Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll
Like Charlie Birger, Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll was also born far away from America. Unlike Birger, Coll became a big-city gangster during the Prohibition years, using his adopted hometown of New York City to. Coll was born in County Donegal, Ireland in 1908. His family emigrated from Ireland to the United States when Coll was still an infant, settling in the Bronx in New York. The Coll family included 7 children and the impoverished immigrants struggled to make ends meet in the U.S.
Coll joined a street gang at a young age, and was constantly in trouble with school officials and the law. He was expelled from school and was now free to run the streets of New York with other young hoodlums. When Prohibition became law in 1920, crime became rampant in New York as it did in other parts of the country. Criminals of all stripes took advantage of New York’s ports and and bootlegging flourished. Vincent Coll took advantage as well. He joined up with Dutch Schultz’s crew and worked as an enforcer and an assassin for the gang.
Coll was wild and unpredictable, and Dutch Schultz and his men grew tired of his behavior. Coll robbed a dairy in the Bronx in 1929 without Schultz’s permission, and the head gangster was furious. When he confronted the brash, young Coll about the incident, the Irishman demanded Schultz make him an equal partner in his enterprise. Predictably, Schultz was not interested in sharing his criminal gains with a young, wild-eyed lunatic, so he told Coll he was on his own. Coll formed his own gang and went to war with Schultz and anyone else who he deemed a threat to his ambition.
Schultz’s men killed Coll’s brother Peter in May 1931, and Coll went on a rampage, gunning down four of Schultz’s men in the next three weeks. The gangs fought back and forth and left the streets of New York littered with dead bodies. On July 28, 1931, Coll and some of his men attempted to kidnap a rival bootlegger named Joseph Rao. Coll’s men opened fire on Rao during the struggle, and stray bullets hit five young children who were playing nearby. One of the children, a 5-year-old boy, died from his wounds. New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker knew Coll was behind the attack and he called the gangster a “Mad Dog.” A nickname was born and Vincent Coll went into hiding.
Coll was captured a few months later in the Bronx and stood trial. The prosecution, however, presented a weak case and Coll was acquitted in December 1931. After his release, a rival Irish gangster and bootlegger named Owney Madden put a $50,000 bounty on Coll’s head. Headlines and condemnation from the mayor of New York were not good for anyone involved in the illegal alcohol business. On February 8, 1932, Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll was gunned down in a phone booth in a Manhattan drug store. The “Mad Dog” was dead at the age of 23.