The room contains three men and a bed.
One of the men is drunk, flailing about with little control of his body, and the other
two are stone cold sober.
Then things turn violent.
One man grabs the drunkard and pins him down — in such a state, he can hardly put up
a fight.
The other sober man starts fiddling with something by the bed, and a few moments later, he unhooks
the tube from a gaslight and shoves it into the mouth of the drunk man.
He switches it on.
Carbon monoxide floods into his mouth and he remains pinned down until his body goes
limp.
The mission was nearly complete — after at least nine attempts, it was finally time
for Iron Mike Malloy to die...
How had things come to such a sorry state?
Two words: the Great Depression.
Oh wait, that’s three words, but never mind.
Desperate times call for desperate measures — and few points in history have been more
desperate than the period after 1929.
Unemployment was soaring, and you’d struggle to meet someone who wasn’t looking for money.
A certain five men sat in a New York speakeasy in 1933 were no exception.
They were Tony Marino, Joseph Murphy, Francis Pasqua, Hershey Green, and Daniel Kreisburg.
The one thing binding them together was the need to make some quick dough, and that’s
exactly what they were discussing one night in the bar.
Jobs were almost out of the question.
None of them were morally opposed to a life of criminality, but they knew they had to
be smart about it.
A bit of petty thievery here or there just wasn’t going to cut it.
They had to think big.
That’s when a eureka moment hit.
Life insurance.
They’d all heard the tales of people doing themselves in, or doing their loved ones in,
to cash in on a good policy.
But there had to be a better way to do it.
What about if you knew someone who was already really ill?
You could persuade them to sign up for a life insurance policy and cash out when they tragically
met their end a few weeks down the line.
The perfect crime.
There was just one problem.
Nobody could think of anyone who was dying.
Luckily, one man had a better idea.
What if someone took out a life insurance policy and later died in a tragic, very accidental
accident?
Straightaway, they thought of just the guy.
Mike Malloy.
That tragic Irish immigrant who’d lost his job and now spent all his time drinking.
He was in this bar almost every night — it would be easy to try some funny business.
Besides, he didn’t have much life left in him anyway.
If they cut his life short artificially by a few months then so what?
There’s no way they could have known that the man they selected would turn out to be
almost entirely indestructible...
But the five of them agreed.
They’d take out a life insurance policy in a fake name, and make a fake identity card
in the same name.
As long as Mike had the fake identity in his pocket when he died, they’d be able to make
a claim on the life insurance.
One of the other men would take out a fake identity to pose as his brother.
It would require a bit of upfront investment of course, but it’d be well worth it in
the end.
Or so they thought.
So, off they went to the insurers.
Spending almost every last penny the five men could pool together, they took out one
policy from Metropolitan Life and another from Prudential.
Mike Malloy became Nicholas Mellory and Joseph Murphy became Joseph Mellory.
Ah, to be alive in the times when scamming people was that easy.
In total, Mike’s life would be worth just under $3,500, or $65,000 in today’s money.
Not bad for a total washup.
What could go wrong?
The only thing at stake was their lives if they got found out and accused of murder…
but no need to worry about that...
Hundreds of people were already dying in New York from alcohol poisoning each year, which
is pretty impressive considering alcohol was illegal there at the time.
That was why Mike Malloy was the perfect victim.
It seemed perfectly plausible that a known alcoholic with little to live for would join
the hordes of men passing away at the hands of their favorite vice.
Shortly after taking out two life insurance policies…
Soon enough, the fateful night rolled around.
Mike — or should I say Nicholas, wink wink — entered the speakeasy, like he did most
other evenings.
There was just one crucial difference: this time, he was given copious amounts of alcohol
for free.
The five men greeted Mike as if he was some kind of legend, royalty, or a long-lost brother.
Instead of him waiting in the corner of the establishment until someone got drunk enough
to buy him a drink, tonight the booze was flowing as if money was no object.
A beer here, a shot there.
The plan was that he’d gradually get drunker and drunker, until he eventually succumbed
to alcohol poisoning.
But somehow, it wasn’t working.
Mike downed one, two, ten, twenty drinks, until the men were unable to keep count anymore.
Yet he never reached that pitiful state of drunkenness where you lose all sense of reality
and become helpless.
In fact, he kept coming back for more.
He didn’t even look tipsy.
How could someone with no money for alcohol build up such a huge tolerance?
The gang realized they’d have to play dirty.
This man might be able to stomach endless quantities of beer, but there was no way he’d
be able to defy actual poisons.
Well, that’s what you’d think — but Mike was no normal man.
Unfortunately, there was no arsenic on hand.
That was too expensive.
But barman Tony did have some methanol — you know, the byproduct of wood alcohol and coal
that destroys the optic nerve and poisons the central nervous system of regular people.
But not Mike.
He continued to laugh and joke, like he was on Cloud Nine.
He might have had a stomach of iron, but his social intelligence was lacking.
The men gathered behind the bar, plotting their next move.
Maybe the alcohol and the methanol didn’t kill him.
But there was one thing that couldn’t possibly fail: denatured alcohol.
The definition of denatured alcohol is literally alcohol that’s unfit for drinking.
And why is it unfit for drinking, I hear you ask?
It contains toxic additional chemicals.
It doesn’t even taste like regular alcohol — it’s completely disgusting.
So, let’s see how our good friend Mike fared this time…
You’d think he’d spit it out in disgust at least.
But there was nothing.
No reaction.
He downed it like it was whiskey.
Eventually, it came to closing time for the speakeasy.
Mike departed in great spirits, thanking everyone for the free drinks.
He even had the nerve to walk in a straight line as he left.
In a moment of last-ditch hope, you wondered if maybe he’d die in his sleep.
Instead, he was back again the next night.
What had happened defied everything you could have predicted.
How was this man still alive?
But still, there had to be another way.
One man proposed using food as poison instead.
Everyone conceded it was at least worth a go.
So, someone sourced a tin of who-knows-how-old sardines that smelled like death, and prepared
them in a sandwich for Mike, who was once again drunk.
I can’t imagine he was thrilled to be presented with a sardine sandwich, but this was a man
who enjoyed drinking denatured alcohol, after all.
The five men waited anxiously as Mike wolfed down the sandwich.
And… nothing happened.
In fact, he asked for another one.
This was ridiculous.
Did he have no sense of taste at all?
Was he just challenging them and playing along?
But still, the men weren’t about to give up so easily.
Not after shelling out so much money on life insurance.
This time, the men filled out the sandwich with as many ridiculous and toxic yet cheap
things as they could think of.
Bits of broken glass, carpet tacks, finely ground bits of metal tin.
Joseph tried oysters marinated with denatured alcohol, knowing oysters and hard spirits
formed a deadly combination that should pickle the stomach.
Can you guess what happened?
Nothing.
Once again, Mike waltzed out in high spirits.
And if you thought any of the previous attempts on Mike’s life were savage, you’ve seen
nothing yet.
The next night, the men suggested that everyone could go for a walk together.
Nothing like a bit of fresh air on a freezing winter night.
Once they reached a park, they encouraged Mike to sit down on a bench, and hung around
waiting until the alcohol took hold and he fell asleep.
And then they did what all good friends would do in such a situation — left him there
to die.
Few people can survive a winter night in New York city with no protection from the elements.
But this wasn’t just anyone, it was Mike, so they had to be sure.
They ripped open his clothes, poured water over him, and left.
So, would that be it?
Would that finally be the end?
Of course not.
The next morning Mike returned to the speakeasy in perfect health but with an interesting
tale, explaining the cold had shaken him awake, allowing him to leave before he reached a
bitter end.
Meanwhile, one of the men who had walked him to the park had come down with a bad cold.
And they say Karma isn’t real.
That night served as a kind of turning point.
Although the men had been trying to murder Mike, they’d at least been doing it in a
nice way.
They hadn’t tried to strangle or hang him or anything too cold-blooded — they’d
just been preparing him dodgy sandwiches or suggesting questionable activities.
Now, things were about to change.
One of the men, Harry Hershey Green, was a cab driver.
And he reckoned he could orchestrate a car crash.
At first, Hershey tried to bribe some of his acquaintances into doing his dirty work for
him.
But it turns out that even during the Great Depression some people have either morals
or a sensible risk management approach.
So, he resolved to do it himself.
A few days later, the fatal crash happened.
Mike took a harsh battering and was admitted to the hospital.
Everyone thought he’d be dead within hours.
They were wrong.
Once again, Mike lived.
He’d broken his shoulder and suffered a concussion, but he was still very much alive.
In fact, a week later he was back at the speakeasy looking for some free booze.
Oh, Mike, if only you knew what was good for you.
You need to find some real friends.
That night, things turned violent.
The men had thought of one thing that no man could possibly survive.
Carbon monoxide poisoning.
Rewind back to the scene at the start of the video.
Joseph Murphy and Daniel Kriesberg had pinned a drunk Mike down on the bed as they used
a gaslight tube to poison him with carbon monoxide.
You might doubt that the man who died was really Mike.
But come on, you didn’t really think he would survive this one, did you?
It took twenty minutes to finish the job, which is surprisingly long, but eventually
his body had to give in.
So, what happened next?
Did they check in their life insurance premium, wander off into the sunset and live happily
ever after?
Not quite.
They did succeed in getting the money.
At first.
They paid a doctor to sign a death certificate, citing lobar pneumonia as the cause.
It was a downright lie — the doctor falsely claimed Mike had visited the doctor complaining
of flu twice before dying.
There was just one problem.
A few months later, there was a murder at the speakeasy, and Joseph Murphy was taken
into custody as a witness.
Meanwhile, one of the life insurance agents became suspicious after failing to track them
down the nonexistent Nicholas Mellory
There were already rumors going around about the plot to kill Mike, and eventually the
police caught wind of it.
Everything was going to pot.
The police decided to give Mike’s body an autopsy.
The murdering fivesome hadn’t bothered to embalm the body, which would have removed
all traces of what had happened.
Rookie mistake.
It soon became clear that Mike hadn’t died because of his lobar pneumonia or flu.
It didn’t exactly take a forensic pathologist to figure it out — there was a cherry red
discoloration all over the corpse, a clear sign of what had really happened.
All five men, plus the doctor who signed the fake death note, were arrested.
All in all, the gang had blown almost two thousand dollars trying to earn the three
thousand five hundred life dollar premium.
If only I’d be there with them, I would have suggested they use that as to bribe a
journalist to report a fake death.
The power of hindsight, I suppose.
Now, begin your own journey towards immortality by checking out our videos on how to survive
a crocodile attack or falling out of an airplane.