davis Chandler.
- Mad Dog Coll film 1992 by Christopher Bradley. Bradley would reprise this role in the 1992 film Hit the Dutchman.
- The Untouchables television series of the 1950s-60's by Clu Gulager.
- Lawless Years television series by Robert Sampson.
- The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond film 1960 by Richard Gardner.
- Portrait of a Mobster film by Joseph Gallison.
- Mobsters film 1991 by Nicholas Sadler.
- The Cotton Club film 1984 by Nicolas Cage, a character modelled after Coll.
- Ogden Nash mentions Coll in his poem A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor.
Further reading
- Lundberg, Ferdinand. The Rich and the Super-Rich. New York: Bantam Books, 1969.
- Downey, Patrick. Gangster City: The History of the New York Underworld 1900-1935. New Jersey: Barricade Books, 2004. ISBN 1-56980-267-X
