WHACKED: Purple Gang Boss Shot Dead in Car
Gangster Michael Meldish took a bullet to the head on Friday night in a grizzly exercise of Mafia recidivism. The killing has all the signs of a genuine, bona fide mob hit – old school all the way.
Meldish, whose brother is currently serving time in prison, has been a notorious hitman believed to have killed more than 10 people in the two decades he spent running The Purple Gang. His reign ended on Friday night, at around 10:30 p.m. His body was found in the driver’s seat of a rusty Lincoln LS in Throgs Neck on Ellsworth Ave.
“Michael was a stone-cold killer,” Joseph Coffey, former commanding officer of the NYPD’s organized crime homicide task force, told the New York Daily News, which added that Coffey had “tried for years to pin murders on Meldish…” Interesting choice of phrase.
Coffey added: “We couldn’t get any witnesses. They had the people so terrified they just wouldn’t cooperate.”
Coffey said he suspects Meldish was offed by a rival – and that “It should have happened a long time ago. I call it vermin killing vermin — poetic justice.” Tell us how you really feel, Joe…
Meldish’s body was seen by witnesses, who said he’d been “nattily [nicely, expensively] dressed, in a camel-colored leather jacket and slacks” when he was whacked. Sounds like he was arriving from or going to a high-level meeting. A setup?
“His head was back, his mouth was open and his sunglasses were on the floor, with one of the lenses popped out,” a witness told the News.
Meldish reportedly controlled the drug trade in the Bronx and Harlem as the co-leader of the Purple Gang — a crew originally affiliated with the Luchese, Genovese and Bonanno crime families.
His brother and longtime partner in crime, Joseph Meldish, is believed to be responsible for as many as 70 contract killings.
Joseph Meldish, 56, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in 2011 for a 1999 slaying.
Michael Meldish racked up nearly 10 arrests between 1970 and 1990 on charges ranging from assault to forgery. “They were the lowest of the low ... just ruthless scumbags,” Coffey said.
But Meldish’s former landlady in the Bronx described him as a perfect gentleman, the News reported.
“There’s not a bad thing I can say about him,” said his onetime landlady, Anne Rescigno, 84. “I loved him like he was my son.”
Sounds like a dyed-in-the-wool gangster.
The Purple Gang is long considered to be among the most pitiless mob crews in the city.
The gang was known for killing and dismembering rivals as it controlled the heroin trade in Harlem and the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s. Its members — many of whom were relatives of more established crime figures — often freelanced as “muscle” for the Lucchese, Genovese and Bonanno families.
Taking its name from a group of thugs that terrorized Detroit during Prohibition, the Purple Gang grew so powerful in the late 1970s that authorities feared it might attempt to become the area’s sixth organized crime family — potentially igniting an all-out mob war.
A 1976 federal report cited the gang’s “enormous capacity for violence” and “lack of respect for other members of organized crime.”
The crew’s power began waning in the late 1980s as members were snared in drug busts.
 |
| Michael Meldish's good night kiss. |
Meldish, whose brother is currently serving time in prison, has been a notorious hitman believed to have killed more than 10 people in the two decades he spent running The Purple Gang. His reign ended on Friday night, at around 10:30 p.m. His body was found in the driver’s seat of a rusty Lincoln LS in Throgs Neck on Ellsworth Ave.
“Michael was a stone-cold killer,” Joseph Coffey, former commanding officer of the NYPD’s organized crime homicide task force, told the New York Daily News, which added that Coffey had “tried for years to pin murders on Meldish…” Interesting choice of phrase.
 |
| Joseph Meldish, now in prison, is alleged to have committed up to 70 contract hits. |
Coffey said he suspects Meldish was offed by a rival – and that “It should have happened a long time ago. I call it vermin killing vermin — poetic justice.” Tell us how you really feel, Joe…
Meldish’s body was seen by witnesses, who said he’d been “nattily [nicely, expensively] dressed, in a camel-colored leather jacket and slacks” when he was whacked. Sounds like he was arriving from or going to a high-level meeting. A setup?
“His head was back, his mouth was open and his sunglasses were on the floor, with one of the lenses popped out,” a witness told the News.
Meldish reportedly controlled the drug trade in the Bronx and Harlem as the co-leader of the Purple Gang — a crew originally affiliated with the Luchese, Genovese and Bonanno crime families.
His brother and longtime partner in crime, Joseph Meldish, is believed to be responsible for as many as 70 contract killings.
Joseph Meldish, 56, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in 2011 for a 1999 slaying.
Michael Meldish racked up nearly 10 arrests between 1970 and 1990 on charges ranging from assault to forgery. “They were the lowest of the low ... just ruthless scumbags,” Coffey said.
But Meldish’s former landlady in the Bronx described him as a perfect gentleman, the News reported.
“There’s not a bad thing I can say about him,” said his onetime landlady, Anne Rescigno, 84. “I loved him like he was my son.”
Sounds like a dyed-in-the-wool gangster.
The Purple Gang is long considered to be among the most pitiless mob crews in the city.
The gang was known for killing and dismembering rivals as it controlled the heroin trade in Harlem and the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s. Its members — many of whom were relatives of more established crime figures — often freelanced as “muscle” for the Lucchese, Genovese and Bonanno families.
Taking its name from a group of thugs that terrorized Detroit during Prohibition, the Purple Gang grew so powerful in the late 1970s that authorities feared it might attempt to become the area’s sixth organized crime family — potentially igniting an all-out mob war.
A 1976 federal report cited the gang’s “enormous capacity for violence” and “lack of respect for other members of organized crime.”
The crew’s power began waning in the late 1980s as members were snared in drug busts.