Owen Vincent "Owney" Madden (December 18, 1891 – April 24, 1965) was a British-born gangster of Irish ancestry who became a leading underworld figure in New York during Prohibition. Nicknamed "The Killer", he garnered a brutal reputation within street gangs and organized crime. He ran the Cotton Club in Manhattan and was a leading boxing promoter. After increased harassment from law enforcement in New York, Madden moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1935, where he remained until his death from natural causes in 1965. Early life Owen Vincent Madden was born into a working-class family at 25 Somerset Road in Leeds, England, on December 18, 1891, the son of Irish immigrants Francis Madden and Mary Madden (née O'Neil.) After his mother became a widow she emigrated to New York to become a maid, leaving Owen and his sister Mary and brother Martin in a British orphanage. In 1896, Owen's mother saved up enough money to take them out of the orphanage and get them tickets to join her in New York City. The young Madden grew up on the streets New York where he learned how to use blackjacks, knuckledusters, bats, pipes, knives, and stilettoes. By the age of 21 years old, Madden had become the leader of a feared New York street gang known as the Gopher Gang. He earned the nickname, "The Killer" for getting away with two brazen murders. On September 6, 1911, he shot dead a gang member of the rival Hudson Dusters in the heart of Dusters' territory around 30th Street. In February 1912, Madden was on a crowded street trolley, arguing with a store clerk named William Henshaw about a woman, and Madden shot Henshaw in the face. Henshaw was not a gang member, and as he was dying, he named Owney Madden as his killer. Despite the police having his name, and there being eyewitnesses to the crime, Madden never went to trial—witnesses in both killings were intimidated, and disappeared. In 1915, he eventually went to prison for ordering the killing of William “Little Patsy Doyle” Moore, who had been waging a three-year vendetta campaign against Madden and the Gopher Gang. Prohibition After serving seven years of a 10-to-20-year sentence for Moore's manslaughter, Madden was released on parole in 1923. The Gopher Gang had broken up, and many members of his own faction were either in Sing Sing or working for bootlegging gangs.